The Ethics of Caring: Finding Professional Right Relationship with Clients

ORDER FORM or use QR code

Kylea Taylor is a senior teacher with GTT. In 1995 she published The Ethics of Caring: Honoring the Web of Life in Our Professional Healing Relationships. Twenty-two years later she has re-organized, re-written, changed the subtitle provided many new quotes and references, and added 80+ pages.

The Ethics of Caring presents a model that first suggests and supports self-compassion, then gently guides self-reflection about unconscious countertransference that often occurs in the main areas of human life.

The Ethics of Caring is a unique ethics text designed to guide the self-compassionate self-reflection of both students and professionals (therapists, clergy, hospice workers, bodyworkers, educators, medical professionals, mentors, and other caregivers) toward understanding human motivations and countertransference, finding professional right relationship, and making good choices with clients. Highly recommended for Holotropic Breathwork facilitators and sitters.

Kindle version
Available in Spanish here

Read a review.

Wide Open Door: The Twelve Steps, Spiritual Tradition, and the New Psychology

ORDER FORM or use QR code

Tav Sparks talks about The Wide Open Door

“There is so far no work that bridges traditional recovery and the transpersonal perspective. There is nothing that introduces one to the other, or translates the language of each into the metaphor of the other, so that both become understandable to seekers interested in their synergistic possibilities.

It has long been my belief that these new observations in science, psychology, and spirituality are the pathways to enlarging our understanding of the true power and depth of Twelve Step practice. But thus far there has been no framework, no language, method, and structure to bring these disciplines together. Therefore, toward that end, I have written The Wide Open Door. First and foremost, it is an effort to validate and support those recovery seekers who feel that there really may be “something more” for them than what they have previously discovered about recovery. I have tried to write it in such a way that those seekers unfamiliar with this new perspective will be able to relate to it without much difficulty.”

Through Thunder: An Epic Poem of Death and Rebirth

ORDER FORM or use QR code

86 pages

In the midst of his stormy years and dark night of the soul, twenty years ago, Tav Sparks spontaneously wrote this “epic” poem, Through Thunder. Epic spiritual poems in ancient literature provided experiences in their times akin to our most profound experiences of film today. Through the poet-director’s image, sound, and emotion, the reader or listener might find connection to inspire or affirm both the struggle and the transcendence. Through Thunder begs to be read aloud. It feels and sounds us through the archetypal “Hero’s Journey” described by Joseph Campbell. It draws the perennial, turbulent, death-rebirth map of psychospiritual awakening, a process experienced by the mystics of all religions and an archetype very present in our world today.

The Power Within: Becoming, Being, and the Holotropic Paradigm

ORDER FORM or use QR code

Explores the healing power of non-ordinary states of consciousness and the nature of the inner healing principle in Holotropic Breathwork.

In a work full of wisdom and humanity, Tav Sparks explores the interface of consciousness, personal growth, numinous experiences, and the evolution of the collective psyche. Drawing on his thirty-plus years of experience with Holotropic Breathwork and his interest in the perennial philosophy,

Sparks shows us how true fulfilment for any individual can be found by turning inward, through searching the core of our own deepest selves, using a powerful breathwork practice. Sparks positions this method of self-exploration as part of an emerging “holotropic paradigm” with revolutionary implications for humanity in the twenty-first century.

346 pages, $28
published by Muswell Hill Press

Reviews for The Power Within:

The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology

Live the Process

New Age Journal Blog

The Stormy Search for the Self: A Guide to Personal Growth through Transformational Crisis

CURRENTLY NOT AVAILABLE – ON BACKORDER

ORDER FORM or use QR code

Many people are undergoing a profound personal transformation associated with spiritual opening. Under favorable circumstances, this process results in emotional healing, a radical shift in values, and a profound awareness of the mystical dimension of existence. For some, these changes are gradual and relatively smooth, but for others they can be so rapid and dramatic that they interfere with effective everyday functioning, creating tremendous inner turmoil. Unfortunately, many traditional health-care professionals do not recognize the positive potential of these crises; they often see them as manifestations of mental disease and repsond with stigmatizing labels, suppressive drugs, and even institutionalization.

