Recommendations based on "The Socratic Method A Practitioner's Handbook"

In his definitive introduction to Zen Buddhism, Alan Watts ("the perfect guide for a course correction in life" —Deepak Chopra), explains the principles and practices of this ancient religion.With a rare combination of freshness and lucidity, he delves into the origins and history of Zen to explain what it means for the world today with incredible clarity. Watts saw Zen as “one of the most precious gifts of Asia to the world,” and in The Way of Zen he gives this gift to readers everywhere.“Perhaps the foremost interpreter of Eastern disciplines for the contemporary West, Watts had the rare gift of ‘writing beautifully the unwritable.’” —Los Angeles Times

Improve your body’s oxygen use and increase your health, weight loss, and sports performance—whether you’re a recovering couch potato or an Ironman triathlon champion.One of the biggest obstacles to better health and fitness is a rarely identified problem: chronic over-breathing. We often take many more breaths than we need—without realizing it—contributing to poor health and fitness, including a host of disorders, from anxiety and asthma to insomnia and heart problems.In The Oxygen Advantage, the man who has trained over 5,000 people—including Olympic and professional athletes—in reduced breathing exercises now shares his scientifically validated techniques to help you breathe more efficiently. Patrick McKeown teaches you the fundamental relationship between oxygen and the body, then gets you started with a Body Oxygen Level Test (BOLT) to determine how efficiently your body uses oxygen. He then shows you how to increase your BOLT score by using light breathing exercises and learning how to simulate high altitude training, a technique used by Navy SEALs and professional athletes to help increase endurance, weight loss, and vital red blood cells to dramatically improve cardio-fitness.Following his program, even the most out-of-shape person (including those with chronic respiratory conditions such as asthma) can climb stairs, run for a bus, or play soccer without gasping for air, and everyone can achieve: Easy weight loss and weight maintenance Improved sleep and energy Increased concentration Reduced breathlessness during exercise Heightened athletic performance Improved cardiovascular health Elimination of asthmatic symptoms, and more.With The Oxygen Advantage, you can look better, feel better, and do more—it’s as easy as breathing.

Applying the art and science of self-compassion to day-to-day therapy work.  This lucidly written guide integrates traditional Buddhist teachings and mindfulness with cutting-edge science from several distinct fields—including neurobiology, cognitive neuroscience, psychotherapy outcome research, and positive psychology—to explain how clinicians can help clients develop a more loving, kind, and forgiving attitude through self-compassion. The practice of self-compassion supports effective therapy in two vital ways: (1) It helps clients become a source of compassion for themselves; and (2) it helps therapists be happier and generate more compassion for their clients. Researchers now understand that self-compassion is a skill that can be strengthened through deliberate practice, and that it is one of the strongest predictors of mental health and wellness. The brain’s compassion center, which neuroscientists call the Care Circuit, can be targeted and fortified using specific techniques. Filled with illuminating case examples, Self-Compassion in Psychotherapy shows readers how to apply self-compassion practices in treatment. The first two chapters illuminate what self-compassion is, the science behind it, and why it is so beneficial in therapy. The rest of the book unpacks practical clinical applications, covering not only basic clinical principles but also specific, evidence-based techniques for building affect tolerance, affect regulation, and mindful thinking, working with self-criticism, self-sabotage, trauma, addiction, relationship problems, psychosis, and more, and overcoming common roadblocks. Readers do not need to have any background in mindfulness in order to benefit from this book. However, those that do will find that self-compassion practices have the capacity to add new layers of depth to mindfulness-based therapies such as Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT).

A lively exploration of contemporary Buddhism from one of its most admired teachersDo you feel at home right now? Or do you sense a hovering anxiety or uncertainty, an underlying unease that makes you feel just a bit uncomfortable, a bit distracted and disconnected from those around you?In The Road Home, Ethan Nichtern, a senior teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition, investigates the journey each of us takes to find where we belong. Drawing from contemporary research on meditation and mindfulness and his experience as a Buddhist teacher and practitioner, Nichtern describes in fresh and deeply resonant terms the basic existential experience that gives rise to spiritual seeking―and also to its potentially dangerous counterpart, spiritual materialism. He reveals how our individual quests for self-awareness ripple forward into relationships, communities, and society at large. And he explains exactly how, by turning our awareness to what's happening around us and inside us, we become able to enhance our sense of connection with others and, at the same time, change for the better our individual and collective patterns of greed, apathy, and inattention.In this wise and witty invitation to Buddhist meditation, Nichtern shows how, in order to create a truly compassionate and enlightened society, we must start with ourselves. And this means beginning by working with our own minds―in whatever state we find them in.

Providing an introduction to "flow," a new field of behavioral science that offers life-fulfilling potentialities, this study explains its principals and shows how to introduce flow into all aspects of life, avoiding the interferences of disharmony

“Vastly knowledgeable and genuinely brilliant . . . An easy yet most effective how-to guide on sleep.” —Dr. Matthew Walker, New York Times bestselling author of Why We SleepFrom renowned sleep scientist Dr. Aric Prather, a book that offers a simple yet powerful plan to improve your sleep in seven daysWe need sleep to survive. Sleep is as essential as food, water, and oxygen. So how can something that should be so instinctual and automatic be so hard? Dr. Prather runs one of the world’s most successful sleep clinics and has cracked the code to help even the most restless of sleepers get a good night’s rest.In The Sleep Prescription, Dr. Prather shares the powerful solutions that he uses to help his patients at the clinic achieve healing and restorative sleep. Going beyond the obvious solutions, Dr. Prather shares surprisingly simple yet deeply effective techniques that will help you lie back and let sleep work its magic.The seven-day prescription will lead you through these exercises:Day 1: Set Your (Internal) ClockDay 2: Ease Off the GasDay 3: Energize—But Do It RightDay 4: Worry EarlyDay 5: You Are Not a Computer; You Can't Just Shut DownDay 6: (Re)Train Your BrainDay 7: Stay Up LateOver the course of seven days, this book will teach you how to get out of your own way, so that your body can do effortlessly what it was built to do: sleep well.

