As a youth, I longed to understand life and its meaning and purpose, and I sought books that opened me up to a world that transcended the more rational, tangible aspects of my life. I also became fascinated with psychology in high school and knew that would be my life’s path. In college and beyond, I was drawn to meditation and mind-body practices that became transformative in my life. This journey continues to this day, calling me to bridge the scientific and psychological with the more contemplative and spiritual traditions to find and help others find healing and wholeness.
I wrote
You Don't Have to Change to Change Everything: Six Ways to Shift Your Vantage Point, Stop Striving for Happy, and Find True Well-Being
Deb Dana has an amazing gift of taking polyvagal theory (understanding the role of our autonomic nervous system and its evolution) and making it so understandable, accessible, and essential for our day-to-day lives.
This book truly transformed how I view the world, offering an understanding of how our autonomic nervous system underlies everything we do and feel. What I loved about this book was how hands-on it was. Deb takes you through simple but profound exercises to learn how to create a felt sense of safety in the nervous system and find your way back there when you get out of balance.
This book offers a beautiful path to resilience and well-being. It changed how I go through my life and how I work with my patients.
Harness the power of your nervous system to support healthy relationships and personal well-being.
Why is it that when you have a tense conversation with a boss, coworker, or partner, you feel like you’re staring down a charging rhinoceros? How is it that both situations cause a fight-or-flight response―and what can you learn from it?
As it turns out, the same neurological processes that cause unwanted stress can also be harnessed to summon relaxation, spaciousness, and equanimity. In Befriending Your Nervous System, clinician Deb Dana presents a simple, hopeful message: when you approach these subconscious processes with openness, mindful attention,…
I found this book so compelling that I not only read it but found myself putting it into practice right away in my own life and with my patients. Jill Bolte Taylor’s story is quite remarkable in the way she describes witnessing her own massive stroke, its effect on her brain and body, and her eight-year journey of healing herself back to health and wellness.
What was most fascinating to me was her observation and description of the four quadrants of our brains and how each one has its own personality (the rational, logical self; the reactive, self-protective, emotional self; the playful, free-spirited and present-focused self; and the spiritual, expansive whole self that experiences oneness with all things).
The book has abundant opportunities to experience the workings and "personalities" that reside in your brain and psyche and learn how to help each part work together in harmony to live your fullest life.
Discover how to tap into the present moment, shift out of anxiety and gain a sense of deep inner peace by understanding the brain's two hemispheres.
At age 37, Harvard neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a massive left-hemisphere stroke that took away her ability to speak, walk, read, write or remember any of her life - and gave her an unprecedented, profound experience of dwelling in the right hemisphere and the sense of oneness and peace to be found there. Her recovery led to her writing the New York Times bestseller My Stroke of Insight, being named one of Time…
This book blew me away when I read it. It completely shifted the way I see things and my understanding of “who” is doing the seeing.
I came to this book with some experience of meditation, but it deepened my understanding of the nature of consciousness, the ways that we humans create suffering for ourselves, and illuminated a path toward greater freedom. Essentially, it offers a profound shift from experiencing ourselves as the voice in our heads that follows us around all day long to a more expansive sense of a witnessing consciousness that we are.
If you are looking for a book that will totally and forever change the way you see things, this one is for you.
Who are you? When you start to explore this question, you find out how elusive it really is. Are you a physical body? A collection of experiences and memories? A partner to relationships? Each time you consider aspects of yourself, you realize that there is much more to you than any of these can define. In this book, spiritual teacher Michael Singer explores the question of who we are and arrives at the conclusion that our identity is to be found in our consciousness, the fact of our ability to observe ourselves and the world around us. By tapping into…
Kelly McGonigal is nothing short of brilliant in the way that she takes neuroscience, research, and spiritual wisdom traditions and weaves them together into this audiobook/course that is powerfully experiential and hands-on.
She describes and then shows firsthand, through guided practices, how we can cultivate mindfulness and self-compassion and use this to help us change behaviors and habits. Whether one wants to improve their physical health, feel better emotionally, or start or stop a behavior to improve their well-being, this program offers a path forward.
