Being True to Life: Poetic Paths to Personal Growth [Paperback]

David Richo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 2009

Psychotherapist David Richo offers a fresh and inspiring approach to personal growth: we can use the process of writing and reading poetry to move toward greater self-understanding and emotional healing. Even if you’ve never written a poem before, you can learn to use poetry to explore your feelings, your relationships, your childhood, your dreams, and more.

Richo explains how the creative, intuitive process of making poetry can help us gain access to our deepest truths, leading us to make connections and explore experiences in a new way, beyond the constraints of everyday language. This book offers a range of practical exercises for getting started, as well as guidance on how to read poetry in a way that can be personally transformative.

Being True to Life shows us that poetry is not reserved for a few specially talented individuals but is a deeply human activity that anyone can tap into for greater clarity and insight into life’s struggles, beauty, and mysteries.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Fascinating. Richo’s comments on reading poetry are well worth savoring.”—SpiritualityandPractice.com

About the Author

David Richo, PhD, is a therapist and author who leads popular workshops on personal and spiritual growth. He is known for drawing on Buddhist thought, poetry, and Jungian perspectives in his work. He is the author of How to Be an Adult in Relationships and The Five Things We Cannot Change. He lives in Santa Barbara and San Francisco, California.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Shambhala; 1 edition (December 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590307429
• ISBN-13: 978-1590307427
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #53,969 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Richo, PhD, is a therapist and author who leads popular workshops on personal and spiritual growth.

He received his BA in psychology from Saint John's Seminary in Brighton, Massachusetts, in 1962, his MA in counseling psychology from Fairfield University in 1969, and his PhD in clinical psychology from Sierra University in 1984. Since 1976, Richo has been a licensed marriage, family, and child counselor in California. In addition to practicing psychotherapy, Richo teaches courses at Santa Barbara City College and the University of California Berkeley at Berkeley, and has taught at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, Pacifica Graduate Institute, and Santa Barbara Graduate Institute. He is a clinical supervisor for the Community Counseling Center in Santa Barbara, California.

Known for drawing on Buddhism, poetry, and Jungian perspectives in his work, Richo is the author of How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving and The Five Things We Cannot Change: And the Happiness We Find in Embracing Them. He has also written When the Past Is Present: Healing the Emotional Wounds that Sabotage our Relationships, Shadow Dance: Liberating the Power and Creativity of Your Dark Side, The Power of Coincidence: How Life Shows Us What We Need to Know, and Being True to Life: Poetic Paths to Personal Growth.

Richo lives in Santa Barbara and San Francisco.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Writing as Discovery, December 21, 2009

By 

Lyn Hopper "library/nonprofit consultant, poe... - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Being True to Life: Poetic Paths to Personal Growth (Paperback)

Writing is discovery, and psychotherapist David Richo affirms this with his wonderful new book. I believe poetry is the written form that brings us closest to the unconscious in us, and it can be as revealing as our dreams. I have taken Richo's suggestion and begun writing my journal in poetry-length lines.

Richo says, "We also want to find out what our own inner self wants to reveal to us in the midst of the clatter of the world. This takes letting go of our manic lifestyle long enough to pause and be silent so that we can hear the chords of our own being above the cacophony of our distracting and seductive world." And he says, "Poetry is too intimate to be nailed down in strictly linear terms. Reading a poem is more like comprehending a multifaceted totality all at once than like following logical steps to a single conclusion. It is more like entering spirals of possibilities than like walking a straight line to a single destination."

As I read this book, I encountered over and over things that resonated with me-"spirals of possibilities" not the least of them. (My new business blog is called "Spiraling," and I use a nautilus as a sort of logo.) Imagine my surprise when I visited Richo's website ([...]/) and found a free downloadable book with a nautilus as the cover illustration! Positively synchronistic.

This book is a gem for anyone who writes poetry, who wants to write poetry, or who just wants to better understand the self. Richo provides solid guidance and writing and meditation (visualization) exercises that will help the reader uncover the poem that wants to write itself in the service of healing.

(from [...], 12/21/09)

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poetic as Medicine, March 19, 2011

By 

Jack Weber (Hawaii) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Being True to Life: Poetic Paths to Personal Growth (Paperback)

A moving exploration of poetry's healing capacities, offering tools and insight to employ poetry's capacities to help us uncover, process, and release childhood wounds as well as to find inspiration and meaning in everyday life. As a primary healthcare physician and having spent the last 20 years dedicated to exploring and sharing poetry as a profoundly healing art (which does not receive its due praise in modern times)--I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in taking a deeper plunge into holistic healing...engaging your own creative juices to move beyond where the techniques of medicine can go no further. Enjoy this journey by a most competent, grounded, and inspirational author David Richo.

--Jack A. Weber, L.Ac., Dipl. A.C.
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