In the same tradition as such bestselling authors as Jack Kornfield and Sharon Salzberg, Insight Meditation teacher Tara Brach has cultivated one of the largest and most active Buddhist meditation communities in the eastern United States. With Radical Self-Acceptance, this gifted guide brings her enthusiasm and depth of experience to a wide new arena of listeners for the first time. "Imagine what it would be like to be without anxiety about your imperfections," begins Brach. Employing her skills in two worlds, this clinical psychologist and meditation instructor takes on what she considers to be the most difficult – and pervasive – challenge to Westerners today: the suffering caused by our feelings of unworthiness and deficiency. Here, Brach teaches the specific practices we need to become more mindful and compassionate toward the "unforgivable" parts within ourselves – and how to free ourselves from "the prison of shame and self-aversion." Practical and supportive, Radical Self-Acceptance marks the debut of one of the most capable new voices today on the marriage between Eastern meditation and Western psychology.
Tara Brach, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist as well as a Buddhist lay priest and popular teacher of mindfulness (vipassana) meditation. She is the founder of the Insight Meditation Community in Washington, D.C., and has conducted workshops at Spirit Rock Center, Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, and other retreat centers nationwide. She lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with her teenaged son.
