Inspiring, Illuminating, Insightful: Books That Influenced Me

I am periodically asked what I would recommend to read about the work I do – i.e. about embodied living, emotional healing, movement, or spirituality. If you are interested, scroll for a link to a (very partial) book list.

I have read all these books and more, many of them more than once… but most of my learning has come from oral transmission from my teachers and personal experience in living the practices.

Here comes your recommended reading list:

Janet Adler, Offering from the Conscious Body

Anna Halprin, Dance as a Healing Art; Moving Toward Life: Three Decades of Transformational Dance; Making Dances that Matter

Daria Halprin, The Expressive Body

Karmae Miller (editor) Wisdom Comes Dancing: Selected Writings of Ruth St. Denis on Dance, Spirituality, and the Body

Andrea Olsen, The Place of Dance

Gabrielle Roth, Sweat Your Prayers: Movement as Spiritual Practice

Wendy Palmer, The Intuitive Body; The Practice of Freedom

Alexander Lowen, The Betrayal of the Body; The Spirituality of the Body

James Kepner, Body Process

Claudio Naranjo, Gestalt Therapy

Pat Ogden, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy

Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands

Richard Strozzi Heckler, The Anatomy of Change

John Heider, The Tao of Leadership

Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape; Start Where You Are; When Things Fall Apart – plus, anything else you can get your hands on, especially live recordings of her teachings

Ajahn Chah, A Still Forest Pool

Reginald Ray, Touching Enlightenment

Chögyam Trungpa, The Myth of Freedom; Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

Stephen Levine, Who Dies? Healing into Life and Death; Embracing the Beloved (with Ondrea Levine)

Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying [a valuable book translating difficult & important teachings for the Western audience by a sadly discredited teacher]

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, Zen-Mind, Beginners Mind

John Tarrant, The Light Inside the Dark

John Welwood, Ordinary Magic: Everyday Life as Spiritual Path; Journey of the Heart; Love and Awakening; Perfect Love–Imperfect Relationships

PS. Despite years of feminist reading, I see that so many of these authors are (white) men. Yikes. I read much less now and if I do it’s mostly novels. I so love me a good novel. Those are often by women, people of color and of other cultures. A certain kind of unlearning.