Nourishing Loving Relationships – a live workshop with Tara Brach
We cherish the important relationships in our lives. But when so many of us have experienced these relationships as a source of insecurity, hurt, and betrayal, how do we overcome the obstacles between us and cultivate genuine bonds of trust, understanding, intimacy, and love?
Nourishing Loving Relationships brings you a two–day intensive workshop with Dr. Tara Brach in Tucson, Arizona. Through talks, experiential reflections and meditations, journaling, and periods of questions and sharing, we will explore the beliefs and feelings that separate us—and how to heal and nourish the loving relationships we all long for.
“At the end of our lives, as we look back,” reflects Dr. Brach, “what will most matter will be the moments of loving presence in our relationships.” Join us in the warm weather of Tucson as she brings her signature blend of Western psychology and Eastern wisdom practices for bringing mindful attention to our inner lives and engaging in our outer world fully and compassionately.
Continuing education credits available. Learn more here.
Recognizing Your Blind Spots
Blind spots, by nature, aren’t seen by you, and cause you to behave unconsciously in ways that have impact on yourself, others, and the world around you. Blind spots are not areas you are familiar with that you are ‘working on’ – qualities you are developing – for example, trying to be more patient with your kids or more loving with your partner. Those qualities may be related to blind spots, but that is not what I’m addressing here. Blind spots are literally what you DON’T see about yourself.
Have you ever had trouble taking in some piece of information – in a talk or a book you’re reading, or sitting on your therapist’s couch? Usually it’s a seemingly innocuous and simple piece of information, but you just can’t get it, or hear it. It’s like you’re going fuzzy. That is a good indication of a blind spot trying to come into the light.
Or perhaps even worse, you keep getting the same feedback from your partner, your coworkers, and even the generalized world around you keeps holding up the same mirror. But it doesn’t quite make sense. You actually can’t really hear or see it. Or even if it makes sense intellectually, it just doesn’t seem necessarily relevant or important enough to demand your attention. Even though you’re hearing the information with your two ears, it flies right past you in terms of actually sticking in your brain, your being, your heart. It actually does not compute. Another signal that it may be a blind spot!
What we tend to end up with as we become adults is an imbalanced view of ourselves that plays handily into the creation and maintenance of our blind spots. What if you saw this mechanism at play, and then saw the pain and suffering you add on top of it? We usually do this in two ways: by personalizing it all and making ourselves either too big for our britches or conversely, unworthy of love and care. This is what I mean by an ‘imbalanced’ self view: too big or too small, over-amazing or under-good-enough. What if you had the courage and humility it would take to admit and embrace your actual place in the world? Even if that means it’s an amazing place in the world? It doesn’t have to be small and hidden just because we are humble and aware. But we are at home.
This is what I mean by learning how to live an undefended life. We aren’t propping up a flimsy ideal of who we think we should or shouldn’t be, or who we think others want us to be. We just are who we are, at home in our own skin, blemishes and all. And we inhabit ourselves so much so that our gifts fall out of us necessarily, rightfully, and with ease.
What if being yourself isn’t essentially about finding your voice, your true calling, your best self, your most significant offering to the world, but instead is about learning to become at home in the world – your world? Learning to become a simple, content, good human being. With no promises on the outcome. Just for the sake of it.
Looking for more great reads?
Excerpted from The Blind Spot Effect by Kelly Boys.
Kelly Boys directed the launch of Google’s “Search Inside Yourself” leadership training program for neuroscience-based emotional intelligence and mindfulness. She’s taught war veterans, women in prison, cancer survivors, those with substance abuse addictions, humanitarian workers, and psychotherapists. She lives in Boulder, Colorado. More at kellyboys.org.
Whatever Arises, Love That
The holiday season is a chance to offer gifts and goodwill as symbols of gratitude to those we love. 
Whether enjoying warm meals with family, watching marathons of classic movies that remind us of a more innocent time, or feeling the winter magic that allows us to be more open, generous, and kind to others, the holidays somehow make life a more precious gift to receive.
