Every day new research attests to the link between spirituality and health. In Healing Zen, which focuses on the concept of "healing as wholeness," a nursing professor and Zen teacher demonstrates how the practice of awareness and meditation can help restore energy, build endurance, and suffuse our lives with compassion and joy. Drawing on her twenty years' experience as a nurse, Ellen Birx takes us on a deeply human journey through the nonlinear process of healing. Profound and inspiring stories are set alongside teachings from the Zen tradition to illustrate how wholeness is found in the midst of illness and disease. Wise and down to earth, Healing Zenshows how daily activities like eating, touching, and bathing are vital aspects of the art of healing, how pain and death are part of life, and how those who are healthy can learn from those who suffer. The author demonstrates how listening keeps us present in the moment; perseverance ensures progress and helps us cope with grief, recurrence, and other challenges; accepting our ordinariness and reconnecting with the flow of daily life give us the power to let go of the drive to excel. This beautifully packaged book, complete with an introduction to meditation and a resource list, makes a heartfelt gift for health professionals, caregivers, patients, or anyone struggling with the demands of life.

Sharing inspiring stories of her patients, a nurse of 20 years offers an elegant and practical book on Zen and the art of healing and helping. Line drawings.

"Zen - the art of living consciously - instructions for a modern and fulfilled attitude to life" Welcome to a world of mindfulness and inner harmony. Our lives are often hectic and overwhelming. My book "Zen - the art of living consciously - instructions for a modern and fulfilled attitude to life" can also help you to experience a calm and clear perspective and fill your life with peace and relaxation. This book is a comprehensive guide on how you can integrate Zen practices into your everyday life in order to lead a more conscious, fulfilled and balanced life. It is aimed at everyone who longs for inner peace and has the desire to bring more mindfulness into their daily life. Zen is a millennia-old practice that has its origins in the Buddhist tradition. It is about calming the mind, living in the present moment and looking at the world with clear and open eyes. Zen teaches us to appreciate life in its simplicity and beauty and to find inner peace, regardless of external circumstances. Learn the basic principles of Zen. You will learn how important it is to calm the mind and live in the here and now. Through simple but effective exercises, you will be shown how to integrate mindfulness into your everyday life. Breathing exercises, meditation techniques and the art of conscious walking are just some of the methods that will help you clear your mind and find inner peace. Learn to apply the principles of Zen in your daily activities. Whether you are working, eating or even cleaning - every moment offers the opportunity to practice mindfulness. You will learn how to transform routines into mindful rituals and thus bring more joy and satisfaction into your life. Nature plays a central role in Zen. Learn how connecting with nature can give you deeper insights and a sense of connection with the world around you. Walking in the forest, observing plants and animals and consciously experiencing the seasons are powerful methods of practicing mindfulness and finding inner peace. An essential part of Zen is the ability to let go. In this chapter, you will learn how to let go of negative thoughts and emotions to make room for positive experiences and feelings. Through practical exercises and meditations, you will be shown how to free yourself from stressful thought patterns and live a lighter, freer life. Zen can also have a profound effect on our interpersonal relationships. My book offers instructions on how to create more harmonious and fulfilling relationships through mindfulness and compassion. You will learn how to build a deeper connection with those around you through conscious listening, patience and empathy. Zen can have a positive impact on our physical and mental health. Learn how mindfulness and meditation can reduce stress, strengthen the immune system and contribute to an overall feeling of well-being. Practical tips and exercises show you how to integrate Zen practices into your health routine. This book encourages you to follow the path of Zen. It reminds you that Zen is a lifelong journey - a journey to greater awareness, peace and fulfillment. Ultimately, this book is more than just an introduction to Zen practice. It is a companion on your path to a more conscious, fulfilled and harmonious life. Immerse yourself in the art of Zen and discover the infinite possibilities that are hidden in every moment. Yours, Hermann Candahashi

Accessible and adaptable Japanese Buddhist rituals to infuse your life with purpose, healing, and gratitude when you need it most. How do we make and sustain meaning amidst the messy conditions of daily life? Personalized rituals can help us blossom like lotuses right in the mud of the present. On a pilgrimage she began after her mother’s death, author Paula Arai encountered numerous Japanese Buddhists who taught her the remarkable power of ritual to heal—practices you can adapt to your own cultural and personal circumstances. Applying principles of Zen practice, she offers stories and insights that illuminate how to nourish and reap a healing bounty of connection, joy, and compassion. Examples include how to: Relate to a late loved one as a “personal Buddha” who supports you Create a home altar to serve as a safe space to be vulnerable, face intense emotions, and experience a depth of warm gratitude that melts fear and anger Engage in daily tasks with attentiveness, intention, and creativity such that they become opportunities for body-mind integration Develop family rituals to celebrate relationship and mark transition Approach illness and grief with a purposeful sense of connection to life-and-death in its wholeness Like Marie Kondo's Shinto principles for decluttering, Paula Arai uses rituals influenced by Japanese Zen for personal and relational nourishment and spiritual healing.

