In times past, it was not uncommon for a seeker of knowledge to request the advice of an Elder: someone skilled in the ability to commune with the energies of nature. Elders were seen as direct links between the people and Spirit, with their words held in high esteem. When qeustions were raised, the Elder would take up a small pouch, perhaps containing claws, teeth, whiskers, and bones of sacred animals which, after a quick shake would be upended, the contents permitted to spill haphazardly onto the ground. Depending on where and how they fell, and the patterns they formed, the Elder would glean information relevant to the seeker by interpreting the messages offered by the animals represented by the claws and teeth.

Developed with the corresponding energies of the four directions in mind, the uniquely Australian Animal Dreaming Oracle embraces this ancient concept in a manner more befitting our times. Instead of the traditional claws and bones, it presents the animal energies to the people as beautifully illustrated portraits, with each animal's Dreaming clearly interpreted in the accompanying guidebook, allowing you to give and receive accurate and inspirational readings for yourself and others.

Qigong is an ancient Chinese system of movements and breathing exercises that promotes health, relaxation, and mental clarity; improves stamina; and can even treat specific health issues. It can be learned and practiced easily by people of any age, and can be extremely effective even if practiced for only a few minutes a day. Acupuncturist and longtime qigong practitioner Deborah Davis has created this user-friendly guide specifically for women forty and older. She shows that qigong practice can help women dramatically boost their energy level, promote well-being, and treat common health issues, and she offers do-it-yourself exercises that are safe and accessible.

Davis's book includes three parts:

• Part 1 explains the traditional Chinese approach to health and the various components of qigong practice, including exercises, breathing techniques, massage, and vocalizations.
• Part 2 gives general health routines for women of age categories 39-49, 50-64, and 65 and over.
• Part 3 gives routines for dealing with specific health issues, including insomnia, hypertension and heart disease, menopause, sexual vitality, breast health, breast cancer, osteoporosis, and depression, among others.

One of Graham Greene's characters famously said, "I suffer, therefore I am," suggesting that pain is an inescapable, and perhaps incurable, part of the human condition. But must this be so? Ellen Macfarland argues otherwise in The Sacred Path Beyond Trauma. Through the use of mythology, stories from film and fiction, real-life examples, and her personal history, Macfarland shows that healing trauma is indeed possible, using rich resources near at hand, in nature. The book explores major symbols of healing nature that can provide an impetus for personal transformation. One of the case studies profiles Monty Roberts, a well-known horse trainer who overcame significant childhood abuse by working with horses and eventually fostering some forty children alongside his own biological family. The key, says Macfarland, is using these and other natural symbols such as yin yang to balance the tension between trauma and numinosity (sacredness, transcendence), resulting in the creation of a new way of being in the world. Understanding this and the book's other nature-based symbols can turn the distressed mind into a fertile field of spiritual awareness, empowerment, and lifelong growth.

"Dr. Macfarland elegantly weaves the reciprocity between the individual and nature. This dance between the individual and nature is the delicate tao that is essential to the very survival of the human soul and the fragile planet that we inhabit." Ashok Bedi, MD, Jungian analyst and author of Path to the Soul and Awaken the Slumbering Goddess

Zen teacher Joan Halifax's Project on Being with Dying has been helping both the dying and their caregivers to face death with courage and compassion since 1994, but her work with the contemplative approach to the dying process goes back much further than that. Here, Joan offers the fruits of her three decades of work with the dying, providing comfort, inspiration, and practical skills for all those who are in the process of dying or who are charged with a dying person's care.

Her teaching, based on Buddhist principles, emphasizes that we have the ability to open up to and rely on our inner strength, and we can help others who are suffering to do the same. She notes that all of us will ultimately have to deal with the loss of parents and loved ones and that most of us are largely unprepared emotionally for their deaths. She says that the process of dying is a rite of passage, and can be viewed as natural and not something to be denied.

Joan offers stories from her personal experience as well as guided exercises and contemplations to help readers meditate on death without fear, develop a commitment to helping others, and transform suffering and resistance into courage. She says, "Why wait until we are actually dying to explore what it may mean to die with awareness?"

The keys to self-knowledge and deep contentment are right here before us in this very moment if we can simply learn to live with open awareness. In The Unfolding Now, A. H. Almaas presents a marvelously effective practice for developing the transformative quality of presence. Through a particular method of self-observation and contemplative exploration that he calls inquiry, we learn to live in the relaxed condition of simply "being ourselves," without interference from feelings of inadequacy, drivenness toward goals, struggling to figure things out, and rejecting experiences we don't want. Almaas explores the many obstacles that keep us from being present including defensiveness, ignorance, desire, aggression, and self-hatred and shows us how to welcome with curiosity and compassion whatever we are experiencing.

