Dieting is the problem. A society that rejects anyone whose body shape or size doesn’t match an impossible ideal is the problem. A medical establishment that equates "thin" with "healthy" is the problem. Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight by Linda Bacon, PhD, presents a well-researched, healthy-living manual that debunks the weight myths and translates the latest science into practical advice to help readers forever end their battle with weight.

    Though these old, conditioned attempts to control our life may offer fleeting relief, ultimately they leave us feeling isolated and mired in pain.   There is another way. Beneath the turbulence of our thoughts and emotions exists a profound stillness, a silent awareness capable of limitless love. Tara Brach, author of the award-winning Radical Acceptance, calls this awareness our true refuge, because it is available to every one of us, at any moment, no exceptions. In this book, Brach offers a practical guide to finding our inner sanctuary of peace and wisdom in the midst of difficulty.   Based on a fresh interpretation of the three classic Buddhist gateways to freedom—truth, love, and awareness—True Refuge shows us the way not just to heal our suffering, but also to cultivate our capacity for genuine happiness. Through spiritual teachings, guided meditations, and inspirational stories of people who discovered loving presence during times of great struggle, Brach invites us to connect more deeply with our own inner life, one another, and the world around us. True Refuge is essential reading for anyone encountering hardship or crisis, anyone dedicated to a path of spiritual awakening. The book reminds us of our own innate intelligence and goodness, making possible an enduring trust in ourselves and our lives. We realize that what we seek is within us, and regardless of circumstances, “there is always a way to take refuge in a healing and liberating presence.”Advance praise for True Refuge   “Tara Brach writes from the heart to the heart. With candor and calmness, she shares her own and others’ struggles to overcome our deep and constant human dilemmas. Whenever I read Brach, I feel more peaceful and hopeful. I trust myself and the universe more. I feel more connected and grounded in what the Lakota Sioux call Wakan Tanka, The Great Mystery. True Refuge is itself a refuge and I thank the author for it.”—Mary Pipher, Ph.D., New York Times bestselling author of The Green Boat and Reviving Ophelia   “There is something very special about this exquisitely written book—its clarity, beauty, simplicity, and humanity practically sing to you. Inspiring and uplifting to read, it also has eminently practical, implementable, step-by-step guidance to practice and live by. And the fifteen brief, powerful guided meditations offer an easy, gentle entry toward inner peace and wisdom. While turning the pages, I thought of a half dozen people who could really use this book as a friendly, loving reference point—myself included!”—Belleruth Naparstek, author of Invisible Heroes and creator of the Health Journeys guided imagery audio series

    This book helps us recognize shame for what it is, and affirm our basic humanity, humility, autonomy, and competence.As we identify shame and use recovery skills to work through it, Letting Go of Shame: Understanding How Shame Affects Your Life helps to explain the emotion of shame and its impact on our self-image and relationships. The authors offer us a way that we can personalize a plan of action to help build our self-esteem, and they suggest exercises to help us identify our feelings of shame.

    Yet what happens if we continue to be plagued with spiritual and emotional problems, and the intimacy we long for with Christ seems elusive?What we need, says inner healing expert Charles H. Kraft, is deep-level healing: healing for our whole person--spirit, body, mind, emotions and will. Using a simple, proven process, refined through 25 years of successful ministry, Kraft leads readers step by step through deep-level healing.Once you experience true freedom, you will find the intimacy with Jesus that you desire, and you'll be equipped to help others find this freedom as well.

    In eleven concise chapters, hooks explains how our everyday notions of what it means to give and receive love often fail us, and how these ideals are established in early childhood. She offers a rethinking of self-love (without narcissism) that will bring peace and compassion to our personal and professional lives, and asserts the place of love to end struggles between individuals, in communities, and among societies. Moving from the cultural to the intimate, hooks notes the ties between love and loss and challenges the prevailing notion that romantic love is the most important love of all.Visionary and original, hooks shows how love heals the wounds we bear as individuals and as a nation, for it is the cornerstone of compassion and forgiveness and holds the power to overcome shame.For readers who have found ongoing delight and wisdom in bell hooks's life and work, and for those who are just now discovering her, All About Love is essential reading and a brilliant book that will change how we think about love, our culture-and one another.