Healing lies at the heart of Zen in the home, as Paula Arai discovered in her pioneering research on the ritual lives of Zen Buddhist laywomen. She reveals a vital stream of religious practice that flourishes outside the bounds of formal institutions through sacred rites that women develop and transmit to one another. Everyday objects and common materials are used in inventive ways. For example, polishing cloths, vivified by prayer and mantra recitation, become potent tools. The creation of beauty through the arts of tea ceremony, calligraphy, poetry, and flower arrangement become rites of healing. Bringing Zen Home brings a fresh perspective to Zen scholarship by uncovering a previously unrecognized but nonetheless vibrant strand of lay practice. The creativity of domestic Zen is evident in the ritual activities that women fashion, weaving tradition and innovation, to gain a sense of wholeness and balance in the midst of illness, loss, and anguish. Their rituals include chanting, ingesting elixirs and consecrated substances, and contemplative approaches that elevate cleaning, cooking, child-rearing, and caring for the sick and dying into spiritual disciplines. Creating beauty is central to domestic Zen and figures prominently in Arai’s analyses. She also discovers a novel application of the concept of Buddha nature as the women honor deceased loved ones as “personal Buddhas.” One of the hallmarks of the study is its longitudinal nature, spanning fourteen years of fieldwork. Arai developed a “second-person,” or relational, approach to ethnographic research prompted by recent trends in psychobiology. This allowed her to cultivate relationships of trust and mutual vulnerability over many years to inquire into not only the practices but also their ongoing and changing roles. The women in her study entrusted her with their life stories, personal reflections, and religious insights, yielding an ethnography rich in descriptive and narrative detail as well as nuanced explorations of the experiential dimensions and effects of rituals. In Bringing Zen Home, the first study of the ritual lives of Zen laywomen, Arai applies a cutting-edge ethnographic method to reveal a thriving domain of religious practice. Her work represents an important contribution on a number of fronts—to Zen studies, ritual studies, scholarship on women and religion, and the cross-cultural study of healing.

Healing our wounded Earth is not unrelated to healing our own personal wounds. The pains of the Earth and those of the individuals making up our Earth community cannot be separated. Thus the healing of our individual lives can become the basis of the healing of Earth. This book sheds light on Zen as a spiritual path that leads to healing - in the personal, social, and ecological dimensions of our being. If you are seeking a form of spiritual practice that addresses all three of these dimensions or simply seeking to deepen your understanding of the Zen path, it is written for you. If instead of fragmentation, disorientation, and vacuity, you seek wholeness, groundedness, and integrity in your life, it is written for you. Perhaps you, too, have come to realize that our global community is in a sad state of affairs, that we need to radically change how we live and relate to one another and to the Earth. You may already be engaged in some form of social or ecological action addressing these issues-and you may feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task. If you've been tempted to pessimism or have thrown up your hands in despair when your best efforts don't seem to make a dent, this book is for you, Healing Breath offers a way to integrate a spiritual path with active, socio-ecological engagement as the ground. This book also addresses another set of questions: can a Christian genuinely practice Zen? How is Zen practice compatible with a Christian faith commitment? To fully engage in a Zen practice, what kind of belief system is presupposed or required? How can spiritual practice in an Eastern tradition inform Christian life and understanding? In the process of describing the Zen way of life, Healing Breath will consider various Christian expressions, symbols, and practices - not as an apologetic for that belief system, but to show how they, too, point to the transformative and healing perspectives and experiences provided by Zen.

Popular psychology.

Can regular people really use the ancient self-healing art of qigong to rapidly improve their health and happiness? While studying at Columbia University, Anthony's life began to fall apart as he wrestled with anxiety, clinical depression, and low back pain. Everything changed for the better after he discovered the amazing art of qigong. This candid book is half memoir and half manifesto. Anthony holds nothing back as he recounts his health struggles and explains, in modern language, how everyone can get remarkable results with qigong. Inside you'll discover: The real secret to healing yourself with qigong. How to practice daily even if you have zero willpower. A practical overview of the history, philosophy, and theory of qigong. How to navigate the world of self-healing, whether you practice qigong, tai chi, meditation, or yoga. Get ready to feel fully alive as you find true healing with qigong!

In 1995, Jim Bedard, a martial artist and Zen student, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and given ten days to live. This is the story of how he used his spiritual strength to bring himself into full contact with a death sentence as well as with painful medical treatment, including chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant. It is also the inspiring story of how the faith of his family, Zen teacher, close friends, and the Buddhist community helped him. Bedard's story introduces us to Zen practices that can help us cope with emotional turmoil and physical pain. His words on compassion, on karma, on gratitude, on impermanence and the inevitability of death—all from a nonsmoking, meditating, aerobically fit vegetarian who became suddenly and "terminally" ill—are inspiring and sometimes funny. He explores, too, the fundamental question of suffering, its cause, and how the teachings of karma can help us accept illness, ultimately using it as an opportunity to deepen our spiritual lives.