For 25 years, psychologist Helene G. Brenner, Ph.D. has been helping women, and men as well, to overcome past conditioning and begin to trust their inner selves. In this beautiful and inspiring, warm, wise, and funny book, Helene writes: “I truly believe that you don’t have to change or fix or improve yourself in order to be happy.”

“You don’t have to be bigger or braver or smarter or more organized than you are to begin pursuing your inner visions — and you don’t have to clean out your closets first!”

The key message of this book is that women (and all of us really) have lost connection with something Helene calls “the inner voice,” and that reconnecting with it is the key to living a fulfilled and fulfilling life. Learn about the Five Pathways to the Inner Voice and the ABCs of Acknowledging, Being With, and Compassion.

“Extend compassion toward the hurt, angry, and fearful places, the vulnerable places, the foolish places, the clumsy and ‘defective’ places, and even the darkest, most unacceptable places inside of yourself and others, and you’ll begin to feel a peace, calm and presence within you that you can barely imagine.”

Read Ann’s full review of this book here.

David I. Rome is a certified Focusing Trainer who has brought Focusing together with Buddhist mindfulness-awareness practices in workshops in the United States, Canada, and Europe. He is the creator of Mindful Focusing, a training program that brings together Eugene Gendlin’s felt-sense focusing method with Buddhist mindfulness-awareness practices.

“Eminently readable, engaging and wise, this book is hugely welcome. Those new to Focusing and the felt sense will be expertly guided; those already familiar with the process will find fresh treasure on every page. Compassionate, warm, and generous in sharing his own journey, Rome is just the person you would want as a companion to opening up your inner world. I know I will be re-reading this book for years and recommending it to all my students and friends.” -Ann Weiser Cornell

This priceless book by the brilliant pioneer of doing Focusing with children is practical, warm-hearted, inspiring, and life-changing. For anyone who touches the lives of children: parents, grandparents, teachers, counselors. A joy to read.

“Listening to children is a skill which parents, teachers, caretakers and school counsellors need to employ every day. From a deep respect for the already existing attitude of these adults, the authors offer an extra dimension to the art of communicating with children. This book is about listening in many ways, both to your deepest self and to others. It is listening to what children say, feel, and think, but also to what is deeper than thoughts and feelings. Change in behaviour arises when children learn to listen inwardly, sensing what is bodily felt inside them. This process of change, called ‘Focusing’, is explained with many examples from the personal experiences of the authors, from their workshops, training and child-therapy sessions. The authors give a structured approach for use in schools and other group situations, but much of it can also be used at home by parents. With this book you can, quite independently, start to accompany children more consciously in their development, and by doing so, you will watch their confidence grow.” -from the publisher

Against the backdrop of a world in crisis, Dr. Judy Schavrien, an artist and a psychotherapist specializing in trauma, writes and paints these portraits of “life interrupted.” They are portraits in a Late Style, and Late Style artists have had a near encounter with death, whether sheerly through aging or through some trauma. She begins, in the preface, with the story of her own “life interrupted.” In a midnight mugging, she was shot in the face. Then she traveled the globe to find healing. Now, in this book, she portrays artists, dancers, refugees, cancer survivors, celebrities and even figures from myth—all viewed in a Late Style light.

There are 68 edgy and vibrant portraits, 58 of them in gorgeous full color. There is a portrait of Alice in Wonderland with her tyrant, the Red Queen; and an updated Beauty, face-to-face with her Beast. There is a loving caricature of Rachel Maddow and a Dorian Gray reveal of Donald Trump. These figures depart from the old version of a portrait figure—well-shielded by costume, rank, entourage of wife, children, and family pets. Instead they present themselves naked—permeable to what happens all around—diaphanous to a dangerous but surprisingly beautiful world.

The book is both traditional and on the cusp. Regarding her media, the portraits resemble woodcuts, etchings, watercolors or oils, but many of them are in fact created digitally. Where gender is concerned, there is the feminist project to update portrayals—strong women, active in their gaze, men with an artist’s receptivity. In addition, in works like “Jen, Sculptor,” or “Myself as a Man,” there is gender fluidity.

Although these portraits are about the “bare, forked beast,” the fragile human, they are not always somber. Intensely alive and immediate, they often unfurl in gorgeous color, proclaiming the strength of survivors.

Schavrien has received 15 awards, national and international, for her work in the arts. She was chosen to be featured out of 50,000 international artists on the Imagekind platform. The life experience that brought her to focus on survivors includes her decades as a psychotherapist for trauma survivors and her recent work as Artist-in-Residence for R.E.A.L. (Refugee Education and Learning).

-from the publisher