Body Brain Love

Karen Rachels' "Body, Brain, Love: A Therapist's Workbook for Affect Regulation and Somatic Attachment," is a first-of-its-kind contribution to the dynamic and unfolding world of body-brain integration. This workbook accessibly integrates three critical areas of therapeutic work brought to us by the Decade of the Brain: 1) brain-based attachment theory, 2) the neuroscience of affect regulation, and 3) practical somatic skills to grow clients' brains. Therapists have the opportunity to view their own experiences through the lens of neuroscience including their own dysregulation and how their attachment strategies interweave with the attachment strategies of clients. By offering a more experiential and somatic way to absorb the information, learning is easy and immediately applicable for therapists seeking to effect transformation with clients. This book bridges mindfulness and neuroscience-based self-help books with the more academic, didactically-focused books for therapists. It uses a self-help format but is, in fact, for therapists. Post-tests, charts with clarifying exercises, specific self-focused exercises, games, case vignettes, and a complete session transcript all facilitate learning in both a cognitive and experiential manner. The author has brought this vital information to therapists in a style that easily teaches practitioners necessary and effective 21st Century skills which enhance compassion and self-compassion, and create authentic therapeutic relationships.

Originally published by Viking Penguin, 2014.

On the way to finding and creating vibrant, successful relationships, too many of us end up tangled in the same old patterns, tripped up by relationship habits that get in our way whether we "know better" or not. In Rewire Your Brain for Love, neuropsychologist and psychotherapist Marsha Lucas, PhD, helps you untangle those relationship snarls, bringing together the latest neuroscience with a practice consistently heralded by top academic institutions for its effectiveness in changing the brain: the practice of mindfulness meditation. Dr. Lucas’s clear, unintimidating, often laugh-out-loud style invites you to explore how the brain functions in relationships, helping you understand how your current relationship wiring developed and showing you how you can rewire your relationship brain through mindfulness meditation. A down-to-earth therapist and self-described neuroscience geek, Dr. Lucas has written a chapter-by-chapter guide with compassion, wisdom, and humor. In Rewire Your Brain for Love, she takes you on a journey through seven high-voltage relationship benefits—everything from keeping your fear from running the show to cultivating healthy, balanced empathy—and offers specific mindfulness practices to help bring those benefits into your life. With a few minutes of practice a day, you can change the way you interact with everyone around you . . . especially those closest to you. You can transform your brain from an enemy to an ally in all matters of the heart, creating more loving communication, building emotional resilience, and reducing overreactivity—not to mention enjoying better sex. You don’t have to become a monk, or a vegetarian, or spend hours contemplating your navel—you just need to update the relationship wiring of your brain. The simple practice of mindfulness can help get you there, with Dr. Lucas showing you how.

Make your marriage the best it can be by learning the secrets of proactive passion. Using the latest in brain research, This Is Your Brain in Love helps couples become Master Level Lovers by encouraging each mate to bring their healthiest, most balanced and joyful self to their marriage. Dr. Henslin speaks to the vital connection between spirituality and sexuality. He identifies the five types of lovers, with ground-breaking insights and effective solutions for the challenges presented by each: Scattered Lover Over-focused Lover Blue Mood Lover Agitated Lover Anxious Lover Filled with relatable stories and humor, this is not your boring brain book! Engaging and practical, Dr. Henslin provides an amazingly accurate, scientifically-based brain test to help spot typical brain imbalances. (And yes, most everyone has at least one!) Bonus material offers brain-researched strategies and new hope for women dealing with hormones and men struggling with sexual addictions.

We could all use a little more self-love and empathy - and let's make it FUN! "I love my brain!" is the first in a series of chuckle-causing, giggle-getting, tongue-twisting nursery rhymers teaching children about compassion, inclusion, and self-love. "There's so much inside it, and I can't deny it. My brain is so helpful and wise, I can't hide it!" Not only is "I love my brain!" a blast to read (parents are sure to love it as much as your kids), but it also lovingly features children with down syndrome, children with physical anomalies, children of varying races, and children who are gender-nonconforming. Many of the children in the book are children that the author/illustrator knows and loves (other books in the series will also feature real children) - showing ALL children that they are worthy of being in their very own book! "I love my brain!" will leave your child grinning from ear to ear and feeling love for exactly how they were made!

Boasting more than two million pageviews per month, TheAwkwardYeti.com has become a webcomic staple since its creation in 2012. In addition to tons of fan favorites, Heart and Brain contains more than 75 brand new comics that have never been seen online. From paying taxes and getting up for work to dancing with kittens and starting a band, readers everywhere will relate to the ongoing struggle between Heart and Brain.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER From a leading child psychologist comes this groundbreaking new understanding of children’s behavior, offering insight and strategies to support both parents and children. Nominated for Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Adam Grant, and Daniel H. Pink's Next Big Idea Club Over her decades as a clinical psychologist, Dr. Mona Delahooke has routinely counseled distraught parents who struggle to manage their children’s challenging, sometimes oppositional behaviors. These families are understandably focused on correcting or improving a child’s lack of compliance, emotional outbursts, tantrums, and other “out of control” behavior. But, as she has shared with these families, a perspective shift is needed. Behavior, no matter how challenging, is not the problem but a symptom; a clue about what is happening in a child’s unique physiologic makeup. In Brain-Body Parenting, Dr. Delahooke offers a radical new approach to parenting based on her clinical experience as well as the most recent research in neuroscience and child psychology. Instead of a “top-down” approach to behavior that focuses on the thinking brain, she calls for a “bottom-up” approach that considers the essential role of the entire nervous system, which produces children’s feelings and behaviors. When we begin to understand the biology beneath the behavior, suggests Dr. Delahooke, we give our children the resources they need to grow and thrive—and we give ourselves the gift of a happier, more connected relationship with them. Brain-Body Parenting empowers parents with tools to help their children develop self-regulation skills while also encouraging parental self-care, which is crucial for parents to have the capacity to provide the essential “co-regulation” children need. When parents shift from trying to secure compliance to supporting connection and balance in the body and mind, they unlock a deeper understanding of their child, encouraging calmer behavior, more harmonious family dynamics, and increased resilience.

This original and lucid account of the complexities of love and its essential role in human well-being draws on the latest scientific research. Three eminent psychiatrists tackle the difficult task of reconciling what artists and thinkers have known for thousands of years about the human heart with what has only recently been learned about the primitive functions of the human brain. A General Theory of Love demonstrates that our nervous systems are not self-contained: from earliest childhood, our brains actually link with those of the people close to us, in a silent rhythm that alters the very structure of our brains, establishes life-long emotional patterns, and makes us, in large part, who we are. Explaining how relationships function, how parents shape their child’s developing self, how psychotherapy really works, and how our society dangerously flouts essential emotional laws, this is a work of rare passion and eloquence that will forever change the way you think about human intimacy.