Books & Resources
Books for
the Empowered Empath
These books are for the empaths who are done dimming their light. For the ones learning to honor their sensitivity as a superpower—not a weakness. Inside this collection, you’ll find words that validate your experience, stretch your thinking, and support your healing.
Whether you’re just waking up to your empathic nature or you’ve been walking this path for years, these titles are here to help you reclaim your energy, set sacred boundaries, and lead with your intuition. This is your personal library of empowerment, clarity, and self-trust.
A note about book and resource recommendations: I encourage everyone to consume content through their own filter and disregard anything that doesn’t resonate with you. You are the master of your soul and you know better than anyone what is true for you. It is possible and common with books of a spiritual and energetic nature, which can’t be proven by science (yet), to hear or read a piece of information that your soul KNOWS isn’t true. Trust that while allowing others’ to hold their own truth.
Books & Resources by Topic
Resources for Empaths
Thriving as an Empath Blog Series
Are You Wanting to Thrive? Dealing with emotional energy is the hallmark of our nature; however, it is not what makes you an empath, it is merely a symptom. Empaths are here on planet Earth, in large numbers, at this time in history to DO THEIR WORK. That involves learning to heal ourselves so we can teach others how to live from their heart. That is our work, our why. Still, we feel “afflicted” with the burden of sensitivity. Because we are lightworkers and our sensitivity tunes us into to the world around us. We are not meant to assimilate into the current world, rather we are meant to shine the light of love into the darkness of self-interest, greed, and power-over.
Energy Medicine Resources
Energy Medicine
by Donna Eden
"World-renowned healer Donna Eden is able to literally see the body's energy key points and meridians. In Energy Medicine, she tells readers how they, too, can visualize these energy systems, determine the causes of physical and psychological problems based on the state of these energies, and devise highly effective treatments to remedy specific ailments and injuries. This is the only interactive guide that shows how you can work with energy to strengthen the immune, circulatory, lymphatic, and respiratory systems; alleviate pain, emotional stress, and depression; and improve memory and learning skills. Blending intuitive genius with a profound grasp of how the body functions as an energy system, Donna Eden's unique approach to energy medicine integrates Eastern, Celtic, and Western healing arts."
Anchored:
How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory
by Deb Dana
Discover your body’s neural pathways to calmness, safety, and connection.
An intense conversation, a spat with a partner, or even an obnoxious tweet—these situations aren’t life-or-death, yet we often react as if they are. That’s because our bodies treat most perceived threats the same way. Yet one approach has proven to be incredibly effective in training our nervous system to stop overreacting and start responding to the world with greater safety and ease: Polyvagal Theory.
In Anchored, expert teacher Deb Dana shares a down-to-earth presentation of Polyvagal Theory, then brings the science to life with practical, everyday ways to transform your relationship with your body. Using field-tested techniques, Dana helps you master the skills to become more aware of your nervous system moment to moment—and change the way you respond to the great and small challenges of life.
Here, you’ll explore:
• Polyvagal Theory—get to know the biology and function of your vagus nerve, the highway of the nervous system
• Befriending Your Nervous System—attune to what’s going on in your body by developing your “neuroception”
• Using Your Vagal Brake—discover key techniques to consciously regulate the intensity of your emotions
• Connection and Protection—learn to recognize and influence your internal cues for safety and danger
• Your Social Engagement System—find ways to create nourishing relationships with others and the world around you
• Practices and guidance to gently shape your nervous system for greater resilience, intuition, safety, and wonder
Through guided imagery, meditation, self-inquiry, and more, Anchored offers a practical user’s manual for moving from a place of fear and panic into a grounded space of balance and confidence. “Once we know how our nervous system works, we can work with it,” teaches Deb Dana. “We can learn to access an embodied, biological resource that is always present, available, and there to guide us toward well-being.”
The Promise of Energy Psychology
by David Feinstein, Donna Eden & Gary Craig
"This groundbreaking book explains how to tap into your body's energy not only to change your health, but to change your behaviors and thought patterns as well. Your body is comprised of energy pathways and energy centers that are in constant motion, a dynamic interplay with other energies and with your cells, organs, immune system, mood, and thoughts. If you can shift these energies, you can influence your physical health, your emotional patterns, and your state of mind. The energy approach presented in this book can help bring about significant change in your life. With this strategy, stubborn phobias often fade in minutes; the lifelong effects of an early trauma can frequently be reduced or completely eliminated; uncontrollable anger can rapidly become manageable; even elusive physical problems may respond where other treatments have failed."
