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Self-Compassion & Self-Reflection: Recommended Re...

Exploring the Science of Self-Compassion

 

The Art of Empathy by Karla McLaren

What if there were a single skill that could directly and radically improve your relationships and your emotional life? Empathy, teaches Karla McLaren, is that skill. With The Art of Empathy, she teaches us how to perceive and feel the experiences of others with clarity and authenticity—to connect with them more deeply and effectively.

Informed by current insights from neuroscience, social psychology, and healing traditions, this book explores some of the following:

  • Why empathy is not a mystical phenomenon but a natural, innate ability that we can strengthen and develop
  • How to identify and regulate our emotions and boundaries

 

 

 

The Science of Compassion by Kelly McGonigal

Stories, dynamic meditations, and innovative writing exercises to spark creativity and spiritual awakening.

The best writers say their work comes from a source beyond the thinking mind. But how do we access that source? “We must first look inside ourselves and be willing to touch that raw emotional core at the heart of a deeper creativity,” Writes Albert Flynn DeSilver. In Writing as a Path to Awakening, this renowned poet, writer, and teacher shows you how to use meditation to cultivate true depth in your writing—so your words reveal layers of profound emotional insight and revelation that inspire and move your readers.

 

 

The Language of Emotions by Karla McLaren

Emotions—especially the dark and dishonored ones—hold a tremendous amount of energy. We’ve all seen what happens when we repress or blindly express them. With The Language of Emotions, empathic counselor Karla McLaren shows you how to meet your emotions and receive their life-saving wisdom to safely move toward resolution and equilibrium. Through experiential exercises covering a full spectrum of feelings from anger, fear, and shame to jealousy, grief, joy, and more, you will discover how to work with your own and others’ emotions with fluency and expertise.

Here is a much-needed resource filled with revolutionary teachings and breakthrough skills for cultivating a new and empowering relationship with your feeling states through The Language of Emotions.

 

 

 

Awakening Compassion by Pema Chödrön

On Awakening Compassion, Pema Chödrön, one of the Western world’s best-known lojong teachers and practitioners, shows you how to use your own painful emotions as stepping stones to wisdom, compassion, and fearlessness. You will learn how to make friends with the painful parts of your life experience and how to use your natural courage and honesty to transform even the most difficult situations.

With an informal teaching style, both playful and insightful, Pema Chödrön makes this timeless way of bringing compassion into the world easy to understand and apply to your own life. More than seven hours of practical, compassionate guidance for shedding your cocoon and meeting your world with fresh appreciation. Includes a nine-page study guide with lojong slogans and additional resources.

 

 

The Force of Kindness by Sharon Salzberg

Distill the great spiritual teachings from around the world down to their most basic principles, and one thread emerges to unite them all: kindness. In The Force of Kindness, Sharon Salzberg, one of the nation’s most respected Buddhist authors and meditation teachers, offers practical instruction on how we can cultivate this essential trait within ourselves.

Through her stories, teachings, and guided meditations, Sharon Salzberg takes readers on an exploration of what kindness truly means and the simple steps to realize its effects immediately. She reveals that kindness is not the sweet, naive sentiment that many of us assume it is, but rather an immensely powerful force that can transform individual lives and ripple out, changing and improving relationships, the environment, our communities, and ultimately the world. Readers will learn specific techniques for cultivating forgiveness; turning compassion into action; practicing speech that is truthful, helpful, and loving; and much more.

An Intimate Guide to Awakening Your Erotic Life

Dear friends,

I’ve always said that if we could solve just one problem in our lives, coming to terms with our sexual selves would solve all of the others. Whether we are actively sexual or not, the deepest aspects of our identity are shaped by our erotic souls.

Becoming intimate with our sexuality is the key to fully engaging with our lives and finding physical and emotional well-being . . . which sounds great, but how do you begin to move in this direction?

I have been married to the same man for over 30 years, and I can tell you that the journey to sexual wholeness is not easy. I remember a moment when sexual wounds had all but destroyed our marriage. And then something totally unexpected happened—a truce that gave us both the courage to turn towards our sex life and each other. It was the beginning of sex that works in my own life.

In my new book, Sex That Works, I share stories from my own erotic transformation, from the couples with whom I’ve worked with as a professional loveologist, and from my research and ongoing conversations about relationships, intimacy, and sex as the founder of Good Clean Love, maker of organic products for sexual health. To help you dig in and understand your own intimate story, I offer practical exercises for building skills to reclaim intimacy, renew curiosity, and ultimately realize your true erotic potential.

Think of this book as a road map for your journey back to your own erotic self—one that will allow you to reach into the really tender places and encourage your truth to flow freely. It’s been an honor to spark this kind of inner dialogue for women, and my hope is that you will find that reading Sex That Works is like talking to a dear friend late at night over a warm cup of tea.

