Retox by Lauren Imparato

All quotes from Lauren's book

We must break with the old and take a conscious step into the new. 

Deconstruct who you think you are to reconstruct who you are to be.

Your thoughts, and from there your perceptions, reactions, and emotions, dictate the inner you.  Good thoughts move energy to the central channel; bad thoughts keep energy tangled in the side channels.  In real yoga, how you think is as important as how you move.

The human body was created as an optimized machine, one that knows how to sustain, heal, and protect itself, to replenish and revitalize itself, inside and out.

Mindset is a brain-muscle practice.  It is training the mind to work the way you want it to, so you can feel and live the way you dream of.

Correct perceptions are simple to grasp – when you have them, you are happy, healthy, successful.  Incorrect perceptions, on the other hand, are intangible mental assessments that form an experience that makes you suffer, mildly or intensely.

Trust is a belief that it will all work out.  It is a sign that you know you can bend without breaking.

Yoga was never, ever intended as a tool for relaxation; rather, it’s an instrument for energy cultivation.  Yoga… is meant to harvest and increase your natural energy. The poses… are designed to concentrate and amplify your innate energy reserve.

Stress is the new happy. We as a society have an almost sick obsession with stress, wearing mental STDs like a badge of honor on our chests, a proof of our self-worth and consistent contribution to humanity.

Most stress and anxiety are about control.

When you feel your life is not where you want it to be, your external experience is simply mirroring your internal intangible body.  If we cure the outside, we heal the inside.

I Have To often prevents you from actually being you.

When we have I Have To, we interrupt the natural succession of events in our life, and instead impose what our intellectual, hypersensitive modern mind thinks needs to happen.

Your eyes may see the world, but your mind perceives it. It is these perceptions that create your you, your world, your reality.

Today is happening to convert itself into the past.  Tomorrow will happen so you can live in the present.  Yesterday happened so you can do it all even better. 

When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron

All quotes from Pema's book

Every day we could think about the aggression in the world, in New York, Los Angeles, Halifax, Taiwan, Beirut, Kuwait, Somalia, Iraq, everywhere.  All over the world, everybody always strikes out at the enemy, and the pain escalates forever.  Every day we could reflect on this and ask ourselves, “Am I going to add to the aggression in the world?”  Every day, at the moment when things get edgy, we can just ask ourselves, “Am I going to practice peace, or am I going to war?”  

What we habitually regard as obstacles are not really our enemies, but rather our friends.  What we call obstacles are really the way the world and our entire experience teach us where we’re stuck.

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.  To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh.  To live is to be willing to die over and over again.  From the awakened point of view, that’s life.  Death is wanting to hold on to what you have and to have every experience confirm you and congratulate you and make you feel completely together.

Overcoming Childhood Trauma by Helen Kennerley

All quotes from Helen's book

Rather than wondering whether or not your experiences fit a definition of "abuse", remember that abusive experiences vary widely and, instead, try to piece together an understanding of how your experiences affect you today. 

Our experience, at any one time, reflects several elements: the way we feel, how we think and what we do, and the influences of our biological state and our environment.

Some memories  haunt us because they have not been "laid to rest"; they have not been emotionally processed, and so the impact of them remains very immediate.

We fail to process memories emotionally when we avoid reflecting on the whole context of an experience with regard to our thoughts and feelings and what they event meant to us.

Many survivors of abuse carry a heavy burden of assumed guilt.

Self-blame often represents an old belief system.

The sensations of anger and anxiety are similar, and it is especially easy to confuse anger and fear if you have a fear of anger.

Understanding an action doesn't mean that you have to accept it or that it was excusable.

You don't have to be hostile in order to confront someone.

The sort of belief systems that can be destructive are those that prevent you from respecting, protecting or valuing yourself or others.

Assertiveness means communicating your needs in a way which is not aggressive, non passive, nor manipulative.

Trust is usually something that we give to a degree and which should be under constant review.

The Prime by Dr Kulreet Chaudhary

All quotes from Kulreet's book

Being overweight is a biochemical issue, not a personality flaw. 

Turning to One Another by Margaret J Wheatley

All quotes from Margaret's book

We seek consolation in everything except each other. The entire world seems hypnotized in the wrong direction -- encouraging us to love things rather than people, to embrace everything new without noticing what's lost or wrong, to choose fear instead of peace.  We promise ourselves everything except each other.

No matter how beaten down we are -- by poverty, by oppressive leadership, by tragedy -- the human spirit is nearly impossible to destroy.  We humans keep wanting to learn, to improve things, and to care about each other.

The very simple process of council takes us to a place of deep connection with each other.  And, as we slow down the conversation to a pace that encourages thinking, we become wise and courageous actors in our world.