Theta Healing
by Vianna Stibal
"ThetaHealing is essentially applied quantum physics. Using a theta brain wave, which until now was believed to be accessible only in deep sleep or yogi-level meditation, the practitioner is able to connect with the energy of All That Is -- the energy in everything -- to identify issues with and witness healings on the physical body, and to identify and change limiting beliefs."
Resources for Self-Directed Inner Work
Brene Brown - All the books!
From Brené:
Here’s how I think of the progression of my work:
The Gifts of Imperfection—Be you.
Daring Greatly—Be all in.
Rising Strong—Fall. Get up. Try again.
I offer brief overviews of my work at the start of Daring Greatly and Rising Strong, but reading The Gifts is always a good place to start.
What transforms this book from words on a page to effective daily practices are the ten guideposts to wholehearted living. The guideposts not only help us understand the practices that will allow us to change our lives and families, they also walk us through the unattainable and sabotaging expectations that get in the way.
Atlas of the Heart
Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience
If we want to find the way back to ourselves and one another, we need language and the grounded confidence to both tell our stories and to be stewards of the stories that we hear. In Atlas of the Heart, we explore eighty-seven of the emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human and walk through a new framework for cultivating meaningful connection. This is for the mapmakers and travelers in all of us.
The Wild Edge of Sorrow
Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
by Francis Weller
The Wild Edge of Sorrow offers hope and healing for a profoundly fractured world—and a pathway home to the brightness, pains, and gifts of being alive.
Introducing the 5 gates of grief, psychotherapist Francis Weller explores how we move through the waters of grief and loss in a culture so fundamentally detached from the needs of the soul.
• The first gate recognizes—and invites us to accept—the painful truth that everything we love, we will lose. With this acceptance comes beauty and responsibility—and an openness into which we can pour the full love of our hearts. At the first gate, we meet the sorrow of losing a loved one; the grief of illness; and the unique and profound pains that accompany loss by suicide.
• The second gate helps us uncover and tend to the places that have not known love: the neglected pieces of our soul that need restoration and care. These “places” can be our secret shames, or the parts of us that we feel are undeserving of love. At the second gate, we face our shadows and heal our most tender wounds.
• The third gate meets us at the sorrows of the world, inviting us to open to the grave pain of our planet: the destruction of ecosystems, the harms of extractive capitalism, the unfathomable pain of war and occupation. We learn to honor and hold this grief even as we move through it, recommitting ourselves to the actions our souls call upon us to perform in service of healing and renewal.
• The fourth gate, what we expected but did not receive, is present in each and every one of our lives. We may need love from a parent or partner unable to give it; we may lack the language to ask for the care we deserve. Each is a loss that must be acknowledged and grieved to move toward wholeness.
• The fifth gate opens to our ancestral grief: the traumas, pains, losses, and unrealized dreams of those who came before us. Weller invites us to reconnect to our bodies, our communities, and the ancestral knowledge we hold in our bones...but may have forgotten.
Profoundly moving, beautifully written, this book is a balm for the soul and a necessary salve for moving together through difficult times. Grounded in ritual and connection, The Wild Edge of Sorrow welcomes each grief with care and attention, opening us to the feelings, experiences, and sacred knowledge that connect us to each other and ultimately make us whole.
Emotional Agility
by Susan David, PhD
The counterintuitive approach to achieving your true potential, heralded by the Harvard Business Review as a groundbreaking idea of the year.
The path to personal and professional fulfillment is rarely straight. Ask anyone who has achieved his or her biggest goals or whose relationships thrive and you’ll hear stories of many unexpected detours along the way. What separates those who master these challenges and those who get derailed? The answer is agility—emotional agility.
Emotional agility is a revolutionary, science-based approach that allows us to navigate life’s twists and turns with self-acceptance, clear-sightedness, and an open mind. Renowned psychologist Susan David developed this concept after studying emotions, happiness, and achievement for more than twenty years. She found that no matter how intelligent or creative people are, or what type of personality they have, it is how they navigate their inner world—their thoughts, feelings, and self-talk—that ultimately determines how successful they will become.
