Here in this body are the sacred rivers…

    —
March 26, 2013

The commitment to our immediate embodied experience is the most radical commitment we could ever make. To commit to this life – right here, right now, as it is – is the unbearable and direct path into the love and freedom that we all so long for. When sadness comes calling, grief appears, shame arrives, anxiety comes for tea, do not mistake them for ordinary visitors, for they have been sent from beyond. Inside every feeling, each sensation, and every flow of emotion is a secret doorway into the center of the heart. Let us allow these guests to reveal to us their gifts, turning toward them, for they have come to show us the way home.

In the words of the great tantric sage Saraha, “Here in this body are the sacred rivers: here are the sun and moon as well as all the pilgrimage places… I have not encountered another temple as blissful as my own body.” Whatever we are offered in this day – the beautiful, the challenging, the heartbreaking, the painful, the difficult – let us allow this life to touch us in the most unprotected way. Let us somehow be willing to risk everything for this one and only rare experience, allowing each and every person we meet to matter deeply.

Snowy River

Let us make this pilgrimage into and through the cells of our heart, learning its secrets; and through the strands of our DNA, sailing down the sacred rivers which make up this precious human body. And, finally, let us behold the movement of love as it washes through every organ, reorganizing our entire somatic sensual reality into a vessel of kindness and attuned empathic presence, filled with a profound care for this life and for all beings everywhere.

Author Info for Sounds True Coming Soon

Also By Author

Six Summer Reads You Won’t Want to Miss!

After the stillness of winter and the slow waking of spring, summer is a time for getting up, getting out, and getting our hands on what inspires us the most. Here are some recent Sounds True releases for tapping into a life well lived.

1. The Biophilia Effect – Clemens G. Arvay 

Summer Super Sale - The Biophilia Effect

This is a book that celebrates our interconnection with nature and shows how to deeply engage the natural world wherever you live to dramatically improve your health. Clemens G. Arvay presents fascinating research, practical tools and activities,

inspiring stories, and more in this accessible guide to the remarkable benefits of being in nature.

Get it here: https://www.soundstrue.com/store/the-biophilia-effect.html

 

 

 

 

2. The Healing Code of Nature – Clemens G. Arvay

The Healing Code of Nature - Clemens G. Arvay

Human beings are inseparable from the natural world, coevolving with all of life. In order to thrive, we need to nourish this bond. In his latest book, biologist Clemens G. Arvay illuminates the miraculous ways that the human body interprets the living “code” of plants, animals, and our larger natural habitat for healing and sustenance.

Get it here: https://www.soundstrue.com/store/the-healing-code-of-nature.html

 

 

 

 

 

3. Book of Beasties – Sarah Seidelman

Summer Super Sale - Book of Beasties

From an ancient perspective, everything—including all natural things, like rocks, flowers, trees, insects, birds, and mammals

—is alive and infused with conscious energy or spirit,” writes Sarah Seidelmann. If you’re one of the many people looking to reconnect with the creativity, wisdom, and vital energy of the natural world, here is a fantastic guide for tapping into the power of animal totems, or “beasties.”

Get it here: https://www.soundstrue.com/store/book-of-beasties.html

 

 

 

4. No Recipe – Edward Espe Brown

Summer Super Sale - No RecipeMaking your love manifest, transforming your spirit, good heart, and able hands into food is a great undertaking,” writes renowned chef and Zen priest Edward Espe Brown, “one that will nourish you in the doing, in the offering, and in the eating.” With No Recipe: Cooking as Spiritual Practice, Brown beautifully blends expert cooking advice with thoughtful reflections on meaning, joy, and life itself.

Get it here: https://www.soundstrue.com/store/no-recipe.html

 

 

 

 

5. Yoga Friends – Mariam Gates & Rolf Gates 

Summer Super Sale - Yoga FriendsFrom the creators of Good Night Yoga and Good Morning Yoga comes a beautifully illustrated city adventure that introduces children to the delights and benefits of partner yoga.

Perfect for teaming up with a friend, sibling, parent, or caregiver, each easy practice shows how cooperation helps us to imagine, move, and have fun in a whole new way.

Includes a back-page guide for parents and caregivers, showing how to do each pose and how to connect them into an easy-to-follow flow.

