Inspiration & Personal Growth Books

What is a beastie? Beastie [bee-stee]: The overarching spirit of any species of insect, reptile, bird, mammal, or mythical creature that exists or has ever existed; also known as an animal totem or spirit animal.

As more and more people seek help with the challenges of modern life, many of us are looking to the wisdom of nature for guidance--especially when it comes in the form of spirit animals. In a quirky and delightful style, Sarah Seidelmann's The Book of Beasties introduces us to the power of animal totems, or "beasties," inviting us to explore why certain animals show up in our lives and what teachings they may be trying to share. Whether you're a long-time shamanic practitioner or simply curious about what secret messages your favorite animal might have for you, The Book of Beasties is an ideal resource for discovering the wild and wonderful world of spirit animals.

Packed with information, illustrations, and traditional and modern insights into the unique qualities of different beasties, The Book of Beasties teaches you about:

- Guest Beasties: how certain beasties enter your life to give you messages or assistance you need just when you need them
- Core Beasties: meet the guiding beasties who are your lifelong companions, friends, and helpers
- Beastie Relationships: tips and techniques for deepening your relationship with beasties and becoming more receptive to their support
- Beasties A-Z: an expansive compendium of individual beasties and their unique qualities--including bats, wolves, elephants, salmon . . . even unicorns and dragons

Young Blood, Old Magic: A No-Nonsense Approach to the Ancient Art of Reading Tarot

You do not need to learn the tarot because you already know it. It is from this radical jumping off point that WTF Is Tarot breaks down the ancient art of cartomancy. This fresh, accessible and sometimes cheeky guide sheds a holistic light on how to read tarot, from the foundation of magic itself to understanding those tricky court cards to offering readings to others.

Non-Indian theologian and editor Nerburn attempts to bridge the gap between the world into which I had been born and the world of a people I had grown to know and love by narrating the fascinating toils and truths of Dan, a 78-year-old Lakota man.

Against an unflinching backdrop of 1990s reservation life and the majestic spaces of the western Dakotas, Neither Wolf nor Dog tells the story of two men, one white and one Indian, locked in their own understandings yet struggling to find a common voice. In this award-winning book, acclaimed author Kent Nerburn draws us deep into the world of a Native American elder named Dan, who leads Kent through Indian towns and down forgotten roads that swirl with the memories of the Ghost Dance and Sitting Bull. Along the way we meet a vivid cast of characters -- ranging from Jumbo, a 400-pound mechanic, to Annie, an eighty-year-old Lakota woman living in a log cabin with no running water. An unlikely cross between On the Road and Black Elk Speaks, Neither Wolf nor Dog takes us past the myths and stereotypes of the Native American experience, revealing an America few ever see.

Stepping beyond the shape of a footprint and into the unseen story of the track, veteran wilderness guide Tamarack Song takes you inside the eyes and mind of an intuitive tracker, with intimate stories where Frogs show the way out of the woods, scat reveals life histories, and Bears demonstrate how to find missing people.

If you suffer about your relationship with food -- you eat too much or too little, think about what you will eat constantly or try not to think about it at all -- you can be free. Just look down at your plate. The answers are there. Don't run. Look. Because when we welcome what we most want to avoid, we contact the part of ourselves that is fresh and alive. We touch the life we truly want and evoke divinity itself.

Since adolescence, Geneen Roth has gained and lost more than a thousand pounds. She has been dangerously overweight and dangerously underweight. She has been plagued by feelings of shame and self-hatred and she has felt euphoric after losing a quick few pounds on a fad diet. Then one day, on the verge of suicide, she did something radical: She dropped the struggle, ended the war, stopped trying to fix, deprive and shame herself. She began trusting her body and questioning her beliefs. It worked. And losing weight was only the beginning. She wrote about her discoveries in When Food Is Love, her first New York Times bestseller. She gave huge numbers of women their first insights into compulsive eating and she changed huge numbers of lives for the better. Now, after more than three decades of studying, teaching and writing about what drives our compulsions with food, Geneen adds a profound new dimension to her work in Women, Food and God.

She begins with her most basic concept: The way you eat is inseparable from your core beliefs about being alive. Your relationship with food is an exact mirror of your feelings about love, fear, anger, meaning, transformation and, yes, even God. But it doesn't stop there. Geneen shows how going beyond both the food and feelings takes you deeper into realms of spirit and soul to the bright center of your own life. With penetrating insight and irreverent humor, Roth traces food compulsions from subtle beginnings to unexpected ends. She teaches personal examination, showing readers how to use their relationship with food to discover the fulfillment they long for. Your relationship with food, no matter how conflicted, is the doorway to freedom, says Roth. What you most want to get rid of is itself the doorway to what you want most: the demystification of weight loss and the luminous presence that so many of us call "God." Packed with revelations on every page, this book is a knock-your-socks-off ride to a deeply fulfilling relationship with food, your body...and almost everything else. Women, Food and God is, quite simply, a guide for life.

