Chakra Meditation: Discover Energy, Creativity, Focus, Love, Communication, Wisdom, and Spirit

by Swami Saradananda Chakras are a series of seven energy centers running from the base of the spine to the top of the head. Each one operates as a hub for the vital energy that flows through the human body, and is important to certain aspects of personal well-being, such as remaining clam, sexual energy, and an open mind.

This comprehensive guide explains the seven major chakras in-depth, as well as the often overlooked minor chakras associated with them. Each beautifully illustrated chapter looks at different kinds of meditation.  Techniques covered include walking meditations and techniques to help tune in to these centers: emotion-based visualizations, a rose meditation, and even a singing meditation and a Sufi whirling exercise.

The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force by Jeffrey M. Schwartz

(A Return to Innocence), a UCLA psychiatrist and expert on treating patients with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), teams up with Begley, a Wall Street Journal science columnist, to explore the mind/brain dichotomy and to discuss the science behind new treatments being developed for a host of brain dysfunctions.

Building on the work presented in Schwartz’s first book, Brain Lock, the authors begin by demonstrating that OCD patients are capable of rechanneling compulsive urges into more socially acceptable activities and that, by doing so, they actually alter their brains’ neuronal circuitry.

By presenting a wide array of animal and human experiments, Schwartz and Begley show that similar neuroplasticity is possible in stroke victims, often leading to a return of function previously thought impossible.

With over 30 million copies sold since its original publication in 1960, Psycho-Cybernetics has been used by athletes, entrepreneurs, college students, and many others, to achieve life-changing goals–from losing weight to dramatically increasing their income–finding that success is not only possible but remarkably simple.

Now updated to include present-day anecdotes and current personalities, The New Psycho-Cybernetics remains true to Dr. Maltz’s promise: “If you can remember, worry, or tie your shoe, you can succeed with Psycho-Cybernetics”

“The field of meditation has been not just a man’s world but a monk’s world,” write Camille Maurine and Lorin Roche, Ph.D., who assert that the techniques that worked for “reclusive and celibate males” need updating for contemporary women. Meditation Secrets for Women presents 12 “secrets” in 12 chapters. Each secret is a theme, such as “celebrate your senses,” “claim your inner authority,” “ride your rhythms,” or “love your body.”

Each chapter starts with a poem and includes explorations (questions for you to ponder), skill circle (practical tips for skill building), meditations, and reflections. This is a nurturing book, filled with acceptance, warmth, and encouragement. If you’ve tried to meditate but found it too restrictive, dull, or difficult, this book will give you a different, distinctly womanly, approach.

This handbook of meditation practice is a complete guide to a unique approach to tapping inner resources by training concentration on inspirational passages. Meditation and the Eight-Point Program that compliments and supports it can be used by anyone who wanst sity of California, Berkeley, in 1960 on the Fulbright exchange program and established the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation in Northern California in 1961.

His 1968 Berkeley class is believed to be the first accredited course in meditation at any Western university. His deep personal experience and his love for his students have made the ancient art of meditation accessible to those who hold jobs and live active lives among friends and family.

Gone are the days when anxiety was an uncommon affliction. Today, it’s a chronic, low-level interference that affects everyone, sometimes with devastating results. In Strength in the Storm, one of the 20th century’s great spiritual teachers addresses this issue. Drawing on his observations of modern life and his teachings, this compact book shows readers how to make the small choices every day that help them build better families, work environments, and communities — transforming themselves in the process.

With gentle wisdom and humor, Easwaran offers specifics on finding the calm center of chaos. He urges readers to take their time, showing how it is the mind, not external events, that drive a sense of urgency and restlessness. He stresses meditating on words that embody one’s highest ideals, allowing them to take root and bring about wonderful life changes. Additional inspirational passages invite the reader to achieve deeper healing and reflection.

Every person has ways of dealing with life’s challenges, but these resources are often locked beneath layers of stress and anxiety.