I can only change how I act if I stay aware of my beliefs and assumptions.  Thoughts always reveal themselves in behavior.

There is no power equal to a community discovering what it cares about.

Observe how simple conversations that originate deep in our caring give birth to powerful actions that change lives and restore hope to the future. 

Whatever we know, it is not sufficient.  We can't see enough of the whole.  We can't figure it out alone.  Somebody sees something that the rest of us might need.

We need each other's help to become better listeners.

As we work together to restore hope to the future, we need to include a new and strange ally -- our willingness to be disturbed.  Our willingness to have our beliefs and ideas challenged by what others think.

We can't be creative if we refuse to be confused.  Change always starts with confusion; cherished interpretations must dissolve to make way for the new.

The future comes from where we are now. It materializes from the actions, values, and beliefs we're practicing now.  We're creating the future everyday, but what we choose to do.  If we want a different future, we have to take responsibility for what we are doing in the present.

The gap between knowing and doing is only bridged by the human heart.

Tyranny starts with the belief that some people are more human than others.

We can turn away, or we can turn toward.  Those are the only two choices we have.

It's important to notice that the ritual isn't sacred, it just opens the door to the experience. 

Sacred is nothing special.  It's just life, revealing its true nature.

Sacred experiences always offer gentle reassurance that everything is all right, just as it is.

Conversation is the practice of freedom.  As we think together, as we question things, as we are stirred to act to change things, we exercise our innate right to be free.

The Misleading Mind by Karuna Cayton

We need to begin with a realistic view of our situation in life. 

Create a different kind of relationship with our problems. 

Guide to Intuitive Healing by Dr Judith Orloff

All quotes from Judith's book

We are the keepers of our own healing.  We are the keepers of an intuitive intelligence so powerful it can tell us how to  heal.

Visionless, too many caregivers fail to grasp that the healing of ourselves, our patients, our beloved planet is contingent on the awakening of our compassion, intuitive foresight, and humility before the mystery of Spirit.

We are all of one heart, inextricably bound.  For each of us, if we want to relieve illness or despair, love must be the lens through which we view ourselves and the world.  The specifics vary form life to life, but the task remains the same.

Your beliefs set the tone for healing.  Positive attitudes accentuate growth, negative attitudes impair it.  Honesty is required to flush out counterproductive perceptions so ingrained you may not realize how pernicious they are.

Our beliefs trigger biochemical responses.  No organ system stands apart from our thoughts.

Dreams do heal, but first you must retrieve them.

Deep healing is a state of being, graced, not an entitlement.  Humility is required.

Illness can be a catalyst for developing self-compassion, softening our egos, trusting our intuition, defining what's truly important to us.

Phase one of prevention is to back track to the energy origins of your illness.  Phase two is to discover what actions to take to correct the imbalance.

A dream's tone can be as restorative as its content.

Responsibility for clear communication goes both ways. 

From the first instant you set eyes on someone, your healing unfolds.  In sacred partnerships intuitive currents are created, enriching with time.

You are not without power.  Your responses can be both tactical and spiritual.  Tactics:  Be Zen.  Keep your center.  Think aikido: The more aggressive your opponent, the more yielding you become.  Use his force to your advantage.  Don't meet resistance with a clenched fist.  This has nothing to do with "giving in", surrender, capitulation, being dominated.  Disarm your opponent by surprise.  First, show appreciation…. Stress the positives.

Intuitive truth 1: The more love and consciousness you bring to your body when it is ill, the better change you'll have of mending it.  Intuitive truth 2: if you resist discomfort, it will persist.  If you soften around it, it will lessen.

Intuitive healing is always body-interactive.

Being intuitively receptive doesn't guarantee having the power to change everything you see.

There are possibilities within illness that you may not anticipate.  Who of us would ever choose disease?  Still, if it is upon you, being to look at it as a form of healing not punishment.

Witnessing the absence of spirit acutely accentuates awareness of what spirit is.

Emotions -- all of them -- are the precious nuts and bolts of the spiritual journey.

Part of healing is reaching out. If you can't love yourself (and those times may come), you must let others love you until you can.

What anybody else says is right for you is irrelevant if you don't feel it yourself.

Realize how timeless you are, despite your body's chronology.

Don't lead a lifestyle based on assuming others are out to get you.  This perpetuates fear.

The arch enemy of intuition is lack of sensitivity.

Sensitivity is learning, at your own pace, to remain wide open.

The solidly you inhabit your body, the less you'll wobble when adversity arrives.

Sitting in meditation is a lifeline to your center, to the earth.  By calming the mind  you can realign with your essence.

