New Books in Spiritual Practice and Mindfulness

New Books Network
New Books in Spiritual Practice and Mindfulness

Interviews with Spiritual Practitioners about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

  1. SEP 8

    The Body in Classical Hathayoga, with Ruth Westoby

    In this episode Dr Pierce Salguero sits down with Ruth Westoby a scholar, teacher, and practitioner of yoga. We discuss Ruth’s work on the body in early hatha yoga texts. We talk about the broad diversity of approaches to the material body in these sources, including their ideas about gender, the cultivation of powers, and approaches to liberation. Along the way, we touch on yogic sex, practices to stop menstruating, and the courageous work that modern practitioners have been doing to expose abuse by yoga gurus. If you want to hear more from experts on Buddhism, Asian medicine, and embodied spirituality then subscribe to Blue Beryl and don’t miss an episode! Resources mentioned in the episode: Preliminary published results from Ruth’s research Mallinson and Szántó, The Amṛtasiddhi and Amṛtasiddhimūla (2021). Jason Birch, The Amaraugha and Amaraughaprabodha of Gorakṣanātha(2023). Elena Valussi, “The Physiology of Transcendence for Women” (2009) BBP episode with Dominic Steavu Hatha Yoga Project Articles on guru abuse by Pattabhi Jois: Anneke Lucas, Karen Rain, Amanda Lucia Inform Project Video footage of Ruth doing historical āsanas Ruth’s website and email newsletter, Facebook page, Instagram Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. He has a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia. www.piercesalguero.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

    57 min
  2. AUG 2

    Ellie Laks, "Cow Hug Therapy: How the Animals at the Gentle Barn Taught Me about Life, Death, and Everything in Between" (New World Library, 2024)

    In Cow Hug Therapy: How the Animals at the Gentle Barn Taught Me about Life, Death, and Everything in Between (New World Library, 2024), Ellie Laks recounts the extraordinary journey that started with her first teacher, Buddha -- not the religious figure, but a rescued miniature Hereford cow. One evening Buddha wrapped her neck around an exhausted and upset Ellie and transferred a singular form of healing and comfort with an incredible impact. Understanding that this was something to be shared with others, Ellie developed Cow Hug Therapy, a groundbreaking approach to emotional healing that has proved effective for trauma, illness, disabilities, addiction, grief, and stress. This colorful and compelling narrative introduces the healing mavens of the barnyard, each with a unique story of being rescued from trauma and treated with love and respect. In their new role at Ellie's Gentle Barn sanctuaries, these animals have transformed lives and ignited breakthroughs and newfound purpose for visitors including a young mother who lost her baby, a suicidal teenager, a wounded serviceman, an open-heart-surgery patient, and many more. A testament to empathy and the mission to heal animals, people, and the planet, Cow Hug Therapy serves as a beacon of hope for all seeking healing and connection. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

    47 min
  3. JUN 21

    Beth Kurland, "You Don't Have to Change to Change Everything" (Health Communications, 2024)

    One of the most significant sources of suffering comes from our human tendency to avoid difficult emotions. We are not taught how to face these unpleasant, often daily inner experiences (mind-body energies) and so we tend to push them away, ignore them, or become unwittingly overwhelmed by them. Yet how we meet and greet these difficult emotions has everything to do with our well-being, resilience, and ability to connect with ourselves and others.Instinctually, we fight against our uncomfortable emotions; in doing so, we reinforce messages of “not good enough” or “something is wrong with me that I am feeling this way.” In You Don't Have to Change to Change Everything (Health Communications, 2024), readers learn that instead of forcing themselves to feel “happy” and pushing away what is unpleasant, or instead of getting hooked by intense emotions, another path can lead to more profound well-being. Rather than trying to change one’s inner experiences, this book offers six ways to shift one’s vantage point when difficult emotions arise. Being aware from each of these six vantage points allows readers to cultivate inner stability, willingness to turn toward rather than away from themselves, greater perspective, internal strengths and inner resources, self-compassion, connection with the “Whole Self” versus identification with “hole self,” and interconnection with the world around them. Beth Kurland   Dr. Beth Kurland is a clinical psychologist, TEDx and public speaker, mind-body coach and author of four books. Her newest book, 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, helps readers to discover a deep “well” of well-being within and realize they don’t need to fix or change themselves to awaken the power of inner transformation. Beth is also the author of three award winning books. Her book Dancing on the Tightrope: Transcending the Habits of Your Mind and Awakening to Your Fullest Life identifies five obstacles that get in the way of our well-being, and offers five tools to transform those obstacles into lasting inner resources for peace, resilience and joy. Her book The Transformative Power of Ten Minutes: An Eight Week Guide to Reducing Stress and Cultivating Well-Being offers readers practical tools for implementing short, daily practices within the course of their day to bring about lasting change. Her book Gifts of the Rain Puddle: Poems, Meditations and Reflections for the Mindful Soul invites readers to awaken to what is most important in their lives through poems, meditations, and questions for reflection. Beth is a regular blog writer for Psychology Today and is a meditation teacher on the app Insight Timer. Inspired by her personal experiences and her work with her clients, Beth is passionate about teaching mindfulness informed practices, mind-body strategies, and practical tools to help people cultivate whole person health and well-being. She is the creator of the Well-Being Toolkit online program and the creator of three audio courses to help people reduce stress, awaken to their fullest life, and set heartfelt intentions that stick. She offers individual and group coaching for powerful personal transformation. Visit her website at bethkurland.com to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