"The Diamond Approach is a superb combination of some of the best of modern Western psychology with ancient (and spiritual) wisdom. I recommend the Diamond Approach as probably the most balanced of the widely available spiritual psychologies/therapies." ....Ken Wilber

One of the most important unsolved problems of current physics, astronomy, and cosmology is the nature of dark matter and dark energy. These two invisible components of the universe seem to control the behavior of galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and the accelerating expansion of the universe, but we do not know what they are. Dark Matters offers a unified explanation for dark matter and dark energy, and, in doing so, formulates a new theory of ordinary matter.

Central to this new theory is the concept of electric lines of force, encased in something called insulating space, which means we are generally not aware of them, just as we are not aware of the currents passing through insulated cables.

The essential feature of Dark Matters that sets it apart from similar titles is that it sees the whole universe as a tapestry. The background "material" of this tapestry is the space-time framework of Einstein's theories of relativity. The threads of the tapestry are magnetic and electric lines of force. The magnetic lines of force originate from planets and stars; many exist as independent threads that weave their way in the vast spaces that separate the stars of galaxies.

Sure to be discussed and debated in international scientific professional societies, Dark Matters is a fascinating, essential, and accessible book for anyone interested in exploring the frontiers of physics and cosmology.

Are you wrestling with your demons? Struggling with depression, anxiety, illness, an eating disorder, a difficult relationship, fear, self-hatred, addiction, or anger? Renowned American Buddhist leader Tsultrim Allione explains that the harder we fight our demons, the stronger they become. If we want to liberate ourselves from the fight once and for all, we must reverse our approach and nuture our demons.

In Feeding Your Demons, Allione adapts the revolutionary wisdom of Tibet's greatest female spiritual master for the first time, providing a powerful method for coping with the inner enemies that undermine your best intentions. Based on an extrordinarily simple yet effective five-step practice, Feeding Your Demons outlines a strategy for transforming negative emotions, relationships, fears, illness, and self-defeating patterns. By recognizing your demons, giving them form, and then feeding them, you can free yourself from the battle. And the paradigm shift from fighting to feeding demons can apply not only to your personal challenges but also to the challenges of the world at large.

Enriched with detailed examples to show how others have transformed their demons, Feeding Your Demons will give you remarkable new insight into the forces that threaten to defeat you, along with the tools to achieve inner peace.

• A mother receives an undeniable message of love from her deceased son
• A series of meaningful coincidences appear to save a life
• A conversation overheard between strangers delivers a life-altering personal message to a bystander
• A dream warns a woman of a wounded animal miles away
• A reading of oracle cards prepares a daughter for an impending tragedy

Extraordinary? Unusual? It's not! Messages from Spirit are received every day by ordinary people in a multitude of ways. We are made of, and surrounded by, an all-knowing Divine field of intelligence that is just waiting to guide us and give us help whenever we ask for it. We just need to learn how to enter the conversation and understand the dialogue. So how do we ask? How do we receive and interpret the answers?

By exploring ancient methods in a modern context of connecting to the Divine, renowned intuitive counselor and best-selling author Colette Baron-Reid shows you magical, fun, and practical methods that will enable you to delve into your own dialogue with Spirit. She'll take you on a mysterious and enlightening journey that will shake up your perspective, stir your curiosity, and prepare you for a Divine conversation that will forever change your understanding of the world around you.

Biogenealogy is a comprehensive new vision of health that takes the mind-body connection one step further by identifying and consciously addressing the emotional shocks that create physical disorders. Each symptom of an illness precisely indicates its emotional origin. Thus, far from being an enemy, the physical symptom is actually a valuable ally that provides the key to the cure of the physical disease as well as resolution of the emotional imbalance that created it.

Christian Fleche, the leading researcher and practitioner in the field of biogenealogy, explains that the "activation of illness" is the body's reaction to unresolved events that are frozen in time. These unresolved traumas affect the body on the cellular level and manifest in minor as well as more serious chronic conditions. In The Biogenealogy Sourcebook, Fleche systematically chronicles all the major organs of the body and specifies the types of emotional conflicts that lead to illness in those areas. For example, he explains that conflicts of separation are evidenced in diseases of the skin; a reduction of self-worth or deep anguish will manifest in the lymph nodes. He also shows that unresolved emotional issues can also be passed down to future generations if left untreated.