 

Wishing you wellness on your sexual journey,

Wendy Strgar

 

 

 

 

 

 

Listen to a podcast with Wendy Strgar >

Yoga for Activating the Heart

Dear friends,

Are you feeling it? Our planet is going through a major energetic shift. People all over the world are feeling called in a new way to align their deepest soul callings with their external lives. There is a global energetic shift contributing to both a magnificent spiritual longing as well as a lack of ease, and the everyday stresses of modern life—along with changes in the Earth’s electromagnetic field—can make us feel strangely separate from our own authenticity. It can feel like standing on the shore of a whitewater river, looking across to the calm green peace on the other side, and wondering how to get back over there. We know there is something genuine that we are missing, but we need a bridge over the separation to return to our own peaceful heart.

We are all spiritual beings expanding into the vastness of our potential. The connection to our heart is a reminder that we are so much more than our bodies and minds. The stillness is where the miracles come through us, and the chaos is the distraction. How do we return to the silence of the heart that gently guides us towards our destiny?

We have found an effective bridge in the simple techniques from Kundalini Yoga. In our new book, Essential Kundalini Yoga: An Invitation to Radiant Health, Unconditional Love, and the Awakening of our Energetic Potential, we explain how to use ancient tools from the Himalayas to shift the frequency of our prana, our inner energy, our bio-magnetic field, and our nervous system so we can align with our highest calling. These tools allow the beautiful energy of your own highest self to be directly accessed and the stillness of your heart to guide you. This form of yoga helps to clear energetic blocks and resistances so our natural brilliance can flow into our body and into our lives from the inside out.

Our goal in writing this book was to present deep concepts in a way that would be accessible, demystified, and easy to follow. We envisioned that the layout could evoke a sense of peace and depth. We wanted to get past the rigmarole and provide clear instructions so you can get to work actualizing the truth of your own vibration, and allow the beautiful shine of you to expand into your life.

YOGA FOR ACTIVATING THE HEART

Here is an example of a very effective exercise that can help you reduce stress and bring you back to your heart center at any time during your day. It works in a very short amount of time.

 

  1. Sit up straight, either cross-legged or in a chair. If in a chair, sit forward closer to the front of the chair so you do not lean back.
  2. Hook the fingers of both hands together in front of your chest and pull your elbows steadily and strongly to the sides.
  3. Close your eyes and inhale very slowly. Keep pulling on the grip. Breathe deeply into your abdomen. Exhale slowly as well.
  4. Imagine that with each breath you are drawing in light through the top of your head.
  5. Continue breathing long, deep breaths while pulling side to side for three minutes.
  6. To finish, inhale deeply, hold the breath, and shift your hands to push your palms firmly together, pressing as hard as you can. Focus your attention on the top of your head. Exhale and repeat two more times.
  7. Release your palms, place them on your knees facing up, and take time to connect with your breathing.

Inside each of us is a core of pure love. There is not a soul on Earth who is not feeling the effects of this shift in one way or another. Yet, through it all, our core energetic state is love. We truly believe this book can help navigate your journey back into love, hope, and miracles.

We thank you for being a part of this evolution. May you feel the light of love and the many blessings that are with you always.

 

With our love always,

Karena Virginia and Dharm Khalsa

 

Are You Enough?

By Mary O’Malley

Are you enough?  Take a moment and be honest with yourself.  Do you live with a sense that you are okay and life is okay exactly as it is? Probably not, because you, like most people, have been conditioned to think that you need to be better or different to be okay. This brings forth the belief that it is only when you get it all together (in the future) that you will be enough.

To get a glimpse into this constant seeking, ask yourself these questions:

Is your body enough because you have gotten rid of the weight, the wrinkles, the too big nose?

Is your mate enough, always relating to you in ways that you want them to?

Are your meditations enough, or are you always seeking for better states of mind?

Are your career, your finances, even your children ever enough in your mind?

If you look closely, you would have to say that, even though your life is how you want it to be for moments, your mind always takes over again in its endless search for lasting satisfaction. We are all like a hungry ghost searching, searching, searching. We seek and long and grasp at what our mind says will bring lasting satisfaction, only to get caught in the illusion that more, more, more will finally fill the empty hole inside of us:

You finally lose the weight and then think either you should lose five more pounds or you become afraid of gaining it back.

You find your perfect mate only to discover six months into the relationship that there are things about them that drive you crazy.

You finally get a raise at work only to find out that you’re living in the same financial stress because you can now buy fancier toys or more complex plastic surgeries, hoping that this will bring you lasting satisfaction.

Stephen Levine once told a story about a 93-year-old woman on her deathbed who said, “It can’t end now because it hasn’t started yet!” It is amazing that most of us don’t see this endless search for satisfaction and how unsatisfying it is in the long run.

If you look with great curiosity, you will see that this search for something out there – a skinnier body, a different mate, more money, deeper meditations, better sex, a happier mind, a fancier house, more, more, more – is a thirst that will never be quenched except for a moment here and a moment there. Read the studies on how much misery winning the lottery brings into people’s lives and you will see the truth of this.