Get it here: https://www.soundstrue.com/store/yoga-friends.html

 

6. Happier Now – Nataly Kogan

Summer Super Sale - Happier Now

What if you could be happier, right now, without radically changing your life? As nationally recognized happiness expert Nataly Kogan teaches, happiness is not a nice feeling or a frivolous extra. It’s a critical, non-negotiable ingredient for living a fulfilling, meaningful, and healthy life—and it’s a skill that we can all learn and improve through practice. In Happier Now, Nataly shares an illuminating, inspiring, and science-based guide to help you build your happier skills and live with more joy, starting now.

Get it here: https://www.soundstrue.com/store/happier-now.html

 

 

 

 

 

Have other books you’ve read by the poolside or under a shade tree ended up changing the way you see the world? Tell us about those summer reads that ended up being more than you expected!

 

Singing Bowl Meditation Sounds True Spotify Playlist

Sounds True is on Spotify!

Need some tunes for rest and relaxation? Check out our Singing Bowl Meditation Playlist! A variety of artists who make a soothing mix of infinite rhythms using Tibetan singing bowls. Perfect throughout a meditative practice.

 

November New Releases and Giveaway

NOVEMBER NEW RELEASES

 

 

The Integrity Advantage by Kelly Kosow

Are you ready to open up to new levels of self-trust and self-love, to get where you want to go?

You vowed to speak up at work, and then sat silent in the meeting yet again.

You told yourself “this time the diet is going to stick,” only to watch the scale inching up.

You felt that something just wasn’t right about someone that—until you learned the hard way that your instincts were right.

“Every time you bite your tongue,” teaches Kelley Kosow, “you swallow your integrity.”

Before Kelley Kosow was a renowned life coach and CEO, she constantly second-guessed herself, let her “to-do” lists and others steer her dreams and passions, and played it “small and safe.”

Inspired by the groundbreaking principles of her renowned mentor Debbie Ford, who hand-picked Kelley to be her successor, The Integrity Advantage is Kelley’s step-by-step guide for facing the fear, shame, and false beliefs that cause us to lose our way.

Through life-changing insights, true stories, and proven strategies, this book will show you how to live on your own terms—according to you—from the inside out.

 

Daring to Rest by Karen Brody

As modern women, we’re taught that we can do it all, have it all, and be it all. While this freedom is beautiful, it’s also exhausting. Being a “worn-out woman” is now so common that we think feeling tired all the time is normal. According to Karen Brody, feeling this exhausted is not normal—and it’s holding us back. In Daring to Rest, Brody comes to the rescue with a 40-day program to help you reclaim rest and access your most powerful, authentic self through yoga nidra, a meditative practice that guides you into one of the deepest states of relaxation imaginable.

It’s time to lie down and begin the journey to waking up

 

 

 

 

Breathe and Be by Anna Emilia Laitinen and Kate Coombs

Teaching mindfulness helps kids learn to stay calm, regulate their emotions, and appreciate the world around them. With Breathe and Be, author Kate Coombs and illustrator Anna Emilia Laitinen team up to present a book of poetry and art for young readers to make mindfulness easy, natural, and beautiful. Here is a book sure to delight parents and kids alike, blending lovingly illustrated nature imagery with elegant verse about living with awareness and inner peace.

 

 

 

 

Leopard Warrior by John Lockley

A Teaching Memoir That Crosses the Barriers Between Worlds

A shaman is one who has learned to move between two worlds: our physical reality and the realm of spirits. For John Lockley, shamanic training also meant learning to cross the immense divide of race and culture in South Africa.

As a medic drafted into the South African military in 1990, John Lockley had a powerful dream. “Even though I am a white man of Irish and English descent, I knew in my bones that I had received my calling to become a sangoma, a traditional South African shaman,” John writes. “I felt blessed by the ancient spirit of Africa, and I knew that I had started on a journey filled with magic and danger.” His path took him from the hills of South Korea, where he trained as a student under Zen Master Su Bong, to the rural African landscape of the Eastern Cape and the world of the sangoma mystic healers, where he found his teacher in the medicine woman called MaMngwev

 

 

Things That Join the Sea and the Sky by Mark Nepo

A Reader for Navigating the Depths of Our Lives

The Universe holds us and tosses us about, only to hold us again. With Things That Join the Sea and the Sky, Mark Nepo brings us a compelling treasury of short prose reflections to turn to when struggling to keep our heads above water, and to breathe into all of our sorrows and joys.