After 2 decades in the study and practice of medicine, Sarah Seidelmann took a 3-month sabbatical to search for a way to feel good again. Having witnessed human suffering early in her career and within her own family, she longed for a way to address more than just the physical needs of her patients and to live in a lighter, more conscious way.

Swimming with Elephants tells the eccentric, sometimes poignant, and occasionally hilarious experience of a working mother undergoing a bewildering vocational shift from physician to shamanic healer. During that tumultuous period of answering her call, Sarah met an elephant who would become an important spirit companion on her journey, had bones thrown for her by a shaman in South Africa, and traveled to India for an ancient Hindu pilgrimage, where she received the blessing she had been longing for. Ultimately, she discovered an entirely different way of healing, one that she had always aspired to and that enabled her to help those who are suffering.

In this era of government gridlock, economic and ecological devastation, and seemingly intractable global violence, our future is ever more ripe for -- and in need of -- fresh, creative re-imagining. With her clear-eyed, inspiring, and sweeping vision of a possible global renaissance in the new millennium, Barbara Marx Hubbard shows us that our current crises are not the precursors of an apocalypse but the natural birth pains of an awakened, universal humanity. This is our finest hour. Conscious Evolution highlights the tremendous potential of new found scientific knowledge, technological advances, and compassionate spirituality and illustrates the opportunities that each of us has to fully participate in this exciting stage of human history. As we do, we will bring forth all that is within us and not only save ourselves, but evolve our world.

Sarah and her magnificent spirit animal Alice the Elephant created this wee book of inspiration to encourage creatives, healers and helpers. Alice offers up daily wisdom in a lighthearted (and sometimes salty) way and Sarah adds her own reflections along with a prompt and prayer.

Themes include humility, moderation, self-love, family, friendship, creativity, pitfalls & quagmires, addiction recovery, and dealing with fear.

How good are YOU willing to let it get? We hope that your answer is, "VERY good!" and this book will help you get there.

As we contemplate leaving the morning of our life, where ego has played a commanding role and entering the afternoon (and evening), where meaning and purpose replace ambition and struggle, we may encounter unexpected occurrences that accompany this new direction. It's almost a universal law that we'll experience a fall of some kind. Yet these falls or low points provide the energy we need to move away from ego and into a life of meaning and purpose. The Shift doesn't mean that we lose our drive and ambition; it signifies that we become ambitious about something new. We make a commitment to living a life based on experiencing meaning and feeling purposeful, rather than a life based on never-ending demands and false promises that are the trademark of the ego's agenda.

Out with the bad energy, in with the good! Khi Armand, a specialist in space clearing with expertise in rootwork and shamanism, offers a fantastic illustrated guide to help laypersons diagnose and resolve energetic issues in their home, office, or any structure.

He reveals the most effective methods for space clearing, including divination and consciousness-shifting; explains how to form a relationship with your space as a spiritual entity; lays out a variety of purifying techniques including smudging, asperging, floorwashing, and visualization; and divulges many other ideas for protecting and blessing your environment.

Peppered with tales and anecdotes from his practice, Clearing Spaces is a toolkit in book form for having a happy home full of positive, productive vibes.

NEW AGE / PERSONAL GROWTH "Susan Wright's creations epitomize the true meaning of magic. They take us to new levels of consciousness, empowering us to accomplish goals we previously only imagined, to realize our deepest dreams. Read, learn, enjoy--and shapeshift yourself and the world."From the foreword by John Perkins, bestselling author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, Shapeshifting, and The World Is As You Dream ItThe chakra system identifies eight centers in the psycho-anatomy of humans, each one associated with a different part of the physical or energy body. Susan J. Wright, a practicing shaman and Gestalt psychotherapist, uses her own life journey to show that each chakra also is linked to a different stage of emotional and spiritual development. In The Chakras in Shamanic Practice, she identifies eight key developmental stages of life, from birth to old age/death. Each of these life stages has various developmental challenges and potential traumatic events that will likely occur within our culture and affect the health and well-being of the individual. Wright explains that life traumas experienced in particular developmental stages become lodged within the energy body as they cling to their corresponding chakra. By identifying and working with the chakra involved, a doorway can be opened to a world of transformative images, allowing powerful shamanic techniques to heal these psychic wounds. Providing both physical exercises and guided meditations that utilize the techniques of soul retrieval, working with power animals, and transcending trauma, Wright offers practitioners a way to gather and nurture the fragmented parts of their energy body and lead themselves to physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being.Susan J. Wright, a practicing shaman and licensed massage therapist since 1981, is also certified as both a Gestalt psychotherapist and yoga teacher and is a licensed clinical social worker. She created and facilitates a shamanic training program at her healing center, Birth of Venus, in Mamaroneck, New York, where she integrates social work, psychotherapy, and shamanism with yoga, belly dancing, and craniosacral therapy and other bodywork techniques. She lives in Mamaroneck, New York.

