Living with Your Heart Wide Open: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Unworthiness, Inadequacy, and Shame [Paperback]

Steve Flowers MFT (Author), Bob Stahl PhD (Author), Tara Brach PhD (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2011

The way we talk to ourselves is often unkind and filled with self-judgments. These overly harsh self-criticisms can make us feel unworthy and incomplete. What if what you really need is not higher standards for yourself, but greater self-compassion? In Living with Your Heart Wide Open, you’ll discover how mindfulness and self-compassion can free you from the thoughts and beliefs that create feelings of inadequacy and learn to open your heart to the loving-kindness within you and in the world around you. 

 

Based in Western psychotherapy and Buddhist psychological principles, this book guides you past painful and self-limiting beliefs about yourself and toward a new perspective of nonjudgmental awareness and acceptance of who you are, just as you are. You’ll receive gentle guidance in mindfulness and compassion practices that will lead you away from unproductive, self-critical thoughts and help you live more freely and fearlessly, with your heart wide open.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The practice of mindfulness is also helpful in ridding oneself of feelings of inadequacy, self-loathing, and a constant sense of isolation according to the authors, both of whom have founded and directed mindfulness-based stress-reduction programs across the country. Pulling from Western psychology and Buddhist thought, Flowers and Stahl explore the concept of self-authorship and help readers, through mindfulness practices, to break free of defeating stories and experience insight and self-compassion. Topics of interest include why pleasing others doesn’t work in the long run and how self-improvement efforts can be a trap. Clear and comprehensive, this book is a valuable addition to mindfulness literature.

Review

“A bold new book that shows how engaging with mindful awareness and compassion can allow us to step out from behind conditional and limiting self-driven narratives and into a more openhearted embrace of our lives.”
—Zindel V. Segal, PhD, author of The Mindful Way Through Depression

“How we focus our attention can transform our lives and rewire our brains toward a healthier, more compassionate way of being. Living with Your Heart Wide Open is a practical, step-by-step guide that teaches us how to cultivate our awareness so that we can develop more resilient minds and enjoy lives of inner clarity and kindness. Freedom from the prison of a life on automatic pilot rests within these powerful and poetic pages.” —Daniel J. Siegel, MD, author of Mindsight

“Living with Your Heart Wide Open is both healing and awakening. By questioning and transforming the many false and negative ways we understand ourselves, we find the joy of liberation.”
—Jack Kornfield, PhD, author of The Wise Heart, A Path with Heart, and After the Ecstasy, the Laundry

“The way you talk to yourself, including that murmur in the back of your head, continually shapes your outlook, your mood, and the circuits in your brain. In a warm, down-to-earth, and wonderfully useful way, Living with Your Heart Wide Open shows you how to change that storyline for the better for greater confidence and happiness, resilience in the face of stress, and peace of mind.”
—Rick Hanson, PhD, author of Buddha's Brain

“A bedside book for the heart. A daily reading in healing for the part of us we have put aside for later. A letting-go of our forgetfulness of how very beautiful we essentially are. A turning toward oneself with loving-kindness.”
—Stephen Levine, author of Healing into Life and Death, Who Dies?, and Meetings at the Edge

“It has been said that the teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his or her wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own. If you want to access your inner wisdom, this is a book you want by your side. If you want to live in accord with your higher power, if you want to be inspired by your experience of life, you should know that this is a book filled with reliable and authentic support.”
—John Robbins, author The Food Revolution, The New Good Life, and Diet For a New America

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 178 pages
• Publisher: New Harbinger Publications; 1 edition (July 1, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1572249358
• ISBN-13: 978-1572249356
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 0.5 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #64,613 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Living with Your Heart Wide Open July 4, 2011

By Carolyn

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I'm so grateful for this book! I ended it feeling as though I had attended an extended meditation retreat with many tools to help free me from tendencies to self-judge and to nurture self-compassion. The authors provide many grounded explanations and examples of the origins of the deficient-self and how, in applying mindfulness to body, mind, and emotions, our relationships to ourselves and others are transformed into greater love and service. Having read many books on the applicability of mindfulness, I believe this is one of the most comprehensive and clearly written with much heart. The teachings presented are universal and touch the humanness in each of us.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A gentle and important workbook! July 1, 2011

By Catherine

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I just purchased the book and am enjoying working through it. Thanks to Bob and Steve - your work is always so "reader friendly" - connecting to the everyday experiences and inner troubles that lay dormant until your words gently take one to an ah-ha experience and allows the reader to grow from there.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Mindful life improvement September 2, 2011

By Ray

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Life changing homework for anyone. If you go slow and really focus your world view will change dramatically. You may want to find a guide (psychologist) to help you manage the feelings fostered by becoming more mindful. This approach to life will make things better. The authors are the best guides in this field.