Sounds True Lauches Online Classes

A note from Sounds True Founder and Publisher, Tami Simon:
 
Dear Friend of Sounds True,

As stimulating as a recording or a book can be, there is nothing quite like learning in person from a spiritual teacher. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have as many opportunities as we would like for such direct contact.

Given this situation, it has long been a dream of mine to allow Sounds True listeners to have a live, interactive experience with their favorite authors—asking questions and communicating directly with both teachers and other participants—at a reasonable cost and without having to travel a long way. I am therefore thrilled to announce that Sounds True is launching our first four programs in an online format, with many more to come in 2010.

Here are brief descriptions, but please visit our website for much more about these courses:

• Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, the bestselling author of Women Who Run With the Wolves, will offer a series launching on October 14, 2009 of six online events on Mother Night: Myths, Stories, and Teachings for Learning to See in the Dark.

• Beginning on October 6, 2009 pioneering psychiatrist in the field of neurobiology Dr. Dan Siegel will team up with meditation teacher Jack Kornfield to offer an online course for healing professionals on Mindfulness and the Brain. Please note that continuing education credits are also available for this online course for therapists, social workers, and other healing professionals.

• As we all know, it is one thing to talk about committing to a daily spiritual practice and another thing to actually follow through on that inspiration. To support people who are interested in developing a spiritual discipline, in January of 2010, Sounds True will launch two new in-depth online training programs—Centering Prayer with Trappist monk Father Thomas Keating, and Insight Meditation with the cofounders of the Insight Meditation Society, Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg.

In recent days, I have heard more and more people talk about how beneficial it is to work in close community with like-minded allies, exchanging ideas and insights in order to thrive during the challenging times in which we live. With these new online events and courses, Sounds True is bringing our authors and listeners together for just such exchanges.

We hope you will join us

Tami Simon
Founder and Publisher, Sounds True

P.S. Check back often for future course offerings at soundstrue.com/courses

 

Kundalini Rising

New Anthology DeMystifies Kundalini Energy
to Support and Catalyze Readers’ Awakening Experiences

“Kundalini” is a term you’ve likely heard for years – and perhaps even an experience you’ve consciously attempted to cultivate. But what does it really mean? For the first time, here is a comprehensive exploration featuring premier voices from the fields of kundalini yoga, integral psychology, spirituality, and neuroscience—as well as everyday practitioners who have experienced kundalini directly. This new anthology is Kundalini Rising: Exploring the Energy of Awakening (Sounds True, September 2009). Visit the online press kit: http://bit.ly/9k2Ka.

“Here is the book I wish I’d had twenty-five years ago,” writes Sounds True founder and publisher Tami Simon, in the book’s introduction. “Gathered into one volume, Kundalini Rising comprises twenty-four essays on different aspects of the kundalini experience, including what transpersonal psychologists have to say about kundalini; understanding the yogic brain from a scientific perspective; the relationship between near-death experiences and kundalini awakening; understanding the relationship between kundalini energy and sexual energy; yogic exercises to catalyze the kundalini process; the role that kundalini awakening plays in the unfolding of our highest human potential; and more.”  Read Tami’s full introduction to Kundalini Rising.

Kundalini spiritual awakenings are a growing topic of online conversation, as well as scientific research by organizations such as the Kundalini Research Network and the Kundalini Research Institute. This anthology includes personal accounts and findings from those who have experienced kundalini, and those who are researching its effects on health.

Kundalini expert Bonnie Greenwell writes, “Kundalini energy, or the life force, may expand gently and quietly in some people, or move steadily, like an overflowing river bouncing up the chakras in others, bringing shifts in consciousness along with physical and psychic eruptions. But in a few people it explodes like a geyser, and they feel like they are blowing apart.”

As another contributor, Stuart Perrin, writes,  “Enlightenment is not just a matter of releasing dormant kundalini energy, because, when kundalini awakens, it could easily tip sanity’s balance…Enlightenment is a matter of building a chakra system capable of handling kundalini—a chakra system developed gradually over a long period of time—and an inner life that has a strong foundation and a quiet mind, an inner life that makes it possible for us to live every moment with an open heart. ”

Kundalini yoga is one of the fastest-growing yoga disciplines. It is a physical and meditative discipline within the tradition of yoga, associated with the subdivision of hatha yoga.