In The Stormy Search for the Self, Christina and Stanislav Grof, the world’s foremost authorities on the subject of spiritual emergence, draw on years of dramatic personal and professional experience with transformative states to explore these “spiritual emergencies,” altered states so powerful they threaten to overwhelm the individual’s oridinary reality. This book will provide insights, assurances, and practical suggestions for those who are experiencing or have experienced such a crisis, for their families and friends, and for mental-health professionals. It is also a valuable guide for anyone involved in personal transformation whose experiences, though generally untraumatic, may still at times be bewildering or disorienting.

Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis

CURRENTLY NOT AVAILABLE – ON BACKORDER

ORDER FORM or use QR code

272 pages

From Spiritual Emergency to Healing and Rebirth

Increasing numbers of people involved in personal transformation are experiencing spiritual emergencies — crises when the process of growth and change becomes chaotic and overwhelming. Individuals experiencing such episodes may feel that their sense of identity is breaking down, that their old values no longer hold true, and that the very ground beneath their personal realities is radically shifting. In many cases, new realms of mystical and spiritual experience enter their lives suddenly and dramatically, resulting in fear and confusion. They may feel tremendous anxiety, have difficulty coping with their daily lives, jobs, and relationships, and may even fear for their own sanity.

Unfortunately, much of modern psychiatry has failed to distinguish these episodes from mental illness. As a result, transformational crises are often suppressed by routine psychiatric care, medication, and even institutionalization.

However, there is a new perspective developing among many mental health professionals and those studying spiritual development that views such crises as transformative breakthroughs that can hold tremendous potential for physical and emotional healing. When understood and treated in a supportive manner, spiritual emergencies can become gateways to higher levels of functioning and new ways of being.

In this book, foremost psychologists, psychiatrists, and spiritual teachers address the following questions: What is spiritual emergency? What is the relationship between spirituality, “madness,” and healing? What forms does spiritual emergency take? What are the pitfalls — and promises — of spiritual practice? How can people in spiritual emergency be assisted by family, friends, and professionals?

This groundbreaking work reveals that within the crisis of spiritual emergency lies the promise of spiritual emergence and renewal.

The Cosmic Game: Explorations at the Frontier of Human Consciousness

ORDER FORM or use QR code

303 pages

In this, his culminating work, the leading international figure in consciousness research masterfully synthesizes his vast findings, drawing not only upon psychedelic therapy and Holotropic Breathwork, but also from literature, cross-cultural studies, ancient mystical sources and psychological data, resulting in a profound consolidation and articulation of what is now known about nonordinary states of consciousness.

The Cosmic Game discusses the broadest philosophical, metaphysical and spiritual insights gleaned in Grof’s research concerning human nature and reality, addressing the most fundamental questions human beings have asked about the nature of existence since time immemorial.

Insights from research into nonordinary states of consciousness portray existence as an astonishing play of the cosmic creative principle that transcends time, space, linear causality, and polarities of every kind and suggest an identity of the individual psyche in its furthest reaches with the universal creative principle and the totality of existence. This identity of the human being with the Divine is the ultimate secret that lies at the core of all great spiritual traditions.

“What moves this book into the status of a classic is that it is in substantial agreement with the world’s great wisdom and spiritual traditions. This modern corroboration of the perennial philosophy is a stunning achievement and deserves publication to the widest audiences.” — Ken Wilber, author of Up from Eden: A Transpersonal View of Human Evoution and The Atman Project: A Transpersonal View of Human Development

Beyond The Brain

ORDER FORM or use QR code

Beyond the Brain seriously challenges the existing neurophysiological models of the brain. After three decades of extensive research on those non-ordinary states of consciousness induced by psychedelic drugs and by other means, Grof concludes that our present scientific world view is as inadequate as many of its historical predecessors. In this pioneering work, he proposes a new model of the human psyche that takes account of his findings.

Grof includes in his model the recollective level, or the reliving of emotionally relevant memories, a level at which the Freudian framework can be useful. Beyond that is perinatal level in which the human unconscious may be activated to a reliving of biological birth and confrontation with death. How birth experience influences an individual’s later development is a central focus of the book.

The most serious challenge to contemporary psycho-analytic theory comes from a delineation of the transpersonal level, or the expansion of consciousness beyond the boundaries of time and space.

Grof makes a bold argument that understanding of the perinatal and transpersonal levels changes much of how we view both mental illness and mental health. His reinterpretation of some of the most agonizing aspects of human behavior proves thought provoking for both laypersons and professional therapists.