The way we respond to these internal experiences drives our actions, careers, relationships, happiness, health—everything that matters in our lives. As humans, we are all prone to common hooks—things like self-doubt, shame, sadness, fear, or anger—that can too easily steer us in the wrong direction. Emotionally agile people are not immune to stresses and setbacks. The key difference is that they know how to adapt, aligning their actions with their values and making small but powerful changes that lead to a lifetime of growth. Emotional agility is not about ignoring difficult emotions and thoughts; it’s about holding them loosely, facing them courageously and compassionately, and then moving past them to bring the best of yourself forward.
Drawing on her deep research, decades of international consulting, and her own experience overcoming adversity after losing her father at a young age, David shows how anyone can thrive in an uncertain world by becoming more emotionally agile. To guide us, she shares four key concepts that allow us to acknowledge uncomfortable experiences while simultaneously detaching from them, thereby allowing us to embrace our core values and adjust our actions so they can move us where we truly want to go.
Written with authority, wit, and empathy, Emotional Agility serves as a road map for real behavioral change—a new way of acting that will help you reach your full potential, whoever you are and whatever you face.
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
by Dr. Lindsay Gibson
If you grew up with an emotionally immature, unavailable, or selfish parent, you may have lingering feelings of anger, loneliness, betrayal, or abandonment. You may recall your childhood as a time when your emotional needs were not met, when your feelings were dismissed, or when you took on adult levels of responsibility in an effort to compensate for your parent’s behavior. These wounds can be healed, and you can move forward in your life.
In this breakthrough book, clinical psychologist Lindsay Gibson exposes the destructive nature of parents who are emotionally immature or unavailable. You will see how these parents create a sense of neglect, and discover ways to heal from the pain and confusion caused by your childhood. By freeing yourself from your parents’ emotional immaturity, you can recover your true nature, control how you react to them, and avoid disappointment. Finally, you’ll learn how to create positive, new relationships so you can build a better life.
Discover the four types of difficult parents:
* The emotional parent instills feelings of instability and anxiety
* The driven parent stays busy trying to perfect everything and everyone
* The passive parent avoids dealing with anything upsetting
* The rejecting parent is withdrawn, dismissive, and derogatory
The Genius of Empathy
by Dr. Judith Orloff
If you grew up with an emotionally immatureAEmbrace empathy as your superpower for transformative personal healing, deeper relationships, and more potent work in the world.
Empathy is no weakness―it holds transformative power to heal ourselves, strengthen our relationships, and amplify our purpose. Dr. Judith Orloff, known for landmark works like The Empath’s Survival Guide, shares an essential new resource for cultivating empathy as a daily healing practice and a form of emotional intelligence. With The Genius of Empathy, Dr. Orloff presents a potent guide not only for highly sensitive people but for anyone with the desire to develop the gifts of empathy that we all possess.
Drawing on insights from neuroscience, psychology, and energy medicine, Dr. Orloff teaches powerful lessons, including:
• Your empathic style—tools for discovering and nurturing your unique sensitivities
• Self-care for empaths—practices to soothe your nervous system to prevent empathy overwhelm
• Setting healthy boundaries to regulate how you process the emotions of others
• How to apply empathy to ourselves to find greater self-love and healing, including from trauma
• Recognizing and protecting yourself from empathy-deficient persons such as narcissists, sociopaths, and bullies
• Using empathic listening and leadership in any situation—at work, in your relationships, and in service to the world
Each chapter is filled with Dr. Orloff’s most valuable insights and tools for living with greater connection, safety, and empowerment as your empathic abilities blossom.
The Genius of Empathy offers practical, action-driven guidance for connecting our minds and hearts to embody our most authentic, fierce, and compassionate selves. “Cultivating empathy is a kind of peaceful warrior training,” says Dr. Orloff. “You will learn to be both strong and loving, neither a pushover nor rigid. Wherever you are in your life, this book can meet you there and lift you higher.”
Resources for Exploring Relationships
Spiritual Partnership
by Gary Zukav
"Gary Zukav explains how a powerful new dynamic is at play in human relationships. By focusing attention on the interior rather than the outer causes of suffering or joy, we can reach our full potential and generate authentic power, co-creating rewarding partnerships of substance and depth for the purposes of our mutual spiritual growth. Filled with fascinating examples as well as practical guidance, this remarkable book is the roadmap to profound change, pointing towards a fulfilling, joyful way of life for us all."