Focused repetition of a mantram, or holy name, provides a simple, effective way to regain one’s natural clarity, energy, confidence, and control.

The good news is that the mantram’s power to heal, calm, and restore is available to anyone.

Conquest of Mind is a beautifully poetic book, but also very meaningful and helpful. Like Freud, Eknath shows how our lives are ruled by desires and impulses. Unlike Freud, however, Eknath offers us hope, and a method, for escaping from them. His simple method for retraining the mind through meditation and thought control works for anybody, no matter what your religion is.

I highly recommend this book to anybody looking to better your life. His methods of thought control can lead to increased concentration and focus, or even to transcendental living. Eknath’s writing style will keep you captivated, and when used properly, his methods will take you to a more fulfilling life.

Chosen for their universal spiritual appeal, literary merit, and recognized wisdom, these selections are perfect subjects for meditation and daily inspirational reading.

Drawing from Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, and Native American sacred literature, this expanded third edition serves as a useful reference and guide to world mysticism. Included are Easwaran’s criteria for choosing personally transformative passages, tips on memorization, and suggestions for further reading.

Pema Chödrön may have more good one-liners than a Groucho Marx retrospective, but this nun’s stingers go straight to the heart: “The essence of bravery is being without self-deception”; “When we practice generosity, we become intimate with our grasping”; “Difficult people are the greatest teachers.” These are the punctuations to specific teachings of fearlessness.

In The Places That Scare You, Chödrön introduces a host of the compassionate warriors’ tools and concepts for transforming anxieties and negative emotions into positive living. Rather than steeling ourselves against hardship, she suggests we open ourselves to vulnerability; from this comes the loving kindness and compassion that are the wellsprings of joy.

How do we achieve it? Through meditation, mindfulness, slogans, aspiration, and several other practices, such as tonglen, which is taking in the pain and suffering of others while sending out happiness to all–emphasis on the all. Chödrön introduces each of these practices in turn, backing them up with succinct practical reasoning and a framework of ideas that offers fresh interpretations of familiar words like strength, laziness, and groundlessness. Chödrön is the type of person you’d like to have with you in an emergency, and to deal with the extremes of daily life. In her absence, The Places That Scare You will do nicely.

Miracle of Mindfulness is a sly commentary on the Anapanasati Sutra, the Sutra on Breath to Maintain Mindfulness. “Sly” because it doesn’t read like a dry commentary at all. One of Thich Nhat Hanh’s most popular books, Miracle of Mindfulness is about how to take hold of your consciousness and keep it alive to the present reality, whether eating a tangerine, playing with your children, or washing the dishes.

A world-renowned Zen master, Nhat Hanh weaves practical instruction with anecdotes and other stories to show how the meditative mind can be achieved at all times and how it can help us all “reveal and heal.” Nhat Hanh is a master at helping us find a calm refuge within ourselves and teaching us how to reach out from there to the rest of the world.

“Next time you are caught in a traffic jam . . . sit back and smile . . . a smile of compassion and loving kindness.” While such sappy Zen advice from a Buddhist monk, a Vietnamese resident in France following his exile in 1966, could send Western seekers of enlightenment into overdrive, fortunately most of the suggestions offered in this slim guidebook are of more substance.

In a series of vignettes and short passages, e.g., “Cooking Our Potatoes,” Nhat Hanh outlines techniques for living mindfullly, that is, in the present. Emphasizing that all things are interconnected on personal and political levels, he notes, for example, that the wealth of one society is based on the poverty of others. This book of illuminating reminders bids us to reorient the way we look at the world, turning away from a goal-driven, me-first modality toward a humanitarian perspective.

Tuck The Long Road Turns to Joy in your pocket and turn your walk into a joyful meditation.

Thich Nhat Hanh teaches “walking just for walking.” Learn to enjoy each step and each breath, to regain peace in difficult moments. Photographs of walking meditation from around the world are included.