What if the magic wasn’t reserved just for the holiday season, but could be celebrated within you in every moment?
What if the perfect gift, which was created just for you, is to awaken the unconditional love that always resides within your heart? What if this holiday season became an opportunity to explore the joy of emotional freedom in the most profound and heart-centered way?
While so many yearn for the grace of unconditional love, many tend to be confused, overwhelmed, or frustrated at not knowing how to open up to it. This is why I wrote Whatever Arises, Love That.
This book has been described as “an owner’s manual for a new spiritual paradigm.” It acts as a wise and loving companion throughout the uncertainties of an ever-changing world.
Now available as an unabridged audiobook, Whatever Arises, Love That is a powerful catalyst of healing for all stages of spiritual evolution.
This holiday season has a new soundtrack, reminding us that no matter what arises in life, “You deserve more love, not less.”
Many blessings always,
A Nature Meditation for Better Focus
A Nature Meditation for Better Focus
- Find a quiet spot in nature or in your garden where you don’t feel observed. If you choose a forest, look for a hiding place or a protected area. A high boulder, hill, or mountainside also works well for meditation.
- Find a sensory impression that appeals to you and generates positive feelings, ideally one that fascinates you. Either a sound you hear, an object that appeals to you and you can hold in your hand, or maybe something else that you can see but not touch, like rays of sunshine cutting through the trees or a line of ants hiking across the forest floor.
- Concentrate completely on your nature object. How does it feel? Notice the details. Get into your sensory perception and concentrate only on this perception. Try to put other sensory impressions in the background.
- Try to assign your sensory impression an emotion. How does it feel in your mind? What does it remind you of?
- Invite these feelings without forcing them. After a while, redirect your attention more and more to these feelings and toward your inner self. Do this knowing that your nature object triggered these feelings in you and represents itself in this way inside you.
- Once you feel that your meditation is complete or that you can no longer maintain your concentration, you can thank your nature object with an inner or outer gesture and gradually direct your attention to other stimuli in your environment, one by one, until you see nature as a whole again.
Excerpted from The Healing Code of Nature: Discovering the New Science of Eco-Psychosomatics by Clemens G. Arvay.
Born in 1980, Clemens G. Arvay is an Austrian engineer and biologist. He studied landscape ecology (BSc) at Graz University and applied plant sciences (MSc) at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna. Arvay examines the relationship between humans and nature, focusing on the health-promoting effects of contact with plants, animals, and landscapes. He also addresses a second range of topics that includes ecologically produced food along with the economics of large food conglomerates. Clemens G. Arvay has written numerous books, including his bestseller The Biophilia Effect. For more, please visit clemensarvay.com.
Buy your copy of The Healing Code of Nature at your favorite bookseller!
Sounds True | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound
Helping Kids Feel Confident in the Spotlight
Dear Sounds True friends,
Have you ever been in the spotlight?
The excitement, the lights, and…
…ALL EYES ON YOU (Gulp!)
While some athletes, speakers, and performers bask in the glow, it can be scary for most others. I happen to be one of these “others,” complete with sweaty palms, a racing heart, and a blank mind!
These big feelings inspired me to write All Eyes on You, a story that helps kids overcome performance anxiety when they find themselves the center of attention, such as on stage, in a classroom, or on the baseball field.
I share tried-and-true tips for dealing with these moments (such as breathing exercises and counting to slow down your racing heart) while also having fun (like picturing the audience in their underwear) to help boost confidence and be present in the moment.
It also makes an excellent tool for helping others calm the butterfly stampede in their stomachs and feel a sense of camaraderie that they are not alone in their stage fright.
So when the stage calls (or the front of the classroom or home plate), take a deep breath and give these tips a try. You just might surprise yourself—and those around you!
Break a leg,
Susi Schaefer
Author & Illustrator
P.S. I invite you to download free coloring sheets from the book to also enjoy with the little ones in your life!
