Resources

Videos

RSAnimates The Divided Brain

Ian McGilchrist, psychiatrist and philosopher wrote a brilliant, massive and impossibly erudite book on the relationship between the left and right hemispheres and the importance of this relationship to the world we live in called The Master and his Emissary. I coaxed and scolded myself into reading fifty of its eight hundred odd pages before discovering this perfect twelve minute animated summary which uses narration taken from a talk given by McGilchrist.

Brene Brown on the Power of Vulnerability

I met a man on a plane. He was one of those impossibly magnetic personalities that blew past my “I’m too busy reading” hauteur like it wasn’t even there. Soon he was teaching me to compose music on his computer and I became one of his thousands of Facebook friends. A few months later he reposted a link to this video and I watched it. The rest, as they say, is history. This was a pretty dark time in my life and this video convinced me that there was hope and set me on the path to find the way forward.

Books

Loves Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships by Burt Hellinger

Hellinger is a German psychotherapist who developed family constellations based on his studies of psychotherapy and his experiences serving as a Roman Catholic missionary with the Zulu people in South Africa. To the Zulus, the ancestors are living presences and this understanding informs family constellation work. Loves Hidden Symmetry is Hellinger’s attempt to explain the basic “rules” of love and relationships that he has come to understand from facilitating the constellations of thousands of people. Some of what he says is controversial and possibly even offensive. This book embodies the courage to face life as it is and not necessarily as we want it to be, a courage that constellation work demands even as it validates it.

Nonviolent Communication: a Language of Life by Marshall Rosenberg, Ph.D

If I’m honest, the real reason I picked this book up in the first place was because I wanted to get my kids to clean up after themselves. Reading it, it seems like Marshall was interested in this age old question as well. He wanted to ask things of people in a way that would inspire them to want to do what he asked. He came up with a simple formula: factual description of the situation, naming of the feeling you were experiencing, naming the need that you would like met and a clear request of the other person. This simple formula eliminates the usual brain chatter and provides a short cut to connection. Over time, the desire to get people to do things actually dissipates as we become more deeply connected with our own needs. My kids still don’t pickup, but it no longer seems to matter.

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle

This book is about the goal, what we all want – freedom from suffering and what that looks like. There’s some kind of freaky magic going on with his writing because somehow, just reading it is enough to create a space in which a sense of enlightenment is possible. It doesn’t last and he can’t help with the things that will trigger you and snap you out of it. But, he does a wonderful job of convincing us that enlightenment is possible while giving us a taste of what that’s like.

The Honest Toddler: a Child’s Guide to Parenting by Bunmi Laditan

Written with compassion, joy, a wicked sense of humor and boundless love, this is the parenting book that most abundantly rewards your time. Told from the child’s perspective, which is pretty much the only one that really matters in the end, it’s hysterically honest and absolutely right. I genuinely believe that reading it healed some of my own childhood trauma even as I was laughing. If you are a parent or ever were a child, you need to read this.

The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

The sole purpose of our possessions is to give us joy. In this slim volume, Marie Kondo explains how she came to this simple but transformative conclusion and outlines her system for restoring your relationship with your belongings so that joy becomes the priority. Deeply compassionate, gently humorous and profoundly healing, this is an organizing book that is really about how to live in relationship with your own needs.

Perfumes: the A-Z Guide by Luca Turin and Tanya Sanchez

If you like perfume or you like language, this is for you. It’s a simple collection of reviews of over 1,800 perfumes that’s poetic, bitchy, funny, devastating and occasionally transcendent. It’s the book that launched a thousand (or more like hundred thousand) perfume addictions, my own included. This little volume establishes perfume’s standing as an art, with this it’s canonical book of art criticism.