Archives de catégorie : Self Help / Mind, Body & Spirit

AWAKE WHERE YOU ARE de Martin Aylward

The body is of course integral to meditation, but there are only a few books that focus this specifically on the body and the meditative experience. AWAKE WHERE YOU ARE addresses that need, and additionally integrates psychological concepts, which provides a more familiar entry point for people less familiar with Buddhism.

AWAKE WHERE YOU ARE
by Martin Aylward
Wisdom Publications, November 2021

Pulled around by desires and distractions, we’re so easily disconnected from ourselves. Life is happening right in front of us, and within us—but still, we manage to miss so much of it. AWAKE WHERE YOU ARE provides the antidote, inviting us to go deep into our own bodies, to inhabit our sensory experience carefully; to learn the art of living from the inside out, and in the process to find ease, clarity, and an authentic, unshakeable freedom.
The practices in the book literally bring us back into our skin, where we can reconnect with a more rich, meaningful, and peaceful life. Aylward writes with sophisticated subtlety, as well as the heart-opening simplicity and clarity born of deep experience. This book is more than a meditation guide—it’s a guide to living an embodied life.

In the introduction to Awake Where You Are, Martin Aylward tells the reader that this is not another book about ‘how to meditate,’ and that is very true. He writes with honesty, insight, and experience to offer us a guidebook to awareness of the body, connection to the body, and deep acceptance no matter the state of that body.” – Sharon Salzberg, author of Real Change

This beautiful and subtle book illuminates and grounds us in the truth that meditation and the practice of loving awareness are an ‘in-the-body’ experience.” – Frank Ostaseski, author of The Five Invitations

After experiencing strong intimations of the spiritual as a teenager, Martin Aylward traveled to India at the age of nineteen to explore meditation. He spent most of the next five years in monasteries, ashrams, and meditation centers in India and Thailand, including two years in a hermitage in the Himalayas with one of his teachers. As well as having the good fortune to learn from and practice with many different teachers, both Asian and Western, Martin has spent much time in solitude with his real guru, Nature—and his teaching often emphasizes contact with Nature as a resource for Awakening. In 1995 he co-founded the Tapovan Dharma Community in the French Pyrenees with his wife Gail. Gradually, the number of visitors increased beyond the capacity of the place, and in 2005—just ten years after opening—they relocated to Le Moulin (Moulin de Chaves), a former Zen monastery in the Dordogne, Southwest France, where Martin and Gail continue to live with their two children. In addition to guiding Dharma practice at Le Moulin as resident teacher, Martin has been invited to teach Dharma around the world since 1999.

WILLPOWER WORKS de Rob Dial

The host of the Mindset Mentor podcast shares the advice and tools from years of study and interviews that have worked for thousands of coaching clients.

WILLPOWER WORKS:
Stop Sabotaging Yourself and Start Reaching Your Full Potential
by Rob Dial
HarperOne, Fall 2022
(via Park & Fine)

Rob Dial has transformed millions of lives through his role as host of the Mindset Mentor podcast, with 3.5 million downloads a month. His book will use principles of neuroplasticity and mindfulness to help readers change their brains and break out of self-sabotaging patterns. He uses personal stories to demonstrate how to create routines and tools that will help readers to visualize and achieve their success.
Rob receives thousands of DMs from listeners thanking him for helping them break life-long patterns of self-sabotage to finally change careers, lose weight, overcome anxiety, and find meaningful relationships. Self-sabotage keeps us locked in behaviors like procrastination, perfectionism, workaholism, and saying yes to commitments we can’t see through, ultimately preventing us from making progress toward our true goals. Our strongest emotions get the better of us, even with the best intentions. By drawing on principles of neuroplasticity and mindfulness techniques, you can change your brain and develop the willpower to break free of these self-sabotaging patterns.
In WILLPOWER WORKS, Rob will share the brain and personality science he has learned in years of study, the advice and tools that have worked for 1000s of coaching clients, and his personal journey of self-sabotage following the death of his alcoholic father while Rob was in his teens. Rob will promote his book through his podcast platform, which reaches 1.1M unique listeners per month with episodes featuring guests like Matthew McConaughey and Jay Shetty, and Facebook, where he has 2.6M followers and videos regularly go viral, such as “Your Job is a Waste of Your Life” with 99M+ views. He will also engage his network which includes Tom Bilyeu, Aubrey Marcus, Rich Roll, and more. His book would be his first foray into traditional media.

Rob Dial started his career in sales at age 19 and worked his way up to owning and operating a multi-million-dollar office by age 24. After studying with leaders in the personal development field, he launched his podcast, The Mindset Mentor, in 2015. In 2017, he started producing viral Facebook videos that have garnered upwards of 98M+ views, 51M+ view and 23M+ views, with totals well over a billion total views. He now reaches 3M+ followers on social media.

THIS BOOK WON’T MAKE YOU HAPPY de Niro Feliciano

Anxiety, stress, and grief aren’t going away anytime soon, and this book won’t make you happy. But with wit and empathy, Feliciano leads you right past happy to calm. No matter how « happy » your life is—or isn’t—you can reach a deeper, truer, and longer-lasting place of contentment.

