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B R A I N / M I N D , C R E AT I V I T Y & N E U R O D H A R M A
Brilliance
Rick Hanson on Neurodharma
ORIGINAL MIND
THE NEURODHARMA OF LOVE
Uncovering Your Natural Brilliance by Dee Joy Coulter
Rewire Your Brain for Healthy Relationships by Rick Hanson
$28.00, cloth. Sounds True. 254 pages
$32.95, 5 WCDs. Sounds True 6 hours, 29 minutes
What would it feel like to experience the world again like a child—deeply engaged with our senses and filled with wonder and creativity? Original Mind takes us on an odyssey back to our “beginner’s mind,” and into our many undeveloped potentials. Through fascinating research, insights, stories, and engaging practices largely overlooked by other “brain science” books, neuroscience and learning pioneer Dee Joy Coulter challenges us to question the conventional definitions and limitations of our minds, and then to move beyond them. This delight-driven odyssey explores a vast landscape of untapped dimensions of consciousness, including: ✦ How to see again with the fresh wonder of an infant ✦ Calming, Enriching, Magnetizing, and Self-Regulating—four keys to character development and emotional resilience ✦ How reading profoundly changes our brains, and how to develop the remarkable capacities of the “pre-literate” mind ✦ Engaging the body to enrich the art of thinking ✦ Boredom, Complexity, Ambiguity, Permeability, and Novelty—five “tolerances” to liberate creativity and joy ✦ Protecting—and expanding—our cognitive faculties as we age ✦ Blending newfound intuitive skills and “school-learned” abilities to navigate the complex demands of the modern world, and much more. “A neuroscience educator takes us on a wild, passionate, bold excursion into the sacredness of human existence, how modern civilization has largely lost sight of it, and how we may go about recovering our sense of the limitless possibilities of our lives. A brilliant book; a must-read.” —Reginald Ray, author of Touching Enlightenment: Finding Realization in the Body.
Meditation teacher and neuropsychologist Rick Hanson here offers a guided training program on the neuroscience of fulfilling relationships. Most of our greatest joys and sorrows happen in our relationships with others. Imagine then: what if you could guide your mind to forgive, heal, and find greater happiness in your connections with others? “The remarkable truth is that you can,” teaches Rick Hanson. With The Neurodharma of Love, this well-respected clinician and teacher shows us how brain science, practical psychology, and Buddhist meditation practices are now converging to help us experience greater intimacy and fulfillment—in our intimate relationships, with family and friends, and in our larger circles of work and community. This practice-centered audio program invites us to learn: ✦ How to strengthen our underlying neural circuits of empathy, compassion, kindness, and love at the deepest levels ✦ Meditations to help us heal childhood wounds and shift out of fight-or-flight reactivity ✦ How to create a healthy balance of intimacy and independence, open our hearts, resolve conflicts with others, and lay the neuropsychological foundation for lasting love. “Compassion,” “love,” “openheartedness”—these aren’t just nice ideas. They’re actual brain states that we can nurture and strengthen. The Neurodharma of Love shows us how, with powerful insights and practices to enrich all of our relationships. Among Rick Hanson’s books are Hardwiring Happiness and Buddha’s Brain
HARDWIRING HAPPINESS The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence By Rick Hanson
CREATIVITY ON DEMAND How to Ignite and Sustain the Fire of Genius by Michael Gelb
$19.00, paper. Harmony. 304 pages.
Why is it easier to ruminate over hurt feelings than it is to bask in the warmth of feeling loved? Your brain was wired in such a way when it evolved, primed to learn quickly from bad experiences, but not so much from the good ones. It’s an ancient survival mechanism that turned the brain into Velcro for the negative, but Teflon for the positive. Being brain-wired to take in the bad and ignore the good makes us worried, irritated, and stressed, instead of confident, secure, and happy. Each day is filled with opportunities to build inner strengths, but the brain is designed to ignore and waste them. This makes you come down harder on yourself than you do on others, feel inadequate even when you get a hundred things done, and feel lonely even when support is all around. Neuropsychologist Rick Hanson here lays out a simple method that uses the hidden power of everyday experiences to build new neural structures that attract happiness, love, confidence, and peace. Dr. Hanson’s four steps build a brain strong enough to withstand its ancient negativity bias, allowing contentment and a sense of well-being to become the new normal. We can hardwire in happiness.
