This “practical, down-to-earth, and very wise guide to awakening” offers a Zen-based approach to coping with physical, psychological, and spiritual pain (Jack Kornfield) Darlene Cohen discovered the secret to finding happiness in the midst of debilitating pain. She shares her knowledge in her popular workshops and now in this book. Cohen, who has suffered from rheumatoid arthritis for eighteen years, was hobbling painfully to her local Zen center one day, when she made a discovery that changed her life: if she focused on the foot that was in the air rather than the one that was hitting the pavement, her stamina increased enormously. It was the beginning of a completely different approach to the crippling pain that had beset her for so long. As she demonstrates here, this approach can be expanded to all types of pain: physical, psychological, and spiritual. Cohen—a certified massage and movement therapist and Zen teacher—proposes a radically liberating alternative to the usual desperate search for pain relief: paradoxically, she says, release from suffering lies in paying closer attention to it. When we keep pain at bay, we keep pleasure at bay, too. The two are interdependent, and our ability to experience each is totally dependent on our understanding of the other. “Enrich your life exponentially,” Cohen advises. If your pain is one of the ten things you are aware of, then it constitutes a tenth of your total awareness. Expand your awareness to a hundred things, however, and your pain is only a hundredth of your awareness. With stories, strategies, exercises, and an awareness born of long Zen practice, Cohen shows us how to tap into that enrichment—and how we can lead a satisfying and even joyful life in the very midst of pain.

This “practical, down-to-earth, and very wise guide to awakening” offers a Zen-based approach to coping with physical, psychological, and spiritual pain (Jack Kornfield) Darlene Cohen discovered the secret to finding happiness in the midst of debilitating pain. She shares her knowledge in her popular workshops and now in this book. Cohen, who has suffered from rheumatoid arthritis for eighteen years, was hobbling painfully to her local Zen center one day, when she made a discovery that changed her life: if she focused on the foot that was in the air rather than the one that was hitting the pavement, her stamina increased enormously. It was the beginning of a completely different approach to the crippling pain that had beset her for so long. As she demonstrates here, this approach can be expanded to all types of pain: physical, psychological, and spiritual. Cohen—a certified massage and movement therapist and Zen teacher—proposes a radically liberating alternative to the usual desperate search for pain relief: paradoxically, she says, release from suffering lies in paying closer attention to it. When we keep pain at bay, we keep pleasure at bay, too. The two are interdependent, and our ability to experience each is totally dependent on our understanding of the other. “Enrich your life exponentially,” Cohen advises. If your pain is one of the ten things you are aware of, then it constitutes a tenth of your total awareness. Expand your awareness to a hundred things, however, and your pain is only a hundredth of your awareness. With stories, strategies, exercises, and an awareness born of long Zen practice, Cohen shows us how to tap into that enrichment—and how we can lead a satisfying and even joyful life in the very midst of pain.

The secret to happiness is to acknowledge and transform suffering, not to run away from it. Here, Thich Nhat Hanh offers practices and inspiration transforming suffering and finding true joy. Thich Nhat Hanh acknowledges that because suffering can feel so bad, we try to run away from it or cover it up by consuming. We find something to eat or turn on the television. But unless we’re able to face our suffering, we can’t be present and available to life, and happiness will continue to elude us. Nhat Hanh shares how the practices of stopping, mindful breathing, and deep concentration can generate the energy of mindfulness within our daily lives. With that energy, we can embrace pain and calm it down, instantly bringing a measure of freedom and a clearer mind. No Mud, No Lotus introduces ways to be in touch with suffering without being overwhelmed by it. "When we know how to suffer," Nhat Hanh says, "we suffer much, much less." With his signature clarity and sense of joy, Thich Nhat Hanh helps us recognize the wonders inside us and around us that we tend to take for granted and teaches us the art of happiness.