The Honeymoon Effect
by Bruce Lipton, Ph.D.
"Imagine what your planetary experience would be like if you could maintain the Honeymoon Effect throughout your whole life. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. describes how the Honeymoon Effect was not a chance event or a coincidence, but a personal creation. This book reveals how we manifest the Honeymoon Effect and the reasons why we lose it. This knowledge empowers readers to create the honeymoon experience again, this time in a way that ensures a happily-ever-after relationship that even a Hollywood producer would love. With authority, eloquence, and an easy-to-read style, Lipton covers the influence of quantum physics (good vibrations), biochemistry (love potions), and psychology (the conscious and subconscious minds) in creating and sustaining juicy loving relationships."
The Energies of Love
by Donna Eden & David Feinstein
"A relationship begins with the meeting of two unique energies. This union of energies determines the way you communicate, fight, love, and want to be loved. Donna Eden and David Feinstein draw on the real-life experiences of couples who have attended their popular 'Energies of Love' workshops, as well as their own experience as husband and wife, to show how an understanding of your energy system and that of your partner can help you build a more harmonious and loving bond."
Attached.
by Amir Levine, Rachel Heller
We now know that the desire to become attached to a partner is a natural human drive. And according to the new science of attachment, every person behaves in relationships in one of three distinct ways:
1) ANXIOUS people are often preoccupied with their relationships and tend to worry about their partner's ability to love them back.
2) AVOIDANT people equate intimacy with a loss of independence and constantly try to minimize closeness.
3) SECURE people feel comfortable with intimacy and are usually warm and loving.
Dr. Amir Levine and Rachel Heller help you understand the three attachment styles, identify your own and recognize the styles of others so that you can find compatible partners or improve your existing relationship. Packed with fascinating psychology and case studies from successful - and unsuccessful - couples you can discover how to avoid the Anxious-Avoidant trap, why Secures can partner any type and how to love the Secure way.
Enlightened Sex
by David Deida
A great guide to understanding the male and female energy signatures and why learning them is important to a fulfilling intimate relationship with your partner. "Through 10 in-depth sessions of guided practices, sexual skills, and provocative insights into the nature of human sexuality, David Deida shows you how to sustain the ecstasy of deep sex. With this ability, you will find that during your intimate encounters and in every minute of your life, you are a beacon of conscious light for everyone, beaming with the effulgence of Enlightened Sex."
Resources for Lightworkers
The Seeker's Guide
Elizabeth Lesser
In 1977, Elizabeth Lesser cofounded the Omega Institute, now America's largest adult-education center focusing on wellness and spirituality. Working with many of the eminent thinkers of our times, including Zen masters, rabbis, Christian monks, psychologists, scientists, and an array of noted American figures from L.A. Lakers coach Phil Jackson to author Maya Angelou, Lesser found that by combining a variety of religious, psychological, and healing traditions, each of us has the unique ability to satisfy our spiritual hunger.
In The Seeker's Guide, she synthesizes the lessons learned from an immersion into the world's wisdom traditions and intertwines them with illuminating stories from her daily life. Recounting her own trials and errors and offering meditative exercises, she shows the reader how to create a personal practice, gauge one's progress, and choose effective spiritual teachers and habits. Warm, accessible, and wise, this book provides directions through the four landscapes of the spiritual journey:
The Mind: learning meditation to ease stress and anxiety
The Heart: dealing with grief, loss, and pain; opening the heart and becoming fully alive
The Body: returning the body to the spiritual fold to heal and overcome the fear of aging and death
The Soul: experiencing daily life as an adventure of meaning and mystery
Ask Your Guides
by Sonia Choquette
"This newly revised edition from world renowned teacher Sonia Choquette features brand-new stories, channeled meditations, and other tools and techniques. We're all spiritual beings, with a spiritual support system on the Other Side that oversees and helps guide our lives from the moment we're born to the moment we leave our physical bodies. Some people call them guardian angels, others call them spirit guides, or divine helpers. These spirits are everywhere, ready to assist us in our life's journey-whether we realize it or not. Best-selling author Sonia Choquette comes from a line of intuitives, and has communicated with spirit guides from a very young age. In fact, many children are able to see guides and angels, although they're usually referred to as "imaginary friends." When we learn how to reconnect with our guides-with a little bit of effort and cooperation-our lives naturally fall into a pattern of ease and flow during which we grow our souls, fulfill our life's purpose, and make our time on Earth endlessly entertaining" -- Publisher's Description
The Lightworker's Manifesto
by Karen Walrond
Many of us have strong convictions. We want to advocate for causes we care about--but which ones? We want to work for change--but will the emotional toll lead to burn out?