Your success in centering doesn't ultimately lie in any one action.  It encompasses an entire lifestyle -- for instance, the way your home feels to you (mine is filled with plants and books, which ground me) or your willingness to improvise according to your body's instincts (when I'm insecure, my body likes to rock back and forth, so I go with it).  These sensibilities, when clarified, set a nurturing tone for your life.

The spaces between thoughts are where your spirit wants to be discovered.

You can return to your spirit to reinforce who you really are -- not just the self you present to the world but that part of you that is timeless.

Codependency is taking inappropriate responsibility for the emotions or behaviors of others -- sometimes caring so much for people that you forget to care for yourself.

As an empath you must remain as conscious of your motivations as possible.

By staying on top of your emotions, you can avoid attracting what you're unresolved about.

Don't allow resentments or insecurities to accumulate.  What you are you will summon toward you.

Daily life is experimental ground, a place to practice centering.  War or peace?  Always a choice to be made.

The language of dream-intuition can save you.  Stay aware.  Know your vocabulary.  Act quickly on messages you receive.  Doing so buys you time.  Get to the crux of what's off kilter before it has a chance to manifest.

Rise Sister Rise by Rebecca Campbell

All quotes from Rebecca's book

Traumas from past lives have the potential to influence who you are today if they are not processed and released.

It is time we stop carrying around [our] ancient wounds and free ourselves to be who we truly are, not bound by who we are afraid to be.

Our intention when working with past lives should always be to notice without attachment.

Don't let your ego get in the way of unshackling your soul.

We need to change our belief that in order to be productive we need to be busy.

In order to allow our true nature the space and nourishment it needs to rise, we must be vigilant at creating an intimate relationship with ourselves.  We must study ourselves.

No one gets to say who you are but you.

There are 84 meridian points on the top of the mouth that are stimulated when we chant.  These stimulate the hypothalamus, which stimulates the pineal gland, which stimulates the entire glandular system.

When you are honest about your life you give someone else permission to be honest about theirs.

Often the path that is yours to walk is the exact one that you do not feel prepared to walk.  Walk it anyway.

Often what is ours to do feels more like a challenge than a choice.  Choose it anyway.

Passion is not possible without anger being given the change to roam free.

Beneath every control freak is a fear of letting go, a fear of not being supported, held, and looked after.

It is impossible to trust and control at the same time. 

You are not here to save the world.  No matter what kind of mission you have, the only person you are here to save is yourself. 

The Authentic Life by Ezra Bayda

All quotes from Ezra's book

Whenever we feel frustrated in any way, if we simply ask, “How is it supposed to be?” --- we’ll see that our discomfort is based, at least in part, on the entitled belief that we should feel different, namely better. 

No matter what is going on or how we feel about it, the essence of spiritual practice is to honestly acknowledge what is happening in the moment and stay present with our experience of it. 

In spiritual practice, to know we don’t know and yet keep practicing is the way we go deeper.

Don’t mistake naming for knowing.

Health is not the absence of illness; it is the state of being undefeated by illness.

Almost all of our difficulties in relationships come from wanting people to be different than they are.

Courage is not about being unafraid.  Courage is the willingness to be with fear.

Don’t try to change; just be aware.

“Just let it go” is more a philosophy than an option.  If it were possible to “just let go,” we’d all know freedom right now.  Often our only real choice is to just let it be. 

The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz

All quotes from Barry's book

The fact that some choice is good doesn't necessarily mean that more choice is better. 

Not all choice enhances freedom. 

The Inside Out Revolution by Michael Neill

All quotes from Michael's book

Ironically, what we`re seeking is all around us all the time.  Right where you`re sitting now is the infinite whole made manifest in the divine specific.  You could no sooner be `not enough` than a tree could be the wrong color.  And you don`t have to become worthy of love, because love is what you're made of. 

I know two things for sure: I seem to be part of a larger whole, and I`m not in charge of how things unfold.  If you want to call that larger whole or great unfolding `life` or `the universe` or `spirit`, I`m okay with that.  If you want to call it `God`, I`m okay with that too. 

Knowing that I`m feeling my thinking and not my life makes all the difference in the world. 

Feelings are real but the way you`re seeing your life isn`t. it`s just a trick of the mind, like a mirage.

One of the great ironies of the human condition is that we seem most motivated to make dramatic changes at precisely the moments when we`re least equipped to do so.

No matter how hard a surfer works, the ocean is doing most of the heavy lifting. 

You’re not the pilot on this mission.  You’re the plane.

In any situation we have a nearly infinite range of choices.

Everything the body does is designed to return itself to a state of natural health and equilibrium.

