Customer Favorites

blog

Meet the Author of . . . Spark Change

Jennie Lee — October 26, 2020

The Author

Jennie Lee is the author of Spark Change: 108 Provocative Questions for Spiritual Evolution. In addition to being an author, she is a recognized expert in the fields of yoga therapy and spiritual living. She has taught classical yoga and meditation for more than 20 years, and coached private clients in the practices that integrate life spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically. She is also the author of the award-winning books True Yoga: Practicing With the Yoga Sutras for Happiness & Spiritual Fulfillment and Breathing Love: Meditation in Action. She lives in Hawai‘i with her husband and bunnies. For more, see jennieleeyogatherapy.com.

The Book

Spark Change Book It’s been said that finding the right question is as important as finding its answer. As author Jennie Lee writes, “Quality questions lead to quality answers. Questions promote deeper thought, connection, authenticity, and humility.” In Spark Change, Lee shows you how to identify your most important personal questions and explore how they might redefine the trajectory of your life.

Send us a photo of you and your pet (and let us know if your pet had any role in helping you write your book)!

Jennie Lee and Toki

Most evenings I share a little couch time with my house bunny Toki. As prey animals, rabbits sense energy, so if I have had a tense day and carry any agitation into snuggle time, Toki will nip my leg as if to say, “calm down!” Relaxing with the bun reminds me to let go of what I can’t control, and to practice being peaceful in the present moment. Toki time in the evening reinforces what I write about in Spark Change—the necessity of self-reflection and accountability for what needs changing within myself. And he is a darn cute teacher.

What is something about you that doesn’t make it into your author bio? It could be something that impacts your work, or something totally random and entertaining!

Jennie Lee Surf

Although I grew up in Southern California, I was always a bit afraid of the ocean. When I moved to Hawai‘i, I wanted to get beyond this fear, so I taught myself how to surf. Now, paddling out at dawn into the gorgeous turquoise water is one of the best things about my day. The focus that is required to catch a wave is an apt metaphor for accomplishing anything in life, and the exhilaration that comes when I make the drop and take the ride is pure joy.

What was your favorite book as a child?

Harold Purple Crayon

As an only child, I played alone a lot. I loved Harold and the Purple Crayon because Harold drew himself into his own adventures, created his own frightening dragons, and saved his own life by imagining a new way home. Imagination is essential to living a creative life and this story illustrates how we craft our experiences through our thoughts. Ever since childhood, I have been learning how to design, with greater intention, the life of my dreams by eliminating dead ends in my thinking and replacing them with new roads home.

Learn More

Sounds True | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop | IndieBound

blog

Post Views: 636

Self-care and selflessness: a contradiction?

Sounds True — June 10, 2013

In the research for the dissertation I’m writing on the ways in which spiritual belief and practice can serve a defensive function, I’ve come across the writings of Miles Neale, a Buddhist-oriented psychologist in New York City (who I ended up interviewing as part of the study). Miles recently sent me an article he just published which covers an important area in the ongoing dialogue between psychological/ therapeutic and contemplative approaches to health and well-being. One of the hot topics in contemporary psychospiritual inquiry has to do with the understanding of the “self,” i.e. its ontological status, what it is, how if at all it might be worked with, and how practitioners might be able to reconcile self-development/ self-love/ self-acceptance/ self-care with the contemplative discoveries of no-self, selflessness, shunyata, and so forth.

During our free video series on the Self-Acceptance Project, more than one participant asked, “So what is this ‘self’ that we’re accepting, anyway?” Or, in other words, how can we accept a self that isn’t actually there upon investigation? All fair questions, of course.

I’ll leave you with the first part of Miles’ paper below. If you find it interesting, you can head over to his website to download the entire piece, which I quite enjoyed. Or just go straight to Miles’ website and read the entire article.

Self-care and Selflessness: A Contradiction?

The nearly half century dialogue between Buddhism and Western psychology has created a potential forum for a mutually enriching exchange. It has also raised productive questions about the points of overlap and dissonance between the two traditions. One of the most apparent differences is in the way these disciplines relate to the self. Psychotherapy emphasizes genuine care for the self and its feelings, needs and wounds, helps to restore a continuity in the sense of self when it begins to fragment and investigates how self-denial creates profound psychic disturbance and dysfunction in relationships. Buddhist meditation establishes attentional equipoise, facilitates direct observation of the impermanent, insubstantial nature of the self and culminates in an intuitive insight of emptiness that ends the habits of self-reification and self-grasping at the root of suffering.

Is there a contradiction between the goals of self-care and selflessness, and what does each tradition stand to learn from the other’s approach?