Leadership coach, lawyer, photographer, and activist Karen Walrond knows that when you care deeply about the world, light can seem hard to find. But when your activism grows out of your joy--and vice versa--you begin to see light everywhere.
In The Lightmaker's Manifesto, Walrond helps us name the skills, values, and actions that bring us joy; identify the causes that spark our empathy and concern; and then put it all together to change the world. Creative and practical exercises, including journaling, daily intention-setting, and mindful self-compassion, are complemented by lively conversations with activists and thought leaders such as Valarie Kaur, Brené Brown, Tarana Burke, and Zuri Adele. With stories from around the world and wisdom from those leading movements for change, Walrond beckons readers toward lives of integrity, advocacy, conviction, and joy.
By unearthing our passions and gifts, we learn how to joyfully advocate for justice, peace, and liberation. We learn how to become makers of light. -- Publisher's Description
Mirrors in the Earth
by Asia Suler
Reflections on Self-Healing from the Living World
In a series of 12 lyrical nature essays, herbalist, writer, and Earth intuitive Asia Suler illuminates the healing power of the living Earth--and gives us permission to nurture self-compassion and empathy as forces for personal and ecological healing.
In a time of unprecedented ecological devastation, it’s easy to feel hopeless and disconnected. It’s easier still to mask our inherent goodness--to imagine that our unique and precious gifts simply aren’t enough, or forget the power of our inborn empathy. For those of us who are highly sensitive, innately attuned to the workings and whispers of the natural world, it can be hard to embody the belief that we’re enough as we are--and that can heal the Earth.
Here, Suler reveals the opposite: our goodness, our empathy, our intuitive connections, and our capacity for self-compassion are more than personal traits or antidotes to despair: they are, in fact, our most potent vehicles for planetary transformation. And as we learn to more deeply nurture and accept ourselves, we unlock living, healing connections to Earth.
Combining poetic nature writing with exercises and reflection prompts at the end of each essay, Mirrors in the Earth coaxes us to come as we are: to discover and tend the inherent brilliance and medicine that lives in each of us. From the manatee-calm springs of wild Florida to the flower-dotted coves of the world’s most biodiverse mountains, Mirrors in the Earth is an invitation and encounter with the benevolence of the living world--and a nature therapy session for the soul.
The Enchanted Life
by Sharon Blackie
FROM THE INTRODUCTION –
I believe that enchantment is an attitude of mind which can be cultivated, a way of approaching the world which anyone can learn to adopt: the enchanted life is possible for everybody. In this book I’ll share with you my own experiences, and the experiences of several men and women from around the world, as they demonstrate how we can bring enchantment into every aspect of our daily lives. Because enchantment, by my definition, has nothing to do with fantasy, or escapism, or magical thinking: it is founded on a vivid sense of belongingness to a rich and many-layered world; a profound and whole-hearted participation in the adventure of life.
The enchanted life presented here is one which is intuitive, which embraces wonder, and fully engages the creative imagination – but it is also deeply embodied, ecological, grounded in place and community. It flourishes on work that has heart and meaning; it respects the instinctive knowledge and playfulness of children. It understands the myths we live by; thrives on poetry, song and dance. It loves the folkloric, the handcrafted, the practice of traditional skills. It respects wild things, recognises the wisdom of the crow, seeks out the medicine of plants. It rummages and roots on the wild edges, but comes home to an enchanted home and garden. It is engaged with the small, the local, the ethical; enchanted living is slow living.
Resources for Exploring Neurodivergence
Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn't Designed for You
by Jenara Nerenberg
The bestselling, paradigm-shifting study of neurodivergent women—those with ADHD, autism, synesthesia, high sensitivity, and sensory processing disorder—exploring why these traits are overlooked in women and how society benefits from allowing their unique strengths to flourish.
