Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart
Written by Tara Bennett-Goleman and Dalai Lama
Narrated by Tara Bennett-Goleman
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
Alchemists sought to transform lead into gold. In the same way, says Tara Bennett-Goleman, we all have the natural ability to turn our moments of confusion and emotional pain into insightful clarity.
Emotional Alchemy maps the mind and shows how, according to recent advances in cognitive therapy, most of what troubles us falls into ten basic emotional patterns, including fear of abandonment, social exclusion (the feeling we don't belong), and vulnerability (the feeling that some catastrophe will occur). Through this program we can free ourselves and others, and the freedom to be more creative and alive.
This remarkable program also teaches the practice of mindfulness, an awareness that lets us see things as they truly are without distortion, or judgement, giving the most insightful explanation of how mindfulness can change not only our lives, but the very structure of our brains. Here is a beautifully rendered work full of Buddhist wisdom and stories of how people have used mindfulness to conquer their self-defeating habits. The result is a whole new way of approaching our relationships, work, and internal lives.
Tara Bennett-Goleman
Tara Bennett-Goleman, New York Times bestselling author of Emotional Alchemy, is a longtime psychotherapist and international workshop leader who has offered seminars on the synthesis of mindfulness and cognitive therapy for many years with her husband, Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence.
More audiobooks from Tara Bennett Goleman
Mind Whispering: A New Map to Freedom from Self-Defeating Emotional Habits Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Emotional Alchemy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
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Reviews for Emotional Alchemy
98 ratings9 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5One of my favorite reads..highly recommend have read it twice already and no doubt will again.
3 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book can help one reshape their world view, deal with their inner demons that constantly whisper negatives in their ears and emerge with a refreshing, enlightened view of themselves and their lives. I am grateful for the mindfulness techniques described and offered herein.
3 people found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The use of the word alchemy is misleading! This is a mindfulness psychological book, another Self help book.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Saw this book just at the right time for reflection. Thank you!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Straightforward! New concepts easy to understand. Would've loved more practical actions from a self help book but I guess I have to read more
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The main focus of this book is a kind of psychotherapy based on the notion of schemas, which are habitual patterns of perceptions, emotions, reactions, etc. that get set generally at a young age in response to some kind of pattern of stress or abuse or trauma. By seeing clearly the patterns that trap us, we can gradually disentangle ourselves from them. There is clearly some kind of parallel or connection with Buddhist practice, and exploring this is the other main theme of the book.The discussion of schema therapy is quite useful. There are lots of examples and the stages of working through these patterns is clearly elaborated. I remain rather unclear on the extent to which these patterns tend to fall into neat categories, versus being more of a multidimensional spectrum where the labels are more of an arbitrary division of a continuity. But this is not a very important distinction for practical purposes.I find the connection with Buddhist practice to be very compelling but the further the book got into Buddhist notions, the more confused it seemed to get. I've been reasonably closely involved in the Buddhist scene for about 40 years, so by now I certainly have my own ways of understanding these notions. A lot of the problems come just from terminology. Equanimity often means just a kind of calmness. But in Buddhism, the word is most often used to mean a kind of relaxation of the distinction between friends and enemies, between those who are near and those who are far. Bennett-Goleman includes lots of great quotes from great teachers, but I didn't find them very coherently situated.Another complaint I'd make... the penultimate sentence of the book reads: "One path leads to further entanglement, reactivity, and a thickening of the fog of confusion, the other toward the refinement of awareness and the unfolding of compassionate wisdom." I think this kind of sharp distinction between doing it right versus doing it wrong is not very helpful. There is also some discussion of relative versus ultimate truth earlier in the final chapters. This stuff gets very subtle. If a person starts to grab on to ultimate truth as something distinct from relative truth... eeek, methinks one has gone astray. Similarly... certainly there is a useful distinction to be made between more grasping and less grasping. But when you dig a bit deeper, a lot of practice is more progressive, more a matter of working from one stage to another stage, like climbing a ladder, where one grasps the next rung as one releases one's grasp on a previous rung. There are lots of effective ways to work with the challenges of one's reactive habits, confusion, etc. It's not really like a fork in the road. It's a lot vaster than that.The schema bits of the book I found quite good. The Buddhist bits I found a bit scrambled. If the Buddhist bits inspire readers to dig deeper and to follow up with books by the authors quoted by Bennett-Goleman... they'll be very well served!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found it difficult to put down. I thought it was quite useful and made lots of sense. It was very inspirational.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book introduced me to meditation. It's a great way to understand and take care of emotions.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is good pyschology AND good Buddhism.