NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • This inspiring guide to healing and growth illuminates the richness and potential of every life, even in the face of loss and adversity—now updated with additional toolbox materials and a new preface by the author In the more than twenty-five years since she co-founded Omega Institute—now the world’s largest center for spiritual retreat and personal growth—Elizabeth Lesser has been an intimate witness to the ways in which people weather change and transition. In a beautifully crafted blend of moving stories, humorous insights, practical guidance, and personal memoir, she offers tools to help us make the choice we all face in times of challenge: Will we be broken down and defeated, or broken open and transformed? Lesser shares tales of ordinary people who have risen from the ashes of illness, divorce, loss of a job or a loved one—stronger, wiser, and more in touch with their purpose and passion. And she draws on the world’s great spiritual and psychological traditions to support us as we too learn to break open and blossom into who we were meant to be.

A dazzling work of personal travelogue and cultural criticism that ranges from the primitive to the postmodern in a quest for the promise and meaning of the psychedelic experience. While psychedelics of all sorts are demonized in America today, the visionary compounds found in plants are the spiritual sacraments of tribal cultures around the world. From the iboga of the Bwiti in Gabon, to the Mazatecs of Mexico, these plants are sacred because they awaken the mind to other levels of awareness--to a holographic vision of the universe. Breaking Open the Head is a passionate, multilayered, and sometimes rashly personal inquiry into this deep division. On one level, Daniel Pinchbeck tells the story of the encounters between the modern consciousness of the West and these sacramental substances, including such thinkers as Allen Ginsberg, Antonin Artaud, Walter Benjamin, and Terence McKenna, and a new underground of present-day ethnobotanists, chemists, psychonauts, and philosophers. It is also a scrupulous recording of the author's wide-ranging investigation with these outlaw compounds, including a thirty-hour tribal initiation in West Africa; an all-night encounter with the master shamans of the South American rain forest; and a report from a psychedelic utopia in the Black Rock Desert that is the Burning Man Festival. Breaking Open the Head is brave participatory journalism at its best, a vivid account of psychic and intellectual experiences that opened doors in the wall of Western rationalism and completed Daniel Pinchbeck's personal transformation from a jaded Manhattan journalist to shamanic initiate and grateful citizen of the cosmos.

Imagine if we treated broken hearts with the same respect and concern we have for broken arms? Psychologist Guy Winch urges us to rethink the way we deal with emotional pain, offering warm, wise, and witty advice for the broken-hearted. Real heartbreak is unmistakable. We think of nothing else. We feel nothing else. We care about nothing else. Yet while we wouldn’t expect someone to return to daily activities immediately after suffering a broken limb, heartbroken people are expected to function normally in their lives, despite the emotional pain they feel. Now psychologist Guy Winch imagines how different things would be if we paid more attention to this unique emotion—if only we can understand how heartbreak works, we can begin to fix it. Through compelling research and new scientific studies, Winch reveals how and why heartbreak impacts our brain and our behavior in dramatic and unexpected ways, regardless of our age. Emotional pain lowers our ability to reason, to think creatively, to problem solve, and to function at our best. In How to Fix a Broken Heart he focuses on two types of emotional pain—romantic heartbreak and the heartbreak that results from the loss of a cherished pet. These experiences are both accompanied by severe grief responses, yet they are not deemed as important as, for example, a formal divorce or the loss of a close relative. As a result, we are often deprived of the recognition, support, and compassion afforded to those whose heartbreak is considered more significant. Our heart might be broken, but we do not have to break with it. Winch reveals that recovering from heartbreak always starts with a decision, a determination to move on when our mind is fighting to keep us stuck. We can take control of our lives and our minds and put ourselves on the path to healing. Winch offers a toolkit on how to handle and cope with a broken heart and how to, eventually, move on.

Losing means grieving. Grieving means choices. Choices mean hurt or healing. You’ve lost someone you love. Or you’re on the brink of losing your marriage. Your dreams. Your health. Or perhaps the trauma of your past pursues you into the present. Your life’s going to change. Which way it goes won’t be decided by your loss, but by the choices you make. At the crossroads of grief, one road will lead to hope and healing. The other, to more hurt. Hope When Your Heart Is Breaking is an honest look at both roads, and how your greatest loss can lead to your greatest gain. Author Ron Hutchcraft writes from the deep well of his own devastating loss and grief, and points you to the practical steps that lead to peace and wholeness. This book is a pathway to hope—a roadmap through the pain of grief and loss. Discover new strength through a new closeness to others and to God. And make the decisions that lead to comfort, growth, and life.

Celebrate feelings in all their shapes and sizes in this New York Times bestselling picture book from the Growing Hearts series! Happiness, sadness, bravery, anger, shyness . . . our hearts can feel so many feelings! Some make us feel as light as a balloon, others as heavy as an elephant. In My Heart explores a full range of emotions, describing how they feel physically, inside, with language that is lyrical but also direct to empower readers to practice articulating and identifying their own emotions. With whimsical illustrations and an irresistible die-cut heart that extends through each spread, this gorgeously packaged and unique feelings book is sure to become a storytime favorite.

The way we talk to ourselves is often unkind and filled with self-judgments. These overly harsh self-criticisms can make us feel unworthy and incomplete. What if what you really need is not higher standards for yourself, but greater self-compassion? In Living with Your Heart Wide Open, you’ll discover how mindfulness and self-compassion can free you from the thoughts and beliefs that create feelings of inadequacy and learn to open your heart to the loving-kindness within you and in the world around you. Based in Western psychotherapy and Buddhist psychological principles, this book guides you past painful and self-limiting beliefs about yourself and toward a new perspective of nonjudgmental awareness and acceptance of who you are, just as you are. You’ll receive gentle guidance in mindfulness and compassion practices that will lead you away from unproductive, self-critical thoughts and help you live more freely and fearlessly, with your heart wide open.

While intended primarily as a guide to recovery for anyone who is experiencing depression, this book is also written with the relatives and friends of that person in mind, hoping they can make sense of what can be a difficult experience to grasp from the 'outside'. Understanding the journey through depression by all who are affected can act as a bridge between people who feel isolated by depression and those who care about them. 'This book shows you the practical steps you can take to lift your mood; helps you listen to what depression may be trying to teach you about your life; and gives you a way to be with yourself when you feel most vulnerable. It is possible for any human being to lose their way, but it is equally possible for any human being to find their way. I hope this book supports and strengthens your recovery by showing that you have the inner strength to come through depression.' Tony Bates.