As a successful Harvard and Berkeley-educated writer, entrepreneur, and devoted mother, Jenara Nerenberg was shocked to discover that her “symptoms”--only ever labeled as anxiety-- were considered autistic and ADHD. Being a journalist, she dove into the research and uncovered neurodiversity—a framework that moves away from pathologizing “abnormal” versus “normal” brains and instead recognizes the vast diversity of our mental makeups. When it comes to women, sensory processing differences are often overlooked, masked, or mistaken for something else entirely. Nerenberg explores these topics in depth, delving into:
* Flawed systems that focus on diagnosing younger, male populations.
* How people assigned female at birth are conditioned to blend in and conform to gender expectations, and how women often don’t learn about their neurological differences until they are adults, if at all.
* The impact of millions living with undiagnosed or misdiagnosed neurodivergences, and how the misidentification leads to depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and shame.
* Practical solutions for neurodivergent people to thrive, not just survive.
Divergent Mind is the much-needed answer for women who have a deep sense that they are “different.” Sharing real stories from women with high sensitivity, ADHD, autism, misophonia, dyslexia, SPD, and more, Nerenberg explores how these brain variances present differently in women and dispels widely-held misconceptions (for example, it’s not that autistic people lack sensitivity and empathy, they have an overwhelming excess of it). Nerenberg offers us a path forward, describing changes in how we communicate, how we design our surroundings, and how we can better support divergent minds. When we allow our wide variety of brain makeups to flourish, we create a better tomorrow for us all.
Unmasking Autism
by Devon Price PhD
A deep dive into the spectrum of Autistic experience and the phenomenon of masked Autism, giving individuals the tools to safely uncover their true selves while broadening society’s narrow understanding of neurodiversity
“A remarkable work that will stand at the forefront of the neurodiversity movement.”—Barry M. Prizant, PhD, CCC-SLP, author of Uniquely Human: A Different Way of Seeing Autism
For every visibly Autistic person you meet, there are countless “masked” Autistic people who pass as neurotypical. Masking is a common coping mechanism in which Autistic people hide their identifiably Autistic traits in order to fit in with societal norms, adopting a superficial personality at the expense of their mental health. This can include suppressing harmless stims, papering over communication challenges by presenting as unassuming and mild-mannered, and forcing themselves into situations that cause severe anxiety, all so they aren’t seen as needy or “odd.”
In Unmasking Autism, Dr. Devon Price shares his personal experience with masking and blends history, social science research, prescriptions, and personal profiles to tell a story of neurodivergence that has thus far been dominated by those on the outside looking in. For Dr. Price and many others, Autism is a deep source of uniqueness and beauty. Unfortunately, living in a neurotypical world means it can also be a source of incredible alienation and pain. Most masked Autistic individuals struggle for decades before discovering who they truly are. They are also more likely to be marginalized in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, and other factors, which contributes to their suffering and invisibility. Dr. Price lays the groundwork for unmasking and offers exercises that encourage self-expression, including:
• Celebrating special interests
• Cultivating Autistic relationships
• Reframing Autistic stereotypes
• And rediscovering your values
It’s time to honor the needs, diversity, and unique strengths of Autistic people so that they no longer have to mask—and it’s time for greater public acceptance and accommodation of difference. In embracing neurodiversity, we can all reap the rewards of nonconformity and learn to live authentically, Autistic and neurotypical people alike.
Laziness Does Not Exist
by Devon Price PhD
From social psychologist Dr. Devon Price, a conversational, stirring call to “a better, more human way to live” (Cal Newport, New York Times bestselling author) that examines the “laziness lie”—which falsely tells us we are not working or learning hard enough.
Extra-curricular activities. Honors classes. 60-hour work weeks. Side hustles.
Like many Americans, Dr. Devon Price believed that productivity was the best way to measure self-worth. Price was an overachiever from the start, graduating from both college and graduate school early, but that success came at a cost. After Price was diagnosed with a severe case of anemia and heart complications from overexertion, they were forced to examine the darker side of all this productivity.
Laziness Does Not Exist explores the psychological underpinnings of the “laziness lie,” including its origins from the Puritans and how it has continued to proliferate as digital work tools have blurred the boundaries between work and life. Using in-depth research, Price explains that people today do far more work than nearly any other humans in history yet most of us often still feel we are not doing enough.