What would happen if you discovered that there is a field of enoughness that is always with you? What would happen if you finally understood that the deep and lasting satisfaction you have been searching for your whole life is always here? To look for lasting satisfaction in the constantly changing flow of life is suffering. To relax the search for more, more, more and to discover an intimate connection with this living moment of your life is to finally come home.

I invite you for a moment to stop reading this blog and lift your eyes to receive your life. This is a unique moment in your life and it is the only moment that matters. See it as if you have never been on this planet before.  Even if you have been in this exact place a thousand times, still, it is brand new.

If your attention doesn’t yet know how to ground here, close your eyes and focus on all the sounds that are arising and passing. There are loud sounds like somebody talking in the next room and soft sounds, like the hum of your computer.  There are sounds far away like an airplane in the sky and there are sounds very close like your breath in your nostrils.

To truly listen to your life is to come home to the only moment that matters – right now. And in an intimate connection with Life the moment it appears out of mystery, you are no longer caught in the endless and unsatisfactory search for satisfaction.

Of course, when your mind sees this, it is very likely that its newest search will be to try to live in ‘the now’, for it believes that will bring it lasting satisfaction.  This doesn’t work! Why? For you are already in the now and any attempt to get there is just more searching.

But what you can do is remember that in all your searching you are already home. You don’t need to try to get here. Instead you can discover how to see and not get seduced into the endless search for satisfaction. Whenever you are caught in wanting things to be different than what they are, it can help to simply say to yourself, “This moment is enough, exactly as it is. I am enough, exactly as I am.”

In order to rest in your natural enoughness, it is important to recognize that nothing in this ever-changing world will bring lasting satisfaction. It can certainly bring temporary happiness and we can enjoy that happiness. But to require that Life, in its ever-changing flow, is where lasting satisfaction will be found is truly suffering.

You can also understand that life is putting you in the exact set of circumstances that will allow you to see how restless and busy your mind is in trying to get to the peace you long for.

You can also finally understand that it is truly a blessing to not get what you want. The pain of having your constant search blocked is the doorway out of the endless seeking and back into an intimate connection with Life. For, what is in the way IS the way!

If you are interested in exploring this further, I encourage you to visit my website and listen to my Radio Show. I am also offering a class on What’s in the Way IS the Way.

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Mary O’Malley is an author, counselor and awakening mentor in Kirkland, Washington. In the early 1970’s, a powerful awakening led Mary to begin changing her relationship with her challenges, freeing her from a lifelong struggle with darkness. Mary’s latest book, What’s In the Way Is the Way, provides a revolutionary approach for healing your fears, anxieties, shame, and confusion, so you can live from a place of ease.

 

Inner Rhythm Meditations

By Byron Metcalf

My new album is ideal for bodywork, movement practices such as walking meditation and qigong, and promoting a state of relaxed, alert creativity. I invite you on an immersive journey with me into the rhythms and music of spaciousness and movement in Inner Rhythm Meditations.

For several years, I’ve wanted to create an album of relaxed tempos, easy meditative rhythms and compositions—a dramatic departure from the deep-trance oriented, concentrated sonic driving of the tribal-shamanic music, and sounds that have primarily defined my music over the past 18 years.

I began by experimenting with periods of meditation (both sitting and walking) followed by sessions in my studio with my intention set to fully trust what emerged from the rhythms of the muse—from the fertile ground that the meditations help cultivate. I was thrilled with the grooves and sounds that were coming through and this inspired me to move fully forward with my vision.

It soon became clear to me that I wanted to add guitars and flutes as my primary accompaniment. Erik Wøllo (an incredible guitar player from Norway) and Peter Phippen (Grammy-nominated flute player from Wisconsin) were both enthusiastic about the album and agreed to join me. Working with such amazing musicians brought my vision of this music to a whole new level! Their melodic and emotional sensitivity to what I was imagining literally took my breath away.

My music has always been a primary means of seeking and realizing the truth of my experience—to genuinely know what it means to live an authentic, soul-based and heart-centered life on this earth and to be a unique part the greater cosmos.

Deep Journeys,

Byron Metcalf

No Mud, No Lotus

Chris Grosso is a public speaker, writer, spiritual director, and recovering addict who leads groups in detoxes, yoga studios, youth centers, hospitals, and festivals worldwide. With Sounds True, Chris Grosso has released a new book called Everything Mind: What I’ve Learned About Hard Knocks, Spiritual Awakening, and the Mind-Blowing Truth of It All. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Chris and Tami Simon discuss the deep connection between spiritual awakening and recovery. They also consider methods of working with self-loathing and judgment, as well as how genuine communication provides a doorway to meaningful connection. Finally, Chris shares a sampling of the practices on offer in Everything Mind. (76 minutes)

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