By recognizing three fundamental principles at play behind every human experience, it becomes possible to tap into a deeper intelligence behind life that informs our mental health, supplies us with ongoing wisdom and guidance, and allows us to unleash incredible creative power into the world.

Experience always follows thought, regardless of what’s going around.

Our endless pursuit of “not this” is driven by our deepest fear: that there’s something wrong with us and we’re not enough.

There is an energy and intelligence behind life.  This ever present but is not “in control” – it has no inherent morality or apparent point of view.

We create our individual experience of reality via the vehicle of thought.

There is no end of you finding beauty, love and understanding in this world.

The more you look in the direction of what’s creating experience and away from the content of that experience the easier it is to hear the quiet wisdom that can lead to a quantum leap of consciousness.

We’re only ever one new thought away from a completely different experience of being alive.

Once you realize that it’s only your over thinking that you’re experiencing, the thinking loses much of its hold over you.

The moment we stop fighting with ourselves and others about what to think and instead focus on the miracle we are thinking, the details of life begin to work themselves out, all by themselves.

We’re living in the feeling of our thinking, not the feeling of the world.

Stress, fear, and difficulty are perceived to be primary characteristics of the situation, not of our own thinking.

The nature of thought is both creative and arbitrary.

Instead of trying to explain why we think what we think by looking for evidence in the world or in our upbringing, we recognize that mind is not so much a camera as a paintbrush and, consciously or unconsciously, we are the artist.

We don’t experience money; we experience our thinking about money.

Daring Greatly by Brene Brown

All quotes from Brene's book

The level to which we protect ourselves from being vulnerable is a measure of our fear and disconnection.

When we spend our lives waiting until we're perfect or bulletproof before we walk into the arena, we ultimately sacrifice relationships and opportunities that may not be recoverable, we squander our precious time, and we turn our backs on our gifts, those unique contributions that only we can make.  Perfect and bulletproof are seductive, but they don't exist in the human experience.  We must walk into the arena, whatever it may be -- a new relationship, an important meeting, our creative process, or a difficult family conversation -- with courage and the willingness to engage.

When failure is not an option we can forget about learning, creativity, and innovation.

Worrying about scarcity is our culture's version of post-traumatic stress.  It happens when we've been through too much, and rather than coming together to heal (which requires vulnerability), we're angry and scared and at each other's throats. 

To believe vulnerability is weakness is to believe that feeling is weakness.

Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity.  It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity.  If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.

We dismiss vulnerability as weakness only when we realize that we've confused feeling with failing and emotions with liabilities.

We have to be vulnerable if we want more courage.

We judge people in areas where we're vulnerable to shame, especially picking folks who are doing worse than we're doing.  If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people's choices. If I feel  good about my body, I don’t go around making fun of other people's weight or appearance.  We're hard on each other because we're using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived shaming deficiency. 

Perfectionism is not the path that leads us to our gifts and to our sense of purpose; it's the hazardous detour.

Perfectionism is a defensive move.  It's the belief that if we do things perfectly and look perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, shame.

Perfectionism is not self-improvement. Perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval.

Perfectionism is a form of shame.  Where we struggle with perfectionism, we struggle with shame. 

Perfectionism is exhausting because hustling is exhausting. It's a never-ending performance.

One of the most universal numbing strategies is what I call crazy-busy…. We are a culture of people who've bought into the idea that if we stay busy enough, the truth of our lives won't catch up with us. 

Oversharing is not vulnerability.  In fact, it often results in disconnection, distrust, and disengagement. 

Using vulnerability is not the same thing as being vulnerable; it's the opposite -- it's armor. 

When we stop caring about what people think, we lose our capacity for connection.  When we become defined by what people think, we lose our willingness to be vulnerable.

A leader is anyone who holds her-or himself accountable for finding potential in people and processes.

Shame can only rise so far in any system before people disengage to protect themselves.  When we're disengaged, we don't show up, we don't contribute, and we stop caring.

Blame is simply the discharging of pain and discomfort. We blame when we're uncomfortable and experience pain -- when we're vulnerable, angry, hurt, in shame, grieving.  There's nothing productive about blame.

Victory is not getting good feedback, avoiding giving difficult feedback, or avoiding the need for feedback.  Instead it's taking off the armor, showing up, and engaging.

Wholehearted parenting: daring to be the adults we want our children to be. 

Compassion and connection -- the very things that give purpose and meaning to our lives -- can only be learned if they are experienced. 

Shame loves prerequisites.

If we want to cultivate worthiness in our children, we need to make sure they know that they belong and that their belonging is unconditional.

In its original Latin form, sacrifice means to make sacred or to make holy.