“We are moving into the Aquarian Age and nearing the awakening of a new era marked by the year 2012,” writes Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa in her chapter, Let Your Presence Work Through the Power of  Kundalini Yoga and Meditation. “An evolutionary leap is happening in much of humanity. I have been exploring this form of yoga for many years, and I have never before seen students changing, evolving, and having such profound experiences as I have of late. In all confidence, I can safely say that this evolution will pick up speed over the next few years.”

A companion product also being released by Sounds True is Kundalini Meditation Music, a compilation album with seven uniquely focused chants, mantras, and gong tones selected for their beneficial effect on relationships, prosperity, health, and more. Infused with the pure energy and bliss of artists steeped in the Kundalini tradition, this album weaves heartfelt vocals with ancient and modern instrumentation to create a vibrational bridge that connects your deepest dreams and aspirations to reality.  It includes a booklet with full lyrics and practice instructions.  Featured musicians include Snatam Kaur, Harijiwan Khalso, Guruganesha Sing, Joseph Michael Levy (Gurunam), and others.  Listen to a sound clip…

 

Rick Jarow at Esalen for Workshop on Abundance

The Alchemy of Abundance: Pragmatic Processes for Challenging Times

A Weekend Workshop with Sounds True author Rick Jarow
August 7-9 2009, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, California

The Alchemy of Abundance invites you to move deeply into the creative intelligence of your own life, to catalyze change in your relationships, creative pursuits, finances, and spiritual understanding. 

Whether you have experienced financial crisis, loss of a loved one, loss of a job, or are otherwise in transition, this workshop offers a profound and pragmatic process for aligning with the forces of fate as well as the forces of freedom, with abundance and anguish, with health and illness.  For registration and more information, visit www.Esalen.org

Visit the online press kit for Alchemy of Abundance, new in paperback from Sounds True, August 2009.

The Practice of Abundance in Times of Shortage

 by Rick Jarow

The Practice of Abundance may initially seem like an extravagant anomaly in the times we are living through, but the contrary may actually be more accurate. Never has there been a more important time to understand exactly what Abundance is, and to develop and experience it in our daily lives.
           
If there is any genuine measure of Abundance it is this: the absence of anxiety. Abundance is not as much about having things, or even about creating desired circumstances as it is about being free: being unconditionally free to fully embrace the life we are given to live. Abundance is indeed a state of faith and trust, pure and simple. Faith and trust in “who or what” is less significant than the ability to open to the flow of Shakti (Qi, Spirit, Energy) in our lives; and to allow ourselves to be touched by its creative flow.
           
Once the intent to be an open vessel is clear and ongoing, the vast storehouse of limiting and conditioned belief systems (conscious and unconscious) can be swept away by the torrent of always available energy, bliss, freedom, and play that is the creation. Our job is to stay on focus, not merely on “I want” focus, but on “this wondrous play” focus. As each thorn of attachment and rancor is removed, situations that seemed hopeless or unsolvable reveal themselves in a new light. Here is where “Alchemy” comes into play. What was separate becomes synergized, what was dull, becomes brilliant; and the “state of the world” is revealed to be exactly what is necessary to take the next step.
           
Abundance does not preclude anguish, but it is just the most challenging situations (loss, separation, illness, etc.) that can be springboards to vocation, authenticity, healing, and radiance. Ongoing radiance can be received, and it changes the way we experience all aspects of our life in the world. The Alchemy of Abundance work ignites our possibilities to experience freedom, clarity, and compassion -  to work with any given life situation.

About the Author…
Rick Jarow, PhD, is a practicing alternative career counselor, an associate professor of religious studies at Vassar College, and author of Creating the Work You Love: Courage, Commitment, and Career; In Search of the Sacred: A Pilgrimage to Holy Places, and more. His acclaimed national seminars, based upon years of research and practice with lineage holders in both Eastern and Western traditions, focus on interfacing intuitive inner experience with effective action in the world. Visit Rick’s Blog  http://bit.ly/14cAd