“Spiritual bypassing”: spiritual practice as pain-avoidance

Psychotherapy encourages meditators to take a more care-ful approach to their traumatic wounds rather than circumventing them. I’ve frequently observed meditators devaluing their own personal traumas in pursuit of more exalted and seductive spiritual virtues like the bodhisattva ideal of saving others from suffering. Likewise, some yogis aim for mystical heights of ecstatic bliss hoping to transcend their ordinary human fragility, only to come crashing down to their painful reality once practice is over. This phenomenon of using spiritual tools and teachings to avoid psychological issues, traumatic wounds, and unmet developmental tasks occurs so frequently, that in the early 1980’s Dr. John Welwood coined the term “spiritual bypassing” to characterize this tendency. Frequent scandals involving so-called spiritual masters who have had inappropriate relations with their students as well as students who see little psychological progress after years of spiritual practice stand as testaments to the deleterious effects of neglecting basic human needs. Indeed it may be possible to have profound spiritual insights, and at the same time neglect other areas of our complex being – including emotional, psychological, interpersonal or somatic dimensions. If we don’t take all of these dimensions seriously and incorporate them into “the work” of human development – then the shadow-side of our split identity can reemerge outside of conscious awareness, when we least expect it and with painful consequences.

Common forms of spiritual bypassing

Spiritual bypassing occurs when we unconsciously attempt to avoid pain, shame and the unpleasant side of our humanity and can manifests in a myriad of ways. The most common forms I have observed in myself as well as in my clinical work with yogis and meditators include: when fear of rejection, fear of burdening others or conflict-avoidance masquerade as being easygoing, patient and accommodating; when co-dependency poses as care-giving and compassion; when guru-devotion leads to subservience and conceals unresolved childhood dynamics such as over-idealization or fear of reprisal; when the spiritual virtue of detachment is misunderstood as disinterest and one attempts to avoid pain by disconnecting from feelings and relationships; when spiritual success and accomplishment end up reinforcing narcissism and the very inflated self-images they were designed to see through; when ultimate truths such as selflessness and emptiness are misunderstood and privileged over relative truths and one consequently falls into the nihilistic extreme of self-denial or apathy. All of these examples share one thing in common; they are unconscious adaptations of pain-avoidance concealed in the fabric of spiritual practice. Without a skilled objective observer such as a therapist or teacher to alert us, we can miss our unconscious attempts at bypassing, just as we do the blindspot in a rearview mirror.

Read the rest of this article now

podcast

Post Views: 613

Richard Mendius: Neuro-Dharma

Richard Mendius — September 22, 2009

Tami Simon speaks with Richard Mendius, a neurologist, meditation teacher, and the cofounder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom. Along with Dr. Rick Hanson, Richard Mendius is the co-author of Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom, as well as the Sounds True audio-learning program Meditations to Change Your Brain. Richard discusses the anatomy of the brain and the emerging field called Neuro-Dharma. (76 Minutes)

podcast

Post Views: 576

Matthieu Ricard: Happiness Is a Skill

— January 4, 2011

Tami Simon speaks with Matthieu Ricard, an author and photographer who earned a PhD in cell genetics. He is also a Buddhist monk who has served as the Dalai Lama’s French interpreter since 1989. Matthieu has written several books, including The Monk and the Philosopher, The Quantum and the Lotus, as well as The Art of Meditation. With Sounds True, he has released an audio learning program based on his book Happiness. Matthieu speaks about the skill of happiness, as well as the conditions for happiness. He also discusses the physical and psychological effects of meditation, along with the ways to track the progress you make in your spiritual practice. (37 minutes)

podcast

Post Views: 847

Tara Brach: True Refuge

Tara Brach — January 18, 2011

Tami Simon speaks with Tara Brach, an author, clinical psychologist, and the founder and senior teacher of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington. She’s the author of the Sounds True audio learning programs Radical Self-Acceptance and Meditations for Emotional Healing. She’s also the creator of a new, nine-week online course called Meditation and Psychotherapy beginning February 18 at SoundsTrue.com, which includes three live sessions with Tara Brach where she will answer participants’ questions. (54 minutes)

podcast

Post Views: 782

Conscious Business

Fred Kofman — August 2, 2011

Tami Simon speaks with Fred Kofman, author of the book Conscious Business: How to Build Value Through Values and the audio learning course Conscious Business: Transforming Your Workplace (and Yourself) by Changing the Way You Think, Act, and Communicate. Fred teaches people how to transform their workplace into an adaptive and resilient community that cultivates intelligence, creativity, and integrity. In this dialogue, he and Tami discuss the greatest challenge he faces as a consultant: how to be ultimately greedy in a way that actually benefits the whole, and how his life as a dharma practitioner relates to his life as a business consultant. (57 minutes)

Meet the Author of . . . Spark Change

The Author

The Book

Learn More

Sounds True | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop | IndieBound

Self-care and selflessness: a contradiction?

Richard Mendius: Neuro-Dharma

Matthieu Ricard: Happiness Is a Skill

Tara Brach: True Refuge

Conscious Business

Categories

Menu

Listen to Sounds True playlists on

Connect With Us