    This book teaches you to look beyond what you and your partner fight about, and discover the core issues that undermine your relationship.In the midst of a disagreement, many couples ask themselves, “What are we really fighting about?” Sound familiar? As it turns out, breakups and divorce don’t happen because couples fight, they happen because of how couples fight. In this much-needed book, Judith and Bob Wright—two married counselors and coaches with over thirty years of experience helping couples learn how to fight well—present their tried-and-true methods for exploring the emotions that underlie many relationship fights.In this unique guide, you’ll learn how to use disagreements as an opportunity to deepen your understanding of your partner, bring more intimacy to the relationship, strengthen your bond, and really learn from the conflicts and tensions that occur between you. You’ll also learn how to navigate the fifteen most common fights couples have, including “the blame game,” “dueling over dollars,” “If you really loved me, you’d…,” “told-you-so’s,” and more.If you’re ready to start fighting for your love, rather than against it, this book will show you how.

    Afterwards, people came up individually and told me how much what I'd shared meant to them. This book is based on the truth I spoke about.It's something I learned from within myself, something I believed saved me. And more than that, the way I set about to do it. This is a collection of thoughts on what I learned, what worked, what didn't. Where I succeed and importantly, where I fail daily.The truth is to love yourself with the same intensity you would use to pull yourself up if you were hanging off a cliff with your fingers. As if your life depended upon it. Once you get going, it's not hard to do. Just takes commitment and I'll share how I did it. It's been transformative for me. I know it will be transformative for you as well.

    It is, in other words, the key to reshaping our very lives.”―Oprah WinfreyThis book is going to change the way you see your life.Have you ever wondered "Why did I do that?" or "Why can't I just control my behavior?" Others may judge our reactions and think, "What's wrong with that person?" When questioning our emotions, it's easy to place the blame on ourselves; holding ourselves and those around us to an impossible standard. It's time we started asking a different question.Through deeply personal conversations, Oprah Winfrey and renowned brain and trauma expert Dr. Bruce Perry offer a groundbreaking and profound shift from asking “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?” Our earliest experiences shape our lives far down the road, and What Happened to You? provides powerful scientific and emotional insights into the behavioral patterns so many of us struggle to understand.Here, Winfrey shares stories from her own past, understanding through experience the vulnerability that comes from facing trauma and adversity at a young age. Joining forces with Dr. Perry, one of the world’s leading experts on childhood and brain development, Winfrey and Dr. Perry marry the power of storytelling with science to better understand and overcome the effects of our pasts.In conversation throughout the book, the two focus on understanding people, behavior, and ourselves. It’s a subtle but profound shift in our approach to trauma, and it’s one that allows us to understand our pasts in order to clear a path to our future―opening the door to resilience and healing in a proven, powerful way.

    Taking a radical departure from traditional views of God, Western or Eastern, author Kevin Griffin neither accepts Christian beliefs in a Supreme Being nor Buddhist non-theism, but rather forges a refreshing, sensible, and accessible Middle Way. Griffin shows how the Dharma, the teachings of the Buddha, can be understood as a Higher Power. Karma, mindfulness, impermanence, and the Eightfold Path itself are revealed as powerful forces that can be accessed through meditation and inquiry.Drawing from his own experiences with substance abuse, rehabilitation, and recovery, Griffin looks at the various ways that meditation and spiritual practices helped deepen his experience of sobriety. His personal story of addiction is not only raw, honest and engrossing, but guides readers to an inquiry of their own spirituality. In doing so, he poses profound questions, including:·         How can I understand God from a Buddhist perspective?·         How can I “turn my will and my life over” as a Buddhist?·         How can this idea of God “remove my shortcomings”?·         How do I learn this God’s “will”?