Filled with practical and accessible advice for overcoming society’s pressure to do more, and featuring interviews with researchers, consultants, and experiences from real people drowning in too much work, Laziness Does Not Exist “is the book we all need right now” (Caroline Dooner, author of The F*ck It Diet).
Resources for Social Justice & Spiritual Leadership
Me & White Supremacy
by Layla Saad
The New York Times and USA Today bestseller! This eye-opening book challenges you to do the essential work of unpacking your biases, and helps white people take action and dismantle the privilege within themselves so that you can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of color, and in turn, help other white people do better, too.
"Layla Saad is one of the most important and valuable teachers we have right now on the subject of white supremacy and racial injustice."—New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert
Based on the viral Instagram challenge that captivated participants worldwide, Me and White Supremacy takes readers on a 28-day journey, complete with journal prompts, to do the necessary and vital work that can ultimately lead to improving race relations.
Updated and expanded from the original workbook (downloaded by nearly 100,000 people), this critical text helps you take the work deeper by adding more historical and cultural contexts, sharing moving stories and anecdotes, and including expanded definitions, examples, and further resources, giving you the language to understand racism, and to dismantle your own biases, whether you are using the book on your own, with a book club, or looking to start family activism in your own home.
This book will walk you step-by-step through the work of examining:
Examining your own white privilege
What allyship really means
Anti-blackness, racial stereotypes, and cultural appropriation
Changing the way that you view and respond to race
How to continue the work to create social change
Awareness leads to action, and action leads to change. For readers of White Fragility, White Rage, So You Want To Talk About Race, The New Jim Crow, How to Be an Anti-Racist and more who are ready to closely examine their own beliefs and biases and do the work it will take to create social change.
"Layla Saad moves her readers from their heads into their hearts, and ultimately, into their practice. We won't end white supremacy through an intellectual understanding alone; we must put that understanding into action."—Robin DiAngelo, author of New York Times bestseller White Fragility
Returning Home to Our Bodies
Abigail Rose Clarke
For readers of adrienne maree brown, Staci K. Haines, and Robin Wall Kimmerer
A body-based healing model that interrogates what we’ve been wrongly taught about hierarchies of nature and the body—and pushes back against the white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism embedded in modern embodiment practices.
Pushing back against a consumerist, pleasure-centric somatics industry that privileges product over process, Abigail Rose Clarke reminds us that truly meaningful embodiment practice nurtures our relationships among self, nature, and community.
Combining the rigor of the scientific method with the poetry and lyricism of movement and somatic studies, Clarke’s somatic learning system—The Embodied Life Method—centers the body as a guide through today’s most seemingly intractable social and environmental challenges, reclaiming the body as a source of liberatory comfort in times of great uncertainty and yet, possibility.
With tools and practices to help us better understand and dismantle the many ways our bodies are weaponized to serve domination systems, topics covered include:
Harnessing the vitality of curiosity and experimentation
Using nature as a guide to possibility
Embracing the necessity of difference
Exposing the lie of universal isolation
Dismantling the fallacy of hierarchy
Uncovering the truth of endless capacity
Awe as a driving force for transformation
With methods honed over decades of inquiry, teaching, and practice,
Returning Home to Our Bodies provides a lucid, body-based model of healing and restoration—one that imagines a world beyond systems of domination, marginalization, and isolation to nurture embodied, whole-community liberation.
My Grandmother's Hands
by Resmaa Menakem
"My Grandmother's Hands will change the direction of the movement for racial justice."— Robin DiAngelo, New York Times bestselling author of White Fragility
In this groundbreaking book, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of trauma and body-centered psychology.
The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze, and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society. Menakem argues this destruction will continue until Americans learn to heal the generational anguish of white supremacy, which is deeply embedded in all our bodies. Our collective agony doesn't just affect African Americans. White Americans suffer their own secondary trauma as well. So do blue Americans—our police.
My Grandmother's Hands is a call to action for all of us to recognize that racism is not only about the head, but about the body, and introduces an alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond our entrenched racialized divide.
Paves the way for a new, body-centered understanding of white supremacy—how it is literally in our blood and our nervous system.
Offers a step-by-step healing process based on the latest neuroscience and somatic healing methods, in addition to incisive social commentary.