Intended for therapists, researchers, and any person who wants to take his or her health in hand, this book is an important guide to understanding and decoding the causes and not just the effects of illness..

This information-packed little book, which presents the teachings of the nonphysical entity Abraham, will help you learn how to manifest your desires so that you're living the joyous and fulfilling life you deserve.

Each day, you'll come to understand how your relationships, health issues, finances, career concerns, and more are influenced by the Universal laws that govern your time-space reality and you'll discover powerful processes that will help you go with the positive flow of life.

So start making your dreams a reality . . . right now!

Each of us inhabits an energy body whose interactions are the principal determinant of all we see, feel, think, or otherwise perceive. Even as modern science is establishing the uncertainty of physical matter, it is asserting the reality of our existence as interconnecting quantum energy fields. For over 5,000 years, shamans of the Toltec tradition have studied and worked with the energy body, learning to recognize and understand its structure and perceptual capacities as well as mapping it as an objective, measurable part of our anatomy. In Awakening the Energy Body, Kenneth Smith's thorough grounding in the Toltec tradition allows him to bring forth an instructive overview for non-Toltec adherents of the latent possibilities available to the energy body and how to bring awareness and objective form to it.

Using evidence from the emerging scientific discipline of bioenergetics, which studies the flow and exchange of energy, Smith shows that conscious awareness not only creates our reality but enhances the functionality of the human energy body, allowing it to navigate the myriad realities of our world. He offers a specific set of strategies to manage the energy body in ways that are beneficial to both material existence and spiritual development. He also discusses the ethical considerations of developing consciousness and how one can quicken personal evolution in order to live a full and complete life, while revealing where the worlds of ancient tradition and modern science meet.

"I've put together this book because I know without any doubt that inspiration can be cultivated and be a driving force throughout life, rather than showing up every now and then and just as mysteriously disappearing, seemingly independent of our desires.

"Inspiration is for everyone! It isn't reserved for high-profile creative geniuses in the arts and sciences - it's inherent in our Divine birthright.

"As you read each of the entries within these pages, you'll find specific suggestions for living in-Spirit. I'm offering you a blueprint through the world of inspiration - your ultimate calling."

What if you could tell, just by looking at others, how they tend to think, feel, and behave? What if your partner's face revealed the best way to resolve any conflicts between you? And what if you could discover in your own face the wisdom that you need in order to be your true self?

Based on the same ancient foundation as acupuncture and Chinese medicine, face reading has been in the "research and development" phase for over 3,000 years. When translated to make it meaningful for our Western lives, it's a powerful source of wisdom that we can all access.

Chinese face reading shows you how to live your life in alignment with your own natural flow, find the life path that gives you joy, attract relationships that nurture you, and most of all, enable you to feel compassion for yourself and others. This book will forever change how you see yourself . . . and all the people in your life!

Bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver returns with her first nonfiction narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.

"As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begin the adventure of realigning our lives with our food chain.

"Naturally, our first stop was to buy junk food and fossil fuel. . . ."

Hang on for the ride: With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that's better for the neighborhood and also better on the table. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet.

"This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air."

The Dalai Lama often says, "My religion is kindness". His translator, Jeffrey Hopkins, writes that by learning to live from a more compassionate viewpoint, we can create a better life not only for ourselves but for everyone. In this book Hopkins uses Buddhist meditations, visualizations, and personal reflections to guide us in developing an awareness of the capacity for love inside us and learning to project that love into the world around us.

Delivering a potent message with the power to change our relationships and improve the quality of our lives, A Truthful Heart is an ideal book for an age in which our dealings with each other seem increasingly impersonal - and even violent and aggressive. Anyone seeking release from anger and hurt, or simply wanting to increase the love and caring among us, will welcome this timely vision for humanity.

God Is Not Dead is a fascinating guided tour of quantum physics, consciousness, and the existence and experience of God. University of Oregon physics professor Amit Goswami shows readers that God's existence can be found in clues that the science of quantum physics reveals.

Goswami helps readers to break through their materialistic conditioning, viewing reality as defined by Newtonian physics, to become free through a quantum understanding and experience of consciousness and God. In fact, God Is Not Dead argues for a quantum activism, leading a balanced life that incorporates both the quantum and material worlds and an experience of consciousness.

God Is Not Dead will change how readers think and experience the nature of reality, the existence of souls, the power of dreams, the universality of love, the possibility of ESP, and the very mind of God.

