In this new book, internationally renowned yoga instructor Cristi Christensen guides readers who are seeking a connection to something greater than themselves by showing them how to tap into the single most perfect system living inside of each of us—the seven chakras.
CHAKRA RITUALS
by Cristi Christensen
St. Martin’s Essentials, May 2021 (voir catalogue)
Celebrating, honoring, and using the chakras frees us to express our authenticity and live a life of power, love, joy, creativity, connection and purpose. In today’s yoga culture, the chakras are for much more than healing, which has been the traditional application of this 4000-year-old wisdom. While the idea and attributes of the chakras have become trendy, sexy, cool, and very spiritual, few people today really know how to activate the chakras’ powerful energy for deep transformation. Cristi aims to change that, and her book offers readers a multi-dimensional, practical and inspiring, structured seven-week step-by-step program.
Each week, readers will be instructed how to activate a different chakra, and each weekday they will be led through a dynamic, easy, and motivating practice which distills the esoteric concepts and makes them tangible, living experiences. A self-discovery and self-help guide, Cristi’s book employs the chakras’ potential to open the pathways to a full, enlightened “aliveness.” Accomplished yogis and newcomers alike will be invited to flow with their emotions, claim their power, open their hearts, feel their bodies, speak their truths, and align with the divine. CHAKRA RITUALS approaches an ancient science that is often considered unrelatable and makes it accessible to the spiritually curious, with the chakras as a roadmap to transformation, something no other chakra book has done.
This will be a full-color book with some illustrations throughout, but not be heavily illustrated – mostly line drawings and some illustrative material of the movement-based sequences.
A former elite-level gymnast and platform diver, Cristi Christensen trained with the US Olympic diving team as a young adult. After an injury cut her Olympic dreams short, Cristi shifted her focus to helping others improve their level of fitness through personal training, Pilates, Core Fusion, and yoga. After earning her degree in Kinesiology, Cristi studied extensively for over 10 years with world-renowned teachers including Saul David Raye, Shiva Rea, Seane Corn, Elisabeth Halfpapp, and Fred DeVito. She now has a personal network following of over 15.2 million people in the US, Asia, and Europe. In the past two decades, she has taught yoga, meditation, movement, and dance on five continents in venues ranging from private studios to festivals attended by thousands.
Katharina Edgeworth seems to have the perfect life. She is the daughter of immigrants, Ivy-League-educated, and speaks four languages. As a single girl in 1940s Manhattan, she is employed as a translator at the newly formed United Nations, devoting her days to her work and the promise of world peace—and her nights to cocktails and the promise of a good time. Now, in 1954 Katharina has the ideal husband, two healthy sons, and enjoys the luxuries of Fifth Avenue; but she is desperate to break free from the constraints of domesticity before depression breaks her for good. When the FBI approaches her to become an informant, Katharina seizes the opportunity. A man from her past has become a high-level Soviet spy, but no one has been able to infiltrate his circle. Enter Katharina, the perfect woman for the job. Navigating the demands of the FBI and the secrets of the KGB, she becomes a courier, carrying stolen government documents from Washington D.C. to Manhattan. But as those closest to her lose their covers, and their lives, Katharina’s secret—which fills her with purpose and reignites her self-worth––soon threatens to ruin her. With the fast-paced twists of a classic spy thriller, a celebration of post-war New York City, and a nuanced depiction of the complexity of motherhood, A WOMAN OF INTELLIGENCE shimmers with Tanabe’s trademark acerbic wit, attention to historical detail, and sharp understanding of human desire.
Maggie Bliss is in trouble. A forty-something, bestselling romance author, Maggie needs to finish the last novel of her current trilogy; except she has the worst case of writer’s block of her career. When her agent offers her a chance to get away to his apartment in Paris, complete with his housekeeper, how can she refuse? She can write undisturbed and pampered in the most beautiful and inspiring city in the world, and she can visit her daughter who is studying in France. Even better, on arrival she meets a charming and sexy Frenchman, Max, the housekeeper’s son, who becomes her writing inspiration. But then her ex-husband shows up in Paris to see their daughter as well, and it seems that he might be interested in rekindling a romance with Maggie. As sparks fly with both men, can Maggie finish her book and find her happily-ever-after?
Skye Starling is overjoyed when her boyfriend, Burke Michaels, proposes after a whirlwind courtship. Though Skye seems to have the world at her fingertips—she’s smart, beautiful, and from a well-off family—she has also battled crippling OCD since her mother’s death when she was eleven, and her romantic relationships have suffered as a result. But now Burke—handsome, older, and more emotionally mature than any other man she’s met before—says he wants to take care of her. Forever. Except, Burke isn’t who he says he is. And interspersed letters to his therapist reveal that he is happily married and using Skye for his own, deceptive ends. In a third perspective, set thirty years earlier, a scrappy seventeen-year-old named Heather is determined to end things with Burke, a local bad boy. But can her adolescent love stay firmly in her past—or will he find his way into her future? On a collision course she doesn’t see coming, Skye throws herself into wedding planning, as Burke’s scheme grows ever more twisted. Meanwhile, three decades in the past, Heather’s longed-for transformation finally seems within reach…yet even the best laid plans can go astray. And just when you think you know where this story is going, you’ll discover that there’s more than one way to spin the truth.
Friday, January 6, 2017: On that day, as always, John Brennan’s alarm clock was set to go off at 4:15 a.m. But nothing else about that day would be routine. That day marked his first and only security briefing with President-elect Donald Trump. And it was also the day John Brennan said his final farewell to Owen Brennan, his father, the man who had taught him the lessons of goodness, integrity, and honor that had shaped the course of an unparalleled career serving his country from within the intelligence community.