Inprint - New Books of interest by Jeanne Spiro

Seeding Your Soul: Six Considerations for Spiritual Growth by Dianne R. Costanzo. (Bolchazy-Carducci, $14.95, Hardcover.)

Picture your spiritual landscape. Do you see an orchard rich with the fruits of the spirit or a garden sorely in need of work? Seeds we consciously plant can grow spiritual landscapes of astonishing beauty, depending on how well we nurture the seedlings and patiently prune the growing plants.

Dianne Costanzo is a spiritual gardener. Through life stories, scripture, brief meditations, and lovely photos, she urges us to plant seeds of trust, generosity, love, transformation, forgiveness, and healing. She includes exercises, suggested readings, and recommended films in each chapter to guide in the cultivation of these spiritual values in our lives. She emphasizes attainable, sustainable growth rather than perfection. Given care, a garden comes slowly and mysteriously into its own.

The Unmistakable Touch of Grace by Cheryl Richardson. (Free Press, $23.00, Hardcover.)

In her most personal work yet, Cheryl Richardson shows us how to identify and embrace the transformative power of grace in our lives. She shows us how grace leads us to the exact events, experiences, and people we need at exactly the right times. Interweaving her own story of awakening to grace with that of many of her clients, family, and friends, she helps us see and act on the signs, symbols, and messages in our own lives.

What is grace? Moments of grace might be as fleeting as a chance smile from a stranger, as impossible to miss as a phone call from a friend just when you need them, or as unexpected as being let go from a job only to later find the job of your dreams. Such moments are like messengers sent to remind us that a higher power is protecting us and directing our lives.

The Unmistakable Touch of Grace helps us to strengthen our relationships, find work we love, improve financial health, or just simplify busy lives. By trusting these instances of grace in action we will free ourselves up to live full, more satisfying, more connected lives.

Jun Q’Anil: One Who Walks the Way by Jessica Nagler. (Cypress House, $16.95, Paperback.)

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to leave your life—to walk away from your loved ones, your career and everything you own, to journey to Central America, not knowing anyone, not even knowing if you were going to return? Have you ever wondered what might exist beyond your everyday perception? Jessica Nagler explores these questions as she journeys through the rugged terrain of Central America on a quest to discover true meaning and purpose.

This quest takes her from the exotic shores of Costa Rica to deep within the Guatemalan jungle. Injuries, loneliness, and fear threaten to send her beyond her physical and emotional limits. Moving from one serendipitous encounter to another, eventually finding a Mayan shaman to guide her, she slips into another culture—and another world. In Jun Q’Anil, Nagler gives us a glimpse into what it really takes to redefine our lives in the quest to heal the body and soul.

The Miracle of the Breath: Mastering Fears, Healing Illness, and Experiencing the Divine by Andy Caponigro. (New World Library, $15.95, Paperback.)

We all breathe every moment of our lives, from birth to death, and yet we rarely think about what a precious gift breathing is. From an early age, we learn to hold our breath in fear or anger; not opening to emotions, but closing from them. Working with students and clients over the years, Andy Caponigro learned the link between these suppressed emotions and physical illness, especially the emotion of fear. When he taught them to use their breath properly, their chronic pain and disease healed rapidly, almost never to return. In easy-to-follow language, Caponigro explains the secret of breathwork’s power over your health, and its remarkable ability to influence and even reprogram the nervous system.

The Miracle of the Breath also examines the concept of breath as a spiritual life force. The force that dwells in our breath is not the same as the physical process of breathing or the air we take into our lungs. Our breath is merely the vehicle through which the life-force manifests in the physical world. The Hindus call this prana, the Chinese named it chi, Hebrews called it the breath of life. Drawing on methods of breath control developed by ancient masters in India, China, and Tibet, you can learn how to practice techniques to improve your emotional and spiritual health.

Living the 80/20 Way: Work Less, Worry Less, Succeed More, Enjoy More by Richard Koch. (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, $17.95, Paperback.)

For modern adults, life moves on the fast track moving from one commitment to the next with a single-minded obsession to get ahead. What remains elusive is real happiness. According to Richard Koch, happiness flows from doing less, not striving more. True achievement and success can and does come from doing less.

Living the 80/20 Way refers to a century old economic principle called the Pareto Principle: 80 percent of results comes from 20 percent of effort. It explains how to improve the key elements of your life and take back your time. The idea is to work out the few things that are really important, and the few methods that will give you what you really want, and to act on them, while ignoring the mass of trivia that normally engulfs your life. It sounds simple, and it is. By focusing your time on the things that are most important, life acquires a meaning beyond the everyday rat race of work and responsiblilty.

The Secret Spiritual World of Children by Tobin Hart, Ph.D. (Inner Ocean Publishing, $16.95, Paperback.)

Children have remarkable spiritual lives full of wonder, wisdom, and pure joy. It is a gift they give to us, a reminder of our greater possibilities. This deep connection to the spiritual realm can include divine encounters and visions of ethereal worlds beyond our own. But such spiritual experiences are often dismissed, or worse, labeled as pathology by adults with no map for understanding them. This signal can close down a child and stunt spiritual growth in all areas.

Psychotherapist Tobin Hart, urged on by his own child’s angel experience, spent five years interviewing children, parents, and adults. What he discovered is that these experiences are pervasive and truly define children’s extraordinary spiritual capacity. In the Secret Spiritual World of Children, he explains how to recognize and nurture this deep connection, and help our children develop into spiritually whole human beings. It may also help adults acknowledge their own childhood spiritual experiences.

The Sufi Book of Life: 99 Pathways of the Heart for the Modern Dervish by Neil Douglas-Klotz. (Penquin Compass, $15.00, Paperback.)

Part meditation book, part oracle, and part collection of Sufi lore, poetry, and stories, The Sufi Book of Life offers a fresh interpretation of the fundamental spiritual practice found in all ancient and modern Sufi Schools—the meditations on the 99 Qualities of Unity.

Unlike most books on Sufism, which are primarily collections of translated Sufi texts, this accessible guide is a handbook that explains how to apply Sufi principles to modern life. Inspirational commentary connects each Quality with contemporary concerns such as love, work, and success. It includes timeless wisdom from Sufi masters, both ancient and modern, such as Rumi, Hafiz, Shabistari, Rabia, Inayat Khan, Idries Shah, Irina Tweedie, Bowa Muhaiyadden, and more. This is a lively guide to the dervish way of experiencing life in the twenty-first century.