    55 min
  4. JUN 9

    The Enlightenment of the Body, with Naomi Worth

    In this episode, Dr Pierce Salguero sits down with Naomi Worth, a scholar and practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism’s postural yoga tradition. We dive into Naomi's experiences in yogic retreats, highlight the vigorous movement and intense visual elements of the practice, and explore yoga’s role in the Nyingma contemplative path. Naomi also shares how she balances her scholarship and practice of Tibetan knowledge with her current work as a high school teacher. Along the way, we mention wrathful deities, sky-gazing, and how to help teenagers find themselves in today’s modern culture. Remember, if you want to hear from more experts on Buddhism, Asian medicine, and embodied spirituality, subscribe to Blue Beryl for monthly episodes. Please enjoy! Resources mentioned in the episode: Naomi’s website Naomi’s publications on Academia.edu Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. He has a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia. www.piercesalguero.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

    54 min
  5. MAY 4

    Reiki and the Subtle Body, with Justin B. Stein

    Dr Pierce Salguero sits down with Justin B. Stein, a specialist in modern Japanese religion and the preeminent historian of Reiki. We discuss Justin’s new book, Alternate Currents: Reiki’s Circulation in the Twentieth-Century North Pacific (U Hawaii Press, 2023), about the transnational origins of Reiki, and also get into his perspective as a both a scholar and a Reiki practitioner. Along the way, we ask what Reiki has to do with Buddhism, what subtle energy feels like up close, and what kinds of extraordinary experiences might occur when you open up to energy of the universe. Remember, if you want to hear from more experts on Buddhism, Asian medicine, and embodied spirituality, subscribe to Blue Beryl for monthly episodes. Please enjoy! Resources mentioned in the episode: C. Pierce Salguero, Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Sources (2020). Justin’s translation is Chapter 5, “Psychosomatic Buddhist Medicine at the Dawn of Modern Japan” Justin B. Stein, Alternate Currents: Reiki’s Circulation in the Twentieth-Century North Pacific (2023). BBP interview with Nathan Michon Dr. Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. He has a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia. www.piercesalguero.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

    1h 2m
  6. MAR 29

    Holly Woods, "The Golden Thread: Where to Find Purpose in the Stages of Your Life" (New Degree Press, 2020)

    Purpose serves as your GPS, guiding your life trajectory, whether you listen or not. It can help you reach for the seemingly unattainable and stop compromising who you are and were meant to be. The Golden Thread: Where to Find Purpose in the Stages of Your Life (New Degree Press, 2020) demonstrates, through hard data alongside expert and client stories, that knowing and living your purpose will positively affect every facet of your life. You’ll also learn how your purpose shows up uniquely at different stages of life (related to Stage of Consciousness), and is related to your childhood wounding, both of which are reasons you can’t see your purpose so clearly. This book helps you make sense of your life and will answer the questions:What is purpose and why do I need to know it?How do I find my purpose?How does the GPS of my purpose pull me forward? How does purpose show up differently over my life span? And more...In The Golden Thread, Holly Woods, PhD shows readers that their own nuanced one-of-a-kind purpose is right there in front of them, waiting to be discovered. Listen to its whispers and let it guide you to a more fulfilling and impactful life. Holly Woods PhD is a visionary who sees deeply into others' souls. She activates and catalyzes what wants to come alive in people and guides them to manifest their dreams through practical strategies. Holly has 30 years of consulting and coaching experience in human and organizational development. She has over two decades of experience building and scaling business and products to help entrepreneurs, visionaries and innovators create impact. In addition, she helps clients uncover their nuanced purpose, gain capacities and mindset to attain goals, and align decisions, products and systems around what matters most. Holly earned a PhD in Human & Organizational Development and is certified as an Integral Master Coach®, Purpose Guide®, Professional Mediator and Facilitator, and Master Energy Practitioner. She is also a Stages of Consciousness developmental practitioner. For more information, please visit https://emergenceinstitute.net/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

    55 min
  7. MAR 3

    Anna Dako, "Dances with Sheep: On RePairing the HumanNature Condition in Felt Thinking and Moving towards Wellbeing" (Intellect Books, 2023)

    Anna Dako,'s book Dances with Sheep: On RePairing the HumanNature Condition in Felt Thinking and Moving towards Wellbeing (Intellect Books, 2023) presents the methodology of Felt Thinking in Movement as an eco-somatic practice inspired by re-thinking nature of being human, as well as contextualises it within wider frameworks of cultural, philosophical and therapeutic viewpoints on wellbeing. Felt Thinking is a self-inquiry practice grounded in somatic movement experience that originates in site-specific and embodied dialoguing between what is felt and what shapes as a responsive thought, as creative movement itself, and which paths ways for ecologically inclusive care for being well with self and other. The book elaborates on creative processes in and with the natural environment in relation to the movers’ overall wellbeing and covers creative journeys of opening up to the living agency of Nature itself through the emergent three phases of experiential relatedness in embodied experience of the self. The book presents its original contribution to eco-phenomenology with its ontological principle of embodied relationality in towards and away from movement as a primal gateway to wellbeing and its creative inter-constitution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

    58 min

Ratings & Reviews

4
out of 5
4 Ratings

About

Interviews with Spiritual Practitioners about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

You Might Also Like

To listen to explicit episodes, sign in.

Stay up to date with this show

Sign in or sign up to follow shows, save episodes, and get the latest updates.

Select a country or region

Africa, Middle East, and India

Asia Pacific

Europe

Latin America and the Caribbean

The United States and Canada