For anyone who's ever felt demoralized, addicted, drained of energy, or victimized, this follow-up to the transformative New York Times bestseller identifies the patterns of behaviour that hold us back and presents a tool for each that allows us to break free and realize our full potential.Your relationship with life is a 2-way street. It gives to you, but it also makes demands of you. Life makes its demands known through the problems you encounter. Confronting your problems allows you to discover your potential--this is the essence of human evolution. Think of your evolution as a difficult climb up a mountain path. When you lose energy, it's like suddenly falling into a hole--you stop ascending. But in life, you dig the hole yourself. There are 4 different ways of digging this hole. Each consists of a set of attitudes and behaviours that drain your energy and make it impossible to go on. The 4 patterns are: demoralization, addiction, paralysis and victimization. In this second book of "tools," Stutz & Michels explain what you did to fall into each hole. They give you the specific tool that allows you to climb out, to create and maintain structure and resiliency in your own life, so you can continue the ascent to your highest potential.

Praise for Happiness Beyond Thought"Husband, father, scientist, military officer, and senior executive in industry and academia, Gary Weber has led a full and successful worldly life. Throughout all of this, Gary has relentlessly pursued a path of practice and inquiry in order to understand life and achieve enlightenment. It is rare to find one who has reached this goal, and rarer still to find such a one who has been so immersed in worldly life.With this book, Gary has successfully integrated his profound realization with traditional non-dualistic teachings, as well as insights from Zen Buddhism and modern brain research, into a practical path that uses Yoga's time-tested practices of asana, pranayama, chanting and meditation to illumine a path to enlightenment for the modern reader." -Gary Kraftsow, author of Yoga for Wellness and Yoga for Transformation "Gary Weber offers a treasure chest of practices for the serious practitioner seeking liberation. On your own journey towards awakening, savor these simple, easy to follow practices culled from Weber's study with his primary teacher Ramana Maharshi, his on-going exploration of Zen meditation practice, and the life-enhancing results of his experiments on the laboratory floor of his yoga mat." -Amy Weintraub, author of Yoga for Depression

A beautiful daily journal to lead your journey in the art of living--and an instant WSJ bestseller.For more than two thousand years, Stoic philosophy has been the secret operating system of wise leaders, artists, athletes, brilliant thinkers, and ordinary citizens. With the acclaimed, bestselling books The Obstacle Is the Way, Ego Is the Enemy and The Daily Stoic, Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman have helped to bring the Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus to hundreds of thousands of new readers all over the world.Now Holiday and Hanselman are back with The Daily Stoic Journal, a beautifully designed hardcover journal that features space for morning and evening notes, along with advice for integrating this ancient philosophy into our 21st century lives. Each week readers will discover a specific powerful Stoic practice, explained and presented with related quotations to inspire deeper reflection and application, and each day they will answer a powerful question to help gauge their progress. Created with a durable, Smyth-sewn binding and featuring a helpful introduction explaining the various Stoic tools of self-management, as well as resources for further reading, this is a lasting companion volume for people who already love The Daily Stoic and its popular daily emails and social media accounts. It can also be used as a stand-alone journal, even if you haven’t read the previous books. For anyone seeking inner peace, clarity, and effectiveness in our crazy world, this book will help them immensely for the next year—and for the rest of their lives.

As seen on Good Morning America and The Today Show with Hoda and Jenna “The key is managing stress, so we can lead healthier, happier lives. The 5 Resets will help you do just that.”   — Katie Couric, Journalist and Founder and CEO, Katie Couric Media   "A masterful approach to rewire our brains and bodies from the inside out."    — Arianna Huffington, Founder and CEO, Thrive Global “The doctor everybody needs.”  — Mel Robbins, Host of the Mel Robbins Podcast From Harvard stress expert, nationally sought after speaker, and television correspondent Dr. Aditi Nerurkar comes a reimagined approach to overcoming your stress and burnout using five small but mighty mindset shifts. For Dr. Nerurkar, the common misperception of stress as “bad” needs reframing. Stress is a healthy biological phenomenon that helps us tackle life’s many demands. It becomes problematic when it’s out of tune with the frequency of our lives, result­ing in burnout, fatigue, sleep disturbances, and many other physical symptoms. To bring stress back to healthy levels, Dr. Nerurkar offers her five science-backed mindset shifts, rooted in more than two decades of clinical experience, for when life gets hard: The First Reset: Get Clear on What Matters Most The Second Reset: Find Quiet in a Noisy World The Third Reset: Sync Your Brain and Your Body The Fourth Reset: Come Up for Air The Fifth Reset: Bring Your Best Self Forward Dr. Nerurkar illuminates why our everyday attempts at being “resilient”—like multitasking, sleeping less, and undergoing huge lifestyle overhauls—aren’t beneficial to our stressed brains. Instead, she prescribes practical, real-world solutions for our modern-day perils that are time efficient, cost-free, and can be applied to anyone’s life, including fol­lowing the Resilience Rule of 2 (making no more than two changes at a time because doing more is unsustainable), accepting that multitasking is a myth (our brains are wired to do one thing at a time!), and adopting her Bookend Method (creating boundaries to honor our brain’s need for compart­mentalization). The five mindset shifts, along with fifteen proven techniques, offer you a road map to change your relationship with stress, bring your biology back into balance, and feel calmer right now.