Susi Schaefer
Susi Schaefer trained as a classical glass painter in Austria before moving to the United States and studying graphic design. She is the illustrator of Zoo Zen and Good Morning, I Love You, Violet! as well as the author-illustrator of other picture books for children. For more, visit susischaefer.com.
Learn More
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop | Sounds True
November New Releases and Giveaway
NOVEMBER NEW RELEASES
The Integrity Advantage by Kelly Kosow
Are you ready to open up to new levels of self-trust and self-love, to get where you want to go?
You vowed to speak up at work, and then sat silent in the meeting yet again.
You told yourself “this time the diet is going to stick,” only to watch the scale inching up.
You felt that something just wasn’t right about someone that—until you learned the hard way that your instincts were right.
“Every time you bite your tongue,” teaches Kelley Kosow, “you swallow your integrity.”
Before Kelley Kosow was a renowned life coach and CEO, she constantly second-guessed herself, let her “to-do” lists and others steer her dreams and passions, and played it “small and safe.”
Inspired by the groundbreaking principles of her renowned mentor Debbie Ford, who hand-picked Kelley to be her successor, The Integrity Advantage is Kelley’s step-by-step guide for facing the fear, shame, and false beliefs that cause us to lose our way.
Through life-changing insights, true stories, and proven strategies, this book will show you how to live on your own terms—according to you—from the inside out.
As modern women, we’re taught that we can do it all, have it all, and be it all. While this freedom is beautiful, it’s also exhausting. Being a “worn-out woman” is now so common that we think feeling tired all the time is normal. According to Karen Brody, feeling this exhausted is not normal—and it’s holding us back. In Daring to Rest, Brody comes to the rescue with a 40-day program to help you reclaim rest and access your most powerful, authentic self through yoga nidra, a meditative practice that guides you into one of the deepest states of relaxation imaginable.
It’s time to lie down and begin the journey to waking up
Breathe and Be by Anna Emilia Laitinen and Kate Coombs
Teaching mindfulness helps kids learn to stay calm, regulate their emotions, and appreciate the world around them. With Breathe and Be, author Kate Coombs and illustrator Anna Emilia Laitinen team up to present a book of poetry and art for young readers to make mindfulness easy, natural, and beautiful. Here is a book sure to delight parents and kids alike, blending lovingly illustrated nature imagery with elegant verse about living with awareness and inner peace.
Leopard Warrior by John Lockley
A Teaching Memoir That Crosses the Barriers Between Worlds
A shaman is one who has learned to move between two worlds: our physical reality and the realm of spirits. For John Lockley, shamanic training also meant learning to cross the immense divide of race and culture in South Africa.
As a medic drafted into the South African military in 1990, John Lockley had a powerful dream. “Even though I am a white man of Irish and English descent, I knew in my bones that I had received my calling to become a sangoma, a traditional South African shaman,” John writes. “I felt blessed by the ancient spirit of Africa, and I knew that I had started on a journey filled with magic and danger.” His path took him from the hills of South Korea, where he trained as a student under Zen Master Su Bong, to the rural African landscape of the Eastern Cape and the world of the sangoma mystic healers, where he found his teacher in the medicine woman called MaMngwev
Things That Join the Sea and the Sky by Mark Nepo
A Reader for Navigating the Depths of Our Lives
The Universe holds us and tosses us about, only to hold us again. With Things That Join the Sea and the Sky, Mark Nepo brings us a compelling treasury of short prose reflections to turn to when struggling to keep our heads above water, and to breathe into all of our sorrows and joys.
Inspired by his own journal writing across 15 years, this book shares with us some of Mark’s most personal work. Many passages arise from accounts of his own life events—moments of “sinking and being lifted”—and the insights they yielded. Through these passages, we’re encouraged to navigate our own currents of sea and sky, and to discover something fundamental yet elusive: How, simply, to be here.
To be enjoyed in many ways—individually, by topic, or as an unfolding sequence—Things That Join the Sea and the Sky presents 145 contemplations gathered into 17 themes, each intended to illuminate specific situations.
NOVEMBER GIVEAWAY