"'Enrich your life exponentially, ' Cohen advises. If your pain is one of ten things you are aware of, then it constitutes a tenth or your total awareness. Expand your awareness to a hundred things, however, and your pain is only a hundredth of your awareness. With stories, strategies, exercises, and an awareness born of long Zen practice, Cohen shows us how we can lead a satisfying--and even joyful--life in the midst of pain."--Publisher's description.

She's seen slave dungeons in Ghana. Genocide in Rwanda. Systemic sexual abuse in Brazil. Child abuse and domestic violence in the US. After forty years of counseling abuse survivors around the world, Dr. Diane Langberg, a world renowned trauma expert, remains certain that what trauma destroys, Christ can and does restore. This book will convince you, too, of the healing heart of God. But it's not a fast process, instead much patience is required from family, friends, and counselors as they wisely and respectfully help victims unpack their traumatic suffering through talking, tears, and time. And it's not a process that can be separated from the work of God in both a counselor and counselee. Dr. Langberg calls all of those who wish to help sufferers to model Jesus's sacrificial love and care in how they listen, love, and guide. The heart of God is revealed to sufferers as they grow to understand the cross of Christ and how their God came to this earth and experienced such severe suffering that he too is "well-acquainted with grief." The cross of Christ is the lens that transforms and redeems traumatic suffering and its aftermath, not only for the sufferer, but it also transforms those who walk with the suffering. This book will be a great help to anyone who loves, listens to, and seeks to help someone impacted by trauma and abuse. There is no quick fix, but there is the hope for healing through the love of God in Christ.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • An "extraordinary ... profoundly moving" history (The New York Times Book Review) of the American Civil War that reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation. An estiated 750,000 soldiers lost their lives in the American Civil War. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be seven and a half million. In This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust describes how the survivors managed on a practical level and how a deeply religious culture struggled to reconcile the unprecedented carnage with its belief in a benevolent God. Throughout, the voices of soldiers and their families, of statesmen, generals, preachers, poets, surgeons, nurses, northerners and southerners come together to give us a vivid understanding of the Civil War's most fundamental and widely shared reality. With a new introduction by the author, and a new foreword by Mike Mullen, 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The intense pressure of daily life gets to everyone eventually-we are all just too stressed out. The demands of modern lives-job, relationships, children, housework, exercise, meals, even spiritual fulfillment-combine to overwhelm and weigh us down. We seem to get through this struggle day by day, week by week, praying that we have the fortitude to survive until the next weekend, the next vacation, when we can totally crash. Along with the daily stress comes the edgy realization that despite all the effort we've made, we still don't have what we want. Even when everything seems caught up, contentment still eludes us. Author Darlene Cohen seeks to rejuvenate the weary professional, busy parent, and harried student by offering a path on which to walk away from exhausted frustration toward a holistic approach to time management. The One Who Is Not Busy introduces two fundamental and specific skills to make this happen: the ability to narrow or widen the mind's focus at will the mental flexibility to shift the mind's focus at will from one thing to another: to go from "narrow" to "narrow" to "narrow" Sound impossible? This is the notion of simultaneous inclusion. In The One Who Is Not Busy, Cohen illustrates that a person could be both busy and not busy at the same time by following six busy professionals through this unique process. Cohen affirms that it is learning to be simultaneously "busy" and "not busy" by living the principles of simultaneous inclusion that will allow us to experience work-and the rest of our lives-in a deeply meaningful way. In a culture that rewards only the final product, many professionals find themselves always looking to the next project, the next reward, the next vacation. Learn how to focus on the present, and stop missing what is right in front of you. Darlene Cohen, M.A., LMT, earned her graduate degree in physiological psychology and spent the majority of her Zen training-thirty years-as a laywoman. After developing rheumatoid arthritis, she became a movement teacher for people with joint restrictions, and was then certified as a massage and movement teacher. Currently, she sees clients and gives workshops, classes, lectures, and seminars that emphasize mindfulness, at various medical and meditation centers throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington State, Illinois, and New York City.