Spilling Open: The Art of Becoming Yourself by Sabrina Ward Harrison

Sabrina Ward Harrison’s first book has the ability to conjure the artist in us all to poke its head out and just try. It is a book that lingers in one’s thoughts long after reading it, a portal into soulful artistic creation. Sabrina takes us on a walk over rocks, revealing her underbelly of open expression. One comes away from reading Spilling Open seeing subtle reflections of beauty abundant around us all the time but often unseen if not for the artist’s eye.

Sabrina’s paintings, photos and words converge with uninhibited emotion and meet us at a confluence of fluid inspiration. In a world largely governed by right angles or rational thought, Spilling Open cries out as colorful, curvaceous and dangerously honest. Sit a copy on your coffee table just to see who picks it up and how long they linger. Spilling Open is the perfect catalyst for suspending the moment and forcing honesty from it.

Villard, 1999

Dreaming While Awake: Techniques for 24 Hour Lucid Dreaming by Arnold Mindell, Ph D

Imagine seeing the subtle fluctuations of energy beneath our everyday reality as they ebb and flow into now. Dreaming While Awake is a practical guidebook into other realms. Arnold Mindell has diverse interests beyond practising Jungian psychotherapy and group process work; in his most recent book he blends his insights spanning the fields of psychology, quantum physics, Taoism, Zen, shamanism and the Australian Aboriginal concept of The Dreaming.

In Dreaming While Awake Mindell is able to reveal the broad scope of his thought much like a synthesis of his earlier books, integrating archetypal Aboriginal outlooks into a Western world view. Despite the abstract nature of the material covered in Mindell’s work, his writing is easily comprehensible for the lay person. Mindell manages to bring The Dreaming universe down to earth.

Dreaming While Awake clarifies the process of dreaming, outlining a progression of exercises and activities to enable the reader to wake to the dreaming beneath reality. Mindell has transferred his experiences as a therapist, exploring dream interpretation and expanded this awareness to the relationship between our dreaming mind and our waking reality.

Hampton Roads Publishing, 2000

The Tibetan Art of Living: Wise Body, Wise Mind, Wise Life by Christopher Hansard

This book is a comprehensive collection of steps for the journey to well being. As a Westerner trained in the ancient art of Tibetan medicine, Hansard bridges diametrical worldviews into a still point of calm. As though his pen was dipped in humility, Hansard’s words tell the remarkable story of his own life, having been identified astrologically by a Bon shaman at four years old in his native New Zealand and his training as a Tibetan doctor from then on.

The book is well paced between elegant storytelling, Tibetan principles of health and practical exercises to awaken an enlightened self. Compassion oozes out of the spaces between words and life energy actively flows simply by reading the book.

The meditation and visualization exercises help to make space for a deep soulful emergence. Like most other alternative forms of healing and well-being, the Tibetan approach begins with the premise that the body, mind, and spirit can all heal themselves, that it is our own personal blocks that bar us from enjoying perfect health. What ever your ailment, illness, or imbalance, the Tibetan Art of Living may improve your life.

Hansard writes with elegant ease a progression toward inner peace. One does not need to analyze the Tibetan world view to benefit from it. Understanding follows practice. Hansard writes, "Your breath is the only thing that you own," my teacher told me. Through these meditations you may see that it is the only thing that you need.

Hodder & Stoughton, 2001

Book reviewer and author Lee White lives near Pemberton, BC. His website is www.worldbliss.com