Resmaa Menakem, MSW, LICSW, is a therapist with decades of experience currently in private practice in Minneapolis, MN, specializing in trauma, body-centered psychotherapy, and violence prevention. Menakem has studied with bestselling authors Dr. David Schnarch (Passionate Marriage) and Dr. Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score). He also trained at Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute.
Emergent Strategies
by adrienne maree brown
In the tradition of Octavia Butler, here is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help to shape the futures we want. Change is constant. The world, our bodies, and our minds are in a constant state of flux. They are a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, Emergent Strategy teaches us to map and assess the swirling structures and to read them as they happen, all the better to shape that which ultimately shapes us, personally and politically. A resolutely materialist spirituality based equally on science and science fiction: a wild feminist and afro-futurist ride!
Pleasure Activist
by adrienne maree brown
How do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience? How can we awaken within ourselves desires that make it impossible to settle for anything less than a fulfilling life? Editor adrienne maree brown finds the answer in something she calls "Pleasure Activism," a politics of healing and happiness that explodes the dour myth that changing the world is just another form of work. Drawing on the black feminist tradition, including Audre Lourde's invitation to use the erotic as power and Toni Cade Bambara's exhortation that we make the revolution irresistible, the contributors to this volume take up the challenge to rethink the ground rules of activism. Writers including Cara Page of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation For Justice, Sonya Renee Taylor, founder of This Body Is Not an Apology, and author Alexis Pauline Gumbs cover a wide array of subjects—from sex work to climate change, from race and gender to sex and drugs—they create new narratives about how politics can feel good and how what feels good always has a complex politics of its own.
Building on the success of her popular Emergent Strategy, brown launches a new series of the same name with this volume, bringing readers books that explore experimental, expansive, and innovative ways to meet the challenges that face our world today. Books that find the opportunity in every crisis!
If We Burn:
The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution
by Vincent Bevins
The story of the recent uprisings that sought to change the world - and what comes next
From 2010 to 2020, more people participated in protests than at any other point in human history. Yet we are not living in more just and democratic societies as a result. Acclaimed journalist Vincent Bevins carried out hundreds of interviews around the world, guided by a single, puzzling question: How did so many mass protests lead to the opposite of what they asked for?
The result is a stirring work of history that connects events in a dozen countries and reveals that conventional wisdom on revolutionary change is gravely misguided. From the so-called Arab Spring to Gezi Park in Turkey, from Ukraine’s Euromaidan to student rebellions in Chile and Hong Kong, Bevins provides a blow-by-blow account of street movements and their consequences, recounted in gripping detail. In this groundbreaking study of an extraordinary chain of events, protesters and major actors look back on successes and defeats, offering urgent lessons for the future.
Inflamed::
Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice
by Rupa Marya, Raj Patel
Raj Patel, the New York Times bestselling author of The Value of Nothing, teams up with physician, activist, and co-founder of the Do No Harm Coalition Rupa Marya to reveal the links between health and structural injustices--and to offer a new deep medicine that can heal our bodies and our world.
The Covid pandemic and the shocking racial disparities in its impact. The surge in inflammatory illnesses such as gastrointestinal disorders and asthma. Mass uprisings around the world in response to systemic racism and violence. Rising numbers of climate refugees. Our bodies, societies, and planet are inflamed.
Boldly original, Inflamed takes us on a medical tour through the human body—our digestive, endocrine, circulatory, respiratory, reproductive, immune, and nervous systems. Unlike a traditional anatomy book, this groundbreaking work illuminates the hidden relationships between our biological systems and the profound injustices of our political and economic systems. Inflammation is connected to the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the diversity of the microbes living inside us, which regulate everything from our brain’s development to our immune system’s functioning. It’s connected to the number of traumatic events we experienced as children and to the traumas endured by our ancestors. It’s connected not only to access to health care but to the very models of health that physicians practice.
Raj Patel, the renowned political economist and New York Times bestselling author of The Value of Nothing, teams up with the physician Rupa Marya to offer a radical new cure: the deep medicine of decolonization. Decolonizing heals what has been divided, reestablishing our relationships with the Earth and one another. Combining the latest scientific research and scholarship on globalization with the stories of Marya’s work with patients in marginalized communities, activist passion, and the wisdom of Indigenous groups, Inflamed points the way toward a deep medicine that has the potential to heal not only our bodies, but the world.
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