THIS BOOK WON’T MAKE YOU HAPPY:
Eight Keys to Finding True Contentment
by Niro Feliciano
‎ Broadleaf Books, April 2022
(via Kaplan/Defiore Rights)

When people find out she is a therapist, Niro Feliciano knows she isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. At soccer games, at cocktail parties, in waiting rooms, people corner her and ask: Why am I so stressed? Is the way I feel normal? Why can’t I just be happy?
The truth is happiness is fleeting, and we are stressing ourselves out trying to achieve it. In This Book Won’t Make You Happy, national media commentator and Psychology Today columnist Feliciano offers a path to something much more achievable and abundantly more satisfying: contentment.
By incorporating eight simple postures rooted in cognitive behavioral science and mindfulness practices into our daily routines, we can move away from anxiety and toward balance and calm. Acceptance, gratitude, connection, a present-focused perspective, intentionality and priority, self-compassion, resilience, and faith: through these practices we will overcome obstacles that hold us back from living full, meaningful, contented lives.

Niro Feliciano is a psychotherapist, podcast host, national media commentator, and expert on anxiety, brain science, and spirituality. She holds a master’s degree in social work from Columbia University and is a columnist for Psychology Today. A first-generation Sri Lankan American, she lives with her family in Fairfield County, Connecticut.

COLLECTIVE ILLUSIONS de Todd Rose

Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience, behavioral economic, and social psychology research, acclaimed author, former Harvard professor, and think tank founder Todd Rose reveals how so much of our thinking about each other is informed by false assumptions that drive bad decisions that make us dangerously mistrustful as a society and hopelessly unhappy as individuals.

COLLECTIVE ILLUSIONS:
Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions
by Todd Rose
Hachette Go, February 2022
(via Javelin)

The desire to fit in is one of the most powerful, least understood forces in a society. Todd Rose believes that as human beings we continually act against our own best interests out of our brains’ misunderstanding of what we think others believe.  A complicated set of illusions driven by conformity bias distorts how we see the world around us. From toilet paper shortages to kidneys that get thrown away rather than used for desperately needed organ transplants, from racial segregation to the perceived “electability” of women for political office, from bottled water to “cancel culture,” we routinely copy others, lie about what we believe, cling to tribes, and silence others. We are so profoundly social that when we are incongruent with the group that we do lasting damage to our self-worth, diminish our well-being and never realize our full potential. It’s why we all too often chase the familiar trappings of money, fame, and success that leave us feeling empty even when we do achieve them. It’s why we’ll blindly espouse a viewpoint we don’t necessarily believe in so that we blend in with the group. We trap ourselves in prisons of our own making that prevent us from living the happy, fulfilled lives we envision. The question is, Why do we keep believing the lies and hurting ourselves? Todd Rose reveals the answer is deeply hard-wired in our DNA, with brains that are more socially dependent than we realize or dare to accept. Most of us would rather be fully in sync with the social norms of our respective groups than true to who we are.
Using originally researched data, COLLECTIVE ILLUSIONS shows us where we get things wrong and just as important, how we can be authentic in forming our opinions while valuing truth. Rose offers a counterintuitive, empowering, and hopeful explanation for how we can bridge the inference gap, make decisions with a newfound clarity, and achieve fulfillment.
Only then can we transform ourselves, and ultimately, society.

Social scientist Dr. Todd Rose is the co-founder of Populace, a think tank dedicated to building a world where all people have the chance to live fulfilling lives in a thriving society. He is also a faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he founded the Laboratory for the Science of Individuality and previously directed the Mind, Brain, and Education program. He is the author of Dark Horse: Achieving Success Through the Pursuit of Fulfillment and The End of Average: Unlocking Our Potential by Embracing What Makes Us Different.

THE ELEMENTS de Jennifer Freed

A fun, gifty paper-over-board package that will appeal to the newbie or astrology aficionado.

THE ELEMENTS
by Jennifer Freed
Goop Press/Rodale, March 2023

THE ELEMENTS focuses on fire, earth, air, and water, which each exist in everyone’s birth charts in unique concentrations that influence your personality, how you work, how you love, and how you understand other people. Knowing your elemental balance is almost like knowing your love language. Dr. Freed will show you how to use a few key pieces of information to understand how your elements influence you in 12 different areas of life (which correspond to the 12 houses of Astrology). She’ll teach someone with a fire/air concentration how to commit to daily routines that keep them happy and grounded. She’ll teach you how to support your watery partner in the way he needs. And she’ll teach you how to tap into the secret strengths of your unique elemental makeup.

Dr. Jennifer Freed has a PhD in psychology in addition to being a trained astrologer. She has spent 40 years in the field of personal growth, as a psychotherapist and social-emotional educator and as a professional psychological astrologer and as a seeker who has participated in nearly every form of so-called transformational healing. She has been interviewed by the New York Times as an expert on retreats. British Vogue featured her, and she was a highlighted astrologer at People.com. She is a monthly contributor on top-rated Sirius show “Sex With Emily,” is a regular contributor to Maria Shriver’s newsletter, The Sunday Paper, and will soon be a contributor at Golive.ly and the-numinous.com.