Hardwiring Happiness

The author of the New York Times best-selling Hardwiring Happiness, Rick Hanson is known for his trademark blend of neuroscience, positive psychology and contemplative practices. In Resilient, he explains how to build the very foundations of well-being by harnessing the power of positive experiences to build an unshakeable core. Dr. Hanson has distilled 40 years of clinical work and teaching into 12 highly effective tools. Working with these tools allows you to enter a positive cycle which creates a sense of well-being, which in turn establishes resilience, which feeds upon itself to strengthen you. 

The structure of your brain changes constantly, in a dynamic, unfolding process that you yourself can direct to create the life you want. This is the exciting premise of Meditations to Change Your Brain, a breakthrough program from psychologist Rick Hanso, Ph.D. and neurologist Rick Mendius, M.D.

Science is now revealing how the flow of thoughts actually sculpts the brain. By combining breakthroughs in neuroscience with insights from thousands of years of contemplative practice, you, too, can use your mind to shape your brain for greater happiness, love, and wisdom.

There's been a major breakthrough in the world's oldest research experiment. For over 2,500 years, Buddhist meditators have investigated the human psyche. Now with the help of modern neuroscience, we have gained an unprecedented understanding of how the brain responds to meditation practice - which gives you powerful tools for changing your own brain for more happiness, love, and wisdom.

Resilience is the ability to face and handle life's challenges, whether everyday disappointments or extraordinary disasters. While resilience is innate in the brain, over time, we learn unhelpful patterns, which then become fixed in our neural circuitry. But science is now revealing that what previously seemed hardwired can be rewired, and Bouncing Back shows us how. With powerful, time-tested exercises, Linda Graham guides us in rebuilding our core well-being and disaster-proofing our brains.

When does enlightenment come? At the end of the spiritual journey? Or the beginning? In After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, Jack Kornfield brings into focus the truth about satori, the awakened state of consciousness, and enlightenment practices today. The result is this extraordinary look at the hard work we all must do - the laundry - no matter how often we experience ecstatic states of consciousness through meditation and other disciplines.

Throughout history people have sought to cope with a life that is often stressful and hard. We have actually known for some time that developing compassion for oneself and others can help us face up to and win through the hardship and find a sense of inner peace. However in modern societies we rarely focus on this key process that underpins successful coping and happiness and can be quick to dismiss the impact of modern living on our minds and well-being. Instead we concentrate on 'doing, achieving' and having'.

Why does it feel so natural to be compassionate and kind to those we care about - yet so hard to treat ourselves the same way? "Our culture teaches us to use self-criticism for motivation and to build self-esteem by constantly measuring ourselves against everyone else," says Dr. Kristin Neff. "We need to re-learn the essential skill of being genuinely nurturing and supportive toward ourselves."

Self-Directed Brain Change is based on a key emerging insight from neuroscience: that to keep our ancestors alive, the human brain evolved to stick to negative experiences like Velcro and shrug off the positive ones like Teflon. The good news, teaches Rick Hanson, is that we can retrain our neural structure out of "sheer survival" mode and into one of greater well-being, mental clarity, and moment-to-moment appreciation.

This anniversary edition celebrates 10 years since the publication of David Hamilton's radical title, How Your Mind Can Heal Your Body. A game changer in the field, it proposed we could use the power of imagination and thought processes to stimulate our body's own defences and healing systems to combat disease, pain, and illness. Updated with the latest scientific research on the mind-body connection, the audiobook compiles the scientific studies that have been done in the past 10 years.

Best-selling author of A Path with Heart, Jack Kornfield invites you into a new awareness: how you can free yourself, whomever you are and whatever your circumstances. Renowned for his mindfulness practices and meditations, Jack provides the keys for opening gateways to immediate shifts in perspective and clarity of vision, allowing yourself to change course, take action or simply relax.

According to Dr. Tara Brach, feelings of shame and unworthiness are the source of many problems we experience with our relationships, careers, creative endeavors, and most fundamentally, our spiritual unfolding. On Radical Self-Acceptance, this respected clinical psychologist and Buddhist meditation teacher shows you how to free yourself from the grip of your insecurities about being "good enough."

What is love? Sharon Salzberg believes that love is a powerful healing force for us all and that modern associations with romance and adoration are limiting. By redefining love, she helps us to recognize our desire for happiness and enhance our connections with each other. Real Love is a creative toolkit of mindfulness exercises and meditation techniques that can help you to truly engage with your present experience and create deeper love relationships - with yourself, your partner, friends and family, and life itself.

Emotions feel automatic to us; that's why scientists have long assumed that emotions are hardwired in the body or the brain. Today, however, the science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology. This paradigm shift has far-reaching implications not only for psychology but also medicine, the legal system, airport security, child-rearing, and even meditation.

In Aware, New York Times best-selling author Daniel J Siegel introduces listeners to his life-changing meditation program, 'The Wheel of Awareness'. Whether the listener has no experience with reflective practices or is an experienced practitioner, Aware provides practical instruction for mastering this brilliant tool for cultivating more focus, presence and peace in one's day-to-day life. Dr. Siegel reveals in this fascinating audiobook how mindfulness practices such as meditation have the capacity to quite literally rewire our brains, as 'neurons that fire together wire together'.