This new book from Zen teacher, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and critical favorite Barry Magid inspires us - in wryly gentle prose - to outgrow the impossible pursuit of happiness, and instead make peace with the perfection of the way things are. Including ourselves! Magid invites readers to consider the notion that our certainty that we are broken may be turning our "pursuit of happiness" into a source of yet more suffering. He takes an unusual look at our "secret practices" (what we're REALLY doing, when we say "practicing") and "curative fantasies," wherein we have ideals of what spiritual practices will "do" for us, "cure" us. In doing so, he helps us look squarely at such pitfalls of spiritual practice so that we can avoid them. Along the way, Magid lays out a rich roadmap of a new "psychological-minded Zen," which may be among the most important spiritual developments of the present-day.

In this breakthrough guide, internationally acclaimed therapist Beverly Engel explains that women today simply cannot afford to be Nice Girls, since "nice girls" are much more likely to be victimized - emotionally, physically, and sexually - than those who are not so nice. She helps you determine whether the syndrome is keeping you in an abusive relationship or in manipulative situations, and she identifies the seven different types of Nice Girls. She also discusses the specific conditions and experiences that contribute to the development of each type and helps you decide which type might apply to you.

Engel helps you understand the signals that your Nice Girl behavior sends to potential abusers. Through prescriptive action steps, she shows you how to confront the beliefs and behaviors that keep you stuck in your Nice Girl act and how to replace them with healthier, more empowering ones.

Filled with wise advice, powerful exercises, and practical prescriptions, The Nice Girl Syndrome will show you step by step how to be your own strong woman.

We're living in the midst of a scientific revolution that's captured the general public's attention and imagination. The aim of this new revolution is to develop a "theory of everything" - a set of laws of physics that will explain all that can be explained, ranging from the tiniest subatomic particle to the universe as a whole. Here, readers will learn the ideas behind the theories, and their effects upon our world, our civilization, and ourselves.

A practicing psychiatrist specializing in bipolar disorder for nearly twenty years, Dr. Burgess has helped countless children and teens navigate the minefield of mania and depression and lead successful, happy lives. Drawing on the real questions asked by patients and parents and families of affected children, The Bipolar Handbook for Children, Teens, and Families tackles every area of the disorder: causes; medical treatment and psychotherapy; strategies for creating a healthy lifestyle; and preventing, coping with, and treating bipolar episodes. More than five hundred questions and answers address:

• how to choose the right doctor or specialist for your child
• what treatment and medication protocols are best
• how to reduce stress to prevent manic and depressive episodes

Special chapters on practical strategies for academic success, building healthy relationships, issues that specifically affect teens versus smaller children, and coping techniques for families and friends further explore the impact of the disorder on daily life. The Bipolar Handbook for Children, Teens, and Families also includes diagnostic criteria from the American Psychiatric Association and the National Institute of Mental Health, making this a versatile guide - perfect for both quick reference and in-depth study.

For the past 10 years, physicists have been banging their heads against the wall, trying to understand one of the greatest new mysteries of the cosmos: Why is the universe pulling itself apart at an ever-increasing rate? Is this a mysterious new force - dark energy - or must we alter our most fundamental theories of time and space?

For 30 years, we have been struggling to understand the nature of dark matter - the mysterious invisible matter that outweighs "normal" matter 10 to one and fills the "empty" spaces in our galaxies.

For 50 years, we have grappled with the seditious theory of gravity, which has failed to fall in line with all other known forces.

But the biggest mystery of all time - one that dates back to man's earliest writings - is our universe, and physicists are the detectives trying to piece together disparate clues that continually turn our view of the cosmos upside down.

This leading edge work by Esther and Jerry Hicks, who present the teachings of the non-physical consciousness Abraham, explains that the two subjects most chronically affected by the powerful law of attraction are financial and physical well-being. This book will shine a spotlight on each of the most significant aspects of your life experience and then guide you to the conscious creative control of every aspect of your life, and also goes right to the heart of what most of you are probably troubled by: money and physical health. Not having enough money or not having good health puts you in the perfect position for creating more of that which you do not have. This book has been written to deliberately align you with the most powerful law in the universe - the law of attraction - so that you can make it work specifically for you.

The book comes with a free CD (excerpted from a live Abraham-Hicks workshop) that features the art of allowing your physical and financial well-being to come through.

This guide shows readers how to embrace the Buddhist concept of living in the moment to help them cope with the bombardment of information, anxiety, stress, and pressure in their days; heal both physical and emotional problems; and increase self-awareness. Readers will also learn how to sit, walk, and breathe mindfully to focus on the moment at hand; eat mindfully; heal relationships and decrease disappointment and frustration; listen deeply; and much more.