Take Your Time: How to Find Patience, Peace & Meaning by Eknath Easwaran What would it be like to never be hurried?
Could you drop the word busy from your vocabulary?
What if your family, friends and colleagues could experience you as attentive, focused and sensitive?

Eknath Easwaran says “a life of artistic beauty is within the reach of everyone.”  Start 2007 using the suggestions in this book and discover the rewards of living soulfully.  ~MLS

Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel by Thomas Keating For those wanting to discover the Christian, contemplative heritage, look no further than Thomas Keating.  He is a founder of the Centering Prayer movement and of Contemplative Outreach.

Thomas is a Cestercian monk who is a modern spiritual master dedicated to introducing people to contemplative prayer.  He is also a world leader in fostering understanding among mystics of every religious tradition. ~MLS

For millennia, Buddhists have enjoyed the limitless benefits of meditation. But how does it work? And why? The principles behind this ancient practice have long eluded some of the best minds in modern science.

Until now. In this groundbreaking work, world-renowned Buddhist teacher Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche invites us to join him in unlocking the secrets behind the practice of meditation. Working with neuroscientists at the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior, Yongey Mingyur provides clear insights into modern research indicating that systematic training in meditation can enhance activity in areas of the brain associated with happiness and compassion.

He has also worked with physicists across the country to develop a fresh, scientifically based interpretation of the Buddhist understanding of the nature of reality.

Getting Unstuck: Breaking Your Habitual Patterns & Encountering Naked Reality By Pema Chodron

An urge comes up, we succumb to it, and it becomes stronger. We reinforce our cravings, habits, and addictions by giving in to them repeatedly. Pema Chödrön guides us through this “sticky feeling” and offers us tools for learning to stay with our uneasiness, soften our hearts toward others, and ourselves and live a more peaceful life in the fullness of the present moment.

The Pema Chodron Collection: Pure Meditation: GoodMedicine:From Fear to Fearlessness By Pema Chodron

Pema Chodron is one of the West’s most beloved teachers of Buddhism, making the Tibetan vajrayana tradition accessible in today’s world. Now, three of her most popular teachings are available in one boxed set. The Pema Chodron Collection includes: Pure Meditation – step-by-step instruction in Tibetan Buddhism’s pinnacle practice for transformation and letting go; Good Medicine – teachings in tonglen, an elegant meditation that allows us to use our troubles to befriend ourselves and widen our circle of compassion; and From Fear to Fearlessness – offers an antidote to fear in the four noble aspirations – maitri (lovingkindness), compassion, joy, and equanimity.

For more than 800 years, Tibetan Buddhists have used the principles of lojong (literally, “mind training”) to transform difficulties into insights, and conflict into genuine communication. Awakening Compassion is the first audio retreat on the practice of lojong taught by Pema Chodron herself. With many on-the-spot techniques for dealing with jealousy, anger, and fear, Awakening Compassion is a unique resource for bringing compassion into the world and stopping the cycle of suffering in our own lives.

Within Buddhism, there are many stories that refer to its founder as the “supreme physician” – a healer of all illness – mental, physical, and spiritual. The Buddha’s prescription for right living led directly to tonglen, a Tibetan meditation practice that is today the medicine our hearts have been searching for. On the new enhanced CD edition of Good Medicine, American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron shares the gift of this simple and elegant meditation system: a way to befriend ourselves, accept the past we have rejected, and widen our circle of compassion. Includes rare live footage with Pema Chodron, interview excerpts, and other enhancements available here for the first time.

A New Earth : Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

In A New Earth, Tolle expands on his previous work to explain how the Power of Presence is actually creating a new species of human being that has the capacity to usher in The New Earth. The author offers examples of how to live in the Now, beginning, well….Now!

The Power of Now on Audio CD

In The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle effectively teaches how to bring Presence into each moment in a way that will transform your whole life.