Offering a practical guide to understanding and navigating relationships with the spirits of those who have passed, Daniel Foor, Ph.D., details how to relate safely and effectively with your ancestors for personal, family, and cultural healing.

He provides exercises and rituals, grounded in ancient wisdom traditions, to help you initiate contact with your ancestors, find supportive ancestral guides, cultivate forgiveness and gratitude, harmonize your bloodlines, and assist the dead who are not yet at peace. He explains how to safely engage in lineage repair work by connecting with your more ancient ancestors before relating with the recently deceased. He shows how, by working with spiritually vibrant ancestors, individuals and families can understand and transform intergenerational patterns of pain and abuse and reclaim the full blessings and gifts of their bloodlines.

Ancestral repair work can also catalyze healing breakthroughs among living family members and help children and future generations to live free from ancestral burdens. The author provides detailed instructions for ways to honor the ancestors of a place, address dream visits from the dead, and work with ancestor shrines and altars. The author offers guidance on preparing for death, funeral rites, handling the body after death, and joining the ancestors. He also explains how ancestor work can help us to transform problems such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and religious persecution

By learning the fundamentals of ancestor reverence and ritual, you will discover how to draw on the wisdom of supportive ancestral guides, heal family troubles, maintain connections with beloved family after their death, and better understand the complex and interconnected relationship between the living and the dead.

A guide to shamanic practices for those seeking to develop psychic powers. Teaches how to access the collective soul, discover the aura, develop shamanic breath, discover relationships with power animals, and engage in a vision quest. These lessons culminate with a trance-state journey induced by the rhythmic drumming session on the accompanying CD.

This redemption story of Native American healer Bobby Lake-Thom invites the reader to enter a world of authentic indigenous traditions and ceremonies. Bobby, also known as Medicine Grizzly Bear, didn't recognize his shamanic calling at first. He didn't know that his vivid dreams, psychic abilities, and visitations by wild animals and ghostly figures were calls from the Great Spirit.

The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this underground classic explores higher consciousness, human evolution, metaphysics, sacred geometry, the secret government, and more.

Bob Frissell has kept intact the basic message of the previous edition; he has also expanded upon it by including significant additions and updates to virtually every chapter, including ten completely new chapters. The author details from a big-picture perspective the enormous infusion of higher dimensional energy that is dramatically raising the vibratory rate of the planet and everyone on it. He also gives the details of the personal transformation that we must make if we are to survive and thrive, so we can “catch the ride” into higher consciousness in a way that enables Mother Earth to reach critical mass and become “lit from within.” This is the story of nothing less than the birth of a new humanity, of the cocreation of Heaven on Earth. 

This is a time of great celebration as we move out of the darkness and into the light. It means that the veils will be lifted, we will remember and live our intimate connection to all life, and we will be allowed to reunite with our cosmic brothers and to move about the universe. We will completely redefine what it means to be human!

Own Your Glow is an inspirational, actionable, and wildly enriching companion for change. Celebrity wellness and lifestyle guru, Latham Thomas provides soulful principles that offer an illuminated path for examining life's challenges, helping you curate your path to greatness, while embracing your uniquely feminine attributes.

Packed with rituals, meditations, and lifestyle tips, Thomas provides a clear framework for harnessing your passion, developing spiritual fitness, and embracing true vulnerability. This guide is for anyone who wants to witness her own life transform and contribute to the positive change of the world around her.

Combining spiritual, psychological, and self-reflective tools, Thomas offers an antidote to the hustle-hard, make-it-happen mainstream culture and fosters slowing down, intentionality, and self-care as a pathway to empowerment.

How much more potent and powerful would we all be if we embraced our inherent talents, strengths, and feminine edge, rather than dwelling in patterns of self-criticism, doubt, and catty competition? Thomas invites you to step into a soulful, fulfilling life of freedom, transcending self-destructive habits and creating a blueprint for a more gratifying, centered, and bountiful way of living.

Own Your Glow is an awakening roar for women to mobilize, become the masters of their lives, and hold their crowned heads up high, letting their relentless light from within shine bright for the world.