Inspired by his own journal writing across 15 years, this book shares with us some of Mark’s most personal work. Many passages arise from accounts of his own life events—moments of “sinking and being lifted”—and the insights they yielded. Through these passages, we’re encouraged to navigate our own currents of sea and sky, and to discover something fundamental yet elusive: How, simply, to be here.

To be enjoyed in many ways—individually, by topic, or as an unfolding sequence—Things That Join the Sea and the Sky presents 145 contemplations gathered into 17 themes, each intended to illuminate specific situations.

 

 

                NOVEMBER GIVEAWAY

 

WIN OUR NEW RELEASE BUNDLE:The Integrity Advantage, Daring to Rest, Breathe and Be, Leopard Warrior, and Things That Join the Sea and the Sky

TO ENTER: Simply reply in the comments with why you’d like to win!

You Might Also Enjoy

Michael A. Singer: Releasing Blockages to Inner Flow

The question of how to find peace in the midst of uncertainty has been on our minds a lot lately. Listeners of this podcast have heard many of Tami Simon’s guests speak to this central challenge of our times. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, we’re thrilled to share what one of the world’s leading spiritual teachers has to say. 

Here, Tami talks with bestselling author Michael A. Singer about deepening our ability to maintain inner peace while living in an unpredictable, uncontrollable world. Singer addresses audience-selected cards from his Living Untethered Card Deck, as he and Tami discuss: why we do our inner work; staying in the seat of the Self; consciousness and objects of consciousness; how our thoughts and emotions can distract us into identifying with them; when your daily life and your spiritual life are the same exact thing; the energy called Shakti; rattlesnakes and butterflies; letting go of resistance to what is uncomfortable; the ego as a set of thought patterns we protect at all cost; accepting the deferred pain that comes when we release the past; the meaning of freedom and the liberation of the soul; trauma, psychology, and physiology; Michael’s advice—practice the simple things first; allowing the energy of what we experience to pass through our hearts; a commitment to living free; compassion versus sympathy; discovering your inherent greatness; learning to relax in the face of disturbances; and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

Giovanni Dienstmann: Activating Your Aspirational Iden...

What would you attempt if you knew you couldn’t fail? Most of us didn’t grow up in a family that was unfailingly supportive. Instead, as life coach and author Giovanni Dienstmann explains, “We were conditioned to believe certain things about ourselves and about life that are just not helpful.” In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Giovanni about his new book, Wise Confidence, and how we can each create our own “aspirational identity”—the person you want to be, how you want to see yourself and the world, and how you want to operate.

Give a listen to their inspiring conversation about: mindful self-discipline; making sacrifices; self-doubt and arrogance—two traps of the ego; the five elements of wise confidence; the conviction of self-belief; the journey from a conditioned identity to an aspirational identity; goal-oriented spiritual lineages (and those that aren’t); living with purpose; recognizing the stories we tell ourselves as the first step in transcending our conditioning; practicing courage; finding your three “power words”; choosing the personal qualities you most want to develop; imposter syndrome; the ceiling fan metaphor; four core tools—mindset, witnessing, imagination, and embodiment; the “never zero” commitment, and how commitment differs from motivation; self-love and self-compassion; energizing your thoughts; living in a multilayered universe; knowing your “bigger why”; and much more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

John Seed: A Cosmic Walk to Discover Your Ecological I...

After almost 50 years as one of the world’s leading environmental activists, John Seed has started to see an encouraging shift: “Caring about the Earth isn’t just for hippies and pagans,” he says. “More and more people are moving from having these ideas to exploring what we can do about them.” In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with the founder of the Rainforest Information Centre and co-author of Think Like a Mountain about his ongoing commitment to serving as a tireless steward of our planet and all its inhabitants. 

Give a listen to this inspiring conversation exploring: the illusion of separation underlying the environmental crisis; experiential ecology, or “the work that reconnects”; engaged Buddhism and activism as a spiritual practice; Joanna Macy’s renowned despair and empowerment work; waking up a culture in denial; transforming numbness into energy and action; creating a container for safely witnessing what’s going on; ceremony and bringing the sacred into our activism; the Council of All Beings practice; gratitude; a guided experience of “the cosmic walk”; Thomas Berry and the call for a creation story that unites us all; and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

  • Diana Neece says:

    Such beautiful imagery.

  • Willie says:

    This is amazing!

  • Flowers says:

    Wow that was odd. I just wrote an very long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t show up. Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again. Anyways, just wanted to say fantastic blog!

  • >
    Share via
    Copy link
    Powered by Social Snap