I found the practical, experiential exercises she offers in this book immensely helpful for incorporating what she teaches into my life. This is the hallmark of a great teacher, and Kelly is just that.
Personal Transformation Based on Mindfulness and Self-Compassion
What's your most important goal? Why does it matter so deeply? How will you overcome the obstacles? Answer these questions with sincerity, proceed with mindfulness and compassion, and you have just set in motion a revolutionary method for personal change that is supported by both the latest science and traditional wisdom. On The Neuroscience of Change, psychologist and award-winning Stanford lecturer Kelly McGonigal presents six sessions of breakthrough ideas, guided practices, and real-world exercises for making self-awareness and kindness the basis for meaningful transformation.
Practical Methods to Retrain Your Brain to Support Your…
I fell in love with this book and couldn’t put it down until completion. It had such a unique blend of neuroscience and psychology woven into the fabric of brilliant storytelling.
I found the storyline quite fascinating: the author’s chance encounter as a young boy with a woman named Ruth at a magic shop, which forever changes the trajectory of his life. As someone who has always loved magic and been drawn to the spiritual, as well as someone drawn to mindfulness practices for decades, this book resonated so deeply with me.
Besides having a fantastic craft for writing, James Doty’s personal story was so poignant, touching, and inspiring. I walked away with a sense of the power of compassion and connecting with heart as the true ingredients for transformation, healing, and creating a meaningful life.
The award-winning New York Times bestseller that inspired BTS's K-pop song 'Magic Shop'.
The day that 12-year-old James Doty walked in to his local magic shop is the day that changed his life.
Once the neglected son of an alcoholic father and a mother with chronic depression, he has gone on to become a leading neurosurgeon, based at Stanford University. He credits Ruth for this incredible turnaround: the remarkable woman he met at the Cactus Rabbit Magic Shop, who devoted the summer to transforming his mind and opening his heart.
In this uplifting memoir, Jim explains the visualisation techniques Ruth…
Well-being is an innate capacity that we all have, but it can be hard to access. In this book I show you six ways to shift your vantage point to discover a deep “well” of well-being already inside of you. Without needing to change or fix yourself or your feelings, you discover how to tap into the amazing inner resources that you already have, to move from “hole self” (sense of something wrong, something missing) to embracing and moving through life as “Whole Self”, from surviving to thriving.
This book blends neuroscience, psychology, mindfulness, personal narrative, and many hands-on practices and meditations to help you find greater ease, joy, perspective, connection, self-compassion, and presence to support you through the ups and downs of life.
I’ve always been fascinated by group dynamics, large and small. Why things functioned well, why they didn’t. It’s possible my ability to empathize and use humor as a consensus-builder is the reason I was elected president of a homeowners association, a music production association, and even an agricultural group. Books were not particularly involved in this fascination! But in recent years, experiencing the breakdown of civility and trust in our political and cultural discourse, I’ve taken a more analytical view of the dynamics. These books, in their very different ways, have taught me lessons about life, understanding those with different beliefs, and finding ways to connect and move forward.
We’ve all experienced the overwhelming level of political and social divisiveness in our country. This invisible “virus” of negativity is, in part, the result of the name-calling and heated rhetoric that has become commonplace among commentators and elected leaders alike.
My book provides a clear perspective on the historical and modern-day causes of our nation's divisive state. It then proposes easy-to-understand solutions—an action plan for our elected leaders and citizens as well. Rather than a scholarly treatment of a complex topic, the book challenges us to take the obvious steps required of those living in a free democracy. And it…
Uniting the States of America: A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation
Lyle Greenfield's "Uniting the States of America―A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation" is a work of nonfiction and opinion. Incorporating the lessons of history and the ideas and wisdom of many, it is intended as both an educational resource and a call-to-action for citizens concerned about the politically and culturally divided state of our Union. A situation that has raised alarm for the very future of our democracy.
First, the book clearly identifies the causes of what has become a national crisis of belief in and love for our country. How the divisiveness and hostility rampant in our political…