    . . again.Getting angry is easy. Daily irritations, frustrations, and pain poke at us. Feelings of disappointment, hurt, rejection, and embarrassment prod in us. And once the unwieldy cluster of emotions of anger are aroused, our thoughts and actions can feel out of control and impossible to manage.Dr. Gary Chapman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The 5 Love Languages®, offers helpful-and sometimes surprising-insights into why you get angry and what you can do about it. Using real-life stories and practical principles, Chapman explains how you can channel anger in ways that are healthy and productive. You'll also be equipped to help those you love (including your children) deal with their own anger, as well as effectively deal with those long-simmering feelings of anger toward people in your past.Includes an assessment that will help you discover your personal propensity toward handling anger and how to effectively tame it when it arises.

    A beach body by summer. A trip to Disneyland around the corner. A promotion on the horizon. Everyone wants to believe that they are headed toward good, better, best. But what happens when the life you hoped for is put on hold indefinitely?Kate Bowler believed that life was a series of unlimited choices, until she discovered, at age 35, that her body was wracked with cancer. In No Cure for Being Human, she searches for a way forward as she mines the wisdom (and absurdity) of today's "best life now" advice industry, which insists on exhausting positivity and on trying to convince us that we can out-eat, out-learn, and out-perform our humanness. We are, she finds, as fragile as the day we were born.With dry wit and unflinching honesty, Kate Bowler grapples with her diagnosis, her ambition, and her faith as she tries to come to terms with her limitations in a culture that says anything is possible. She finds that we need one another if we're going to tell the truth: Life is beautiful and terrible, full of hope and despair and everything in between--and there's no cure for being human.

    Issues of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, and ability often complicate this question for youth, affecting their schoolwork and their relationships with teachers, administrators, and peers.Adolescents at School gives educators, administrators, community leaders, counselors, social workers, health-care professionals, and parents a glimpse into the complex "identities" adolescents negotiate as they manage the challenges of school. The book contains the perspectives of teachers, researchers, and administrators and adolescents themselves who explore what it means to be a middle or high school student in the United States today. Practical and jargon-free, the book suggests ways to foster the success of every student in our schools and classrooms.

    Only by getting past the artificial division between mind and body can personal, holistic healing become real. In our fast-paced and ever-changing world, the burden of healing rests on the individual making the right lifestyle choices every day. Chopra and Tanzi want to guide us to make the best decisions possible and they offer a cutting-edge, Seven-Day Action Plan which allows the reader free choice to develop a personalized path to self-healing.Besides this unique feature, The Healing Self prioritizes two factors--stress and inflammation--that are emerging as crucial to lifelong health and well-being. A host of chronic disorders like hypertension, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and much more, are known to takes years and sometimes decades to develop before the first symptoms appear. The medical system isn't set up to attend to chronic low-grade inflammation or the everyday stresses that take their toll over a lifetime. Therefore, learning the secrets of self-healing is mandatory; otherwise, each of us is gambling with our very future.Chopra's inspiring prose and Tanzi's experience as the world's leading researcher in brain health and Alzheimer's disease make for a unique combination of knowledge and wisdom. The Healing Self is a high point in a partnership that has benefitted millions of people to date. It is destined to be a landmark book in the growing movement of self-care and lifelong wellness.

    As children, these powerful messages helped us to know that we were worthwhile, that it was all right to want food and to be touched, and that our very existence was a precious gift. The messages that we received from our parents helped us to form decisions that determined the course of our lives. If we were raised with consistent, nurturing parents, we conclude that life is meaningful and that people are to be trusted. If we were raised with parents who were addictively or compulsively ill, we determine that life is threatening and chaotic--that we are not deserving of joy. These are the crucial decisions that impact our lives long after we have forgotten them. Unfortunately, childhood judgments don't disappear. They remain as dynamic forces that contaminate our adulthood. When childhood needs are not taken care of because of abuse or abandonment, we spend our lives viewing the world through the distorted perception of a needy infant or an angry adolescent. The more we push these child parts away, the more control they have over us. This collection of daily meditations is dedicated to those adults who are ready to heal their childhood wounds. It is through this courageous effort that we will move from a life of pain into recovery.

    It provides examples of some of the forms self-hate takes, including taking blame but not credit, holding grudges, and trying to be perfect, and explores the many facets of self-hate, including its role in addiction, the battering cycle, and the illusion of control. After addressing these factors, it illustrates how a meditation practice can be developed and practiced in efforts to free oneself from self-hating beliefs.