$18.50, paper. Sounds True. 224 pages, b/w photos
Do moments of inspiration have to be few and far between— or can you develop the ability to access your deepest creativity any time? Michael Gelb has discovered the missing key that allows genius to flourish: an open, reliable connection to the vital life energy we all possess. The practices for accessing energy have been developed for thousands of years in yoga, martial arts, and Chinese medicine. I’ve asked today’s greatest living masters of these arts to contribute their most effective practices for cultivating creative energy—in a way that the average person can do in 20 minutes or less.
With Creativity On Demand, Gelb teaches a series of simple and potent practices to clear blockages and open the flow of creative energy. He then reveals how these techniques can be integrated with the renowned creative mindset and creative process tools he’s taught to individuals and organizations worldwide. The result is Michael Gelb’s most powerful work yet on unlocking our potential to innovate and achieve.
Your brain has separate systems for liking and wanting. Consequently, it is possible to like something without wanting it. If you let yourself have positive experiences without trying to hold on to them, you’ll enjoy them more and won’t get carried away by the drivenness and pressure of wanting them. Noticing good experiences gives you many opportunities to take in the good each day. Even noticing your own awareness is an opportunity for a good experience, since awareness is inherently peaceful and never tainted or harmed by what passes through it.
The practices you will learn are simple, enjoyable, and effective. If you invest twenty minutes a day, you’re likely to discover that within a few months you’ve significantly strengthened your core creative energy. To make it as easy as possible for you to benefit from these practices you can go to my website, michaelgelb.com, and enjoy free videos to complement your reading… Whatever approach you take you’ll discover that, unlike many other resources, creative energy isn’t depleted when you use it. Rather, the more you use it, the stronger it becomes.
“Learning to take in the good is like fully and mindfully breathing in life…it allows us to access our inner strengths, creativity, vitality and love… Hanson gives us the fascinating science behind attending to positive experiences, and offers powerful and doable ways to awaken the deep and lasting wellbeing we yearn for.” —Tara Brach, author of True Refuge Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a neuropsychologist and is also the author of Buddha’s Brain and Just One Thing as well as several audio programs.
Also by Michael Gelb are How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci, Body Learning, and Discover Your Genius.
THE SHARK’S PAINTBRUSH Biomimicry and How Nature is Inspiring Innovation by Jay Harman
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New in Paperback
$19.99, paper. White Cloud. 340 pages
The wave of the future has been around since the beginning of time: it’s called Nature. Let inventor and entrepreneur Jay Harman introduce you to stunning solutions to some of the world’s thorniest problems. Why does the bumblebee have better aerodynamics than a 747? How can a seashell keep a microchip from overheating? What structural design is shared by a tornado and a blood vessel? How can the design of a butterfly wing reduce the world’s lighting energy bill by 80 per cent?
How will fleas’ knees and bees’ shoulders help scientists formulate a near-perfect rubber? Today an interdisciplinary group of scientists, inventors, and engineers is turning to nature to innovate and find elegant solutions to human problems. The principle driving this transformation is called biomimicry, and Harman shares a wide range of examples of how we’re borrowing from natural models to invent
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profitable, green solutions to pressing industrial challenges. Aimed at a business audience, aspiring entrepreneurs, environmentalists, and general science readers, The Shark’s Paintbrush reflects a force of change in the new global economy that teaches us how to live in harmony with nature and opens bright opportunities for a better future. Among the many fascinating topics Jay explores: what the human heart and dust devils have in common, and how this parallel structure can lead to better technologies in medicine; how studying seaweed can lead
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to resistance-free antibiotics; how a single whale affords us a vast library of design expertise and information that can revolutionize industries as diverse as medicine, aerospace, and emergency pollution response following oil spills and catastrophic tsunamis; how the blowfly maggot could lead to breakthroughs in materials science, helping to lower production costs and manufacture higher-efficiency substances; and how the tiny scales making up the skin of sharks are being replicated on boats and airplanes to reduce drag and increase fuel efficiency.