Radical Wholeness: The Embodied Present and the Ordinary Grace of Being

Description

There are qualities we all yearn to experience in our lives-peace, simplicity, grace, connection, clarity. Yet these qualities evade us because each of them arises from an experience of wholeness, and we live in a culture that enforces divisions within each of us. In Radical Wholeness, Philip Shepherd shows the countless ways in which we are persuaded to separate from the body and live in the head. Disconnected from the body's intelligence, we also disconnect from the wholeness of the present. This schism within us is the primary source of stress not just in our personal lives, but for the systems of the planet. Drawing from neuroscience, anthropology, physics, the arts, myth, personal stories and his experiences helping people around the world to experience wholeness, Philip Shepherd illuminates what true wholeness means and offers practices designed to help readers soften into the intelligence of the body. Radical Wholeness is a call to action- to recover wholeness and experience a new way of being.

Philip Shepherd is an internationally recognized embodiment expert and the author of New Self New World. He travels the world teaching people how to ground their thinking in the calm, deep-dwelling intelligence of the body.

"Philip Shepherd has gifted us a book that reframes our basic understanding of getting the most out of body intelligence. It rearranges the familiar top-down authorship from cerebral brain to body and restores body presence to a borderless merging of intelligence that includes inside/outside and sensory awareness. Ingest this book and let it ruminate throughout your daily dance. Take Shepherd's experiences to heart and practice the exercises he shares with us to reclaim our inheritance as fully functional breathing sensing alive awake beings." -Vinn Arjuna Marti, Designer of Soul Motion (R). A conscious dance practice. "Radical Wholeness is an important book. It's a "deep dive" into understanding our somatic experience of being and provides a path back to wholeness. And for students of the Enneagram, this is a book not to be missed. You'll be amazed and delighted by how what Shepherd reveals so exquisitely adds to the exploration of the three centers of intelligence." -Curt Micka, President of the International Enneagram Association (IEA). (The opinions expressed here are not an endorsement by the IEA.) "With words of shimmering clarity, Philip Shepherd blows the door between body and mind off its hinges. Calling us with rigor, sensitivity, wisdom and imagination towards a future grounded in resurrected human capacities of awareness, he shows not only why but also how to develop those capacities, awakening intelligence we didn't know we had. Radical Wholeness is sorely needed and sweet-tasting medicine for a fragmented world." -Amnon Buchbinder, author, Biology of Story, Professor of Screenwriting, York University "This very wise book shows why it is impossible and ultimately suicidal to attempt to secede from nature, as our culture has tried to do through denying our oneness and wholeness with the world. We are nature, and there is no 'out there' that exists independently from our consciousness, our knowing. As Max Planck, the founder of quantum physics put it, 'We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness'-for consciousness, he said, is 'fundamental.' But do not think Radical Wholeness is merely a philosophical treatise. It is a practical blueprint for embodying information in the service of human welfare and survival. Our future depends on the vision Philip Shepherd powerfully and eloquently presents in Radical Wholeness." -Larry Dossey, MD, author, One Mind: How Our Individual Mind Is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why It Matters "In a culture as broken and fragmented as ours, this book is painfully overdue. Going beyond outdated notions of 'holistic,' Philip Shepherd has captured the essence of individual embodiment and its inextricable connection with everyone and everything. What our world desperately needs now are not more smart homo sapiens, but fully present and embodied holo sapiens who feel and live in grounded inter-relatedness. In this book, Shepherd has provided us with an extraordinary tool kit that tenderly and skillfully integrates mind, body, and soul with all life in the universe. If you long to reconnect with your deeper self, other living beings, and the Earth, you must read this book." -Carolyn Baker, PhD, co-author with Andrew Harvey of Return to Joy and author of Love in the Age of Ecological Apocalypse: Cultivating the Relationships We Need to Thrive "When Philip Shepherd asked me to look at his new manuscript, I was unprepared for the extraordinary experience that awaited me-within minutes I literally couldn't put his book down. Radical Wholeness was not just talking about, but was literally speaking to-and invoking-a deeper, more whole and healed part of myself. While I was reading, I had the overwhelming feeling that it is as if this book is a multi-vitamin and mineral supplement-real medicine-secreted by the universe itself to help us heal our collective insanity. I can't recommend Radical Wholeness highly enough." -Paul Levy, author of Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil "Philip Shepherd is a force of nature. Fully embodied and present in the world, he stands outside the most fundamental bias of Western culture and offers us nothing less than a new center to live from. In his hands, wholeness is no longer just an idea or a goal to strive for; it becomes a visceral experience, and one that can be accessed at will through brilliantly simple practices. Here you will find both the vision and the means to come home to your own wholeness. This luminous book is clearly a lifework. Don't miss it. It will transform you." -Morgan Farley, PhD., author of Name Yourself Feast "As a social ecologist I highly recommend this book as a valuable guide to a new way of being whole in our fragmented world." -Ben-Zion Weiss, PhD, author of The Creativity Revolution: Steps to an Ecology of Culture "In Radical Wholeness, Shepherd has given us an insight into what it really means to be human, and it could very well challenge our fundamental assumptions around this. Radical Wholeness is a profoundly personal message with truly global ramifications, written at a time of great need." -Michael Anderson, CEO Mediaworks NZ "Radical Wholeness is a profound, ground-opening, stunning book-a true masterpiece. Shepherd illuminates the madness of our western culture and entices the reader to drop into the wholeness that is always here with a powerful/urgent/gentle invitation to live from it. The radical wholeness that Shepherd embodies, in my experience, is the goal of all therapy and spiritual practice. This is one of the most profound books I have read in twenty-five years of practice and I will be recommending it to all my peers and clients. -Natalie Lascelles, Psychotherapist and mindfulness coach "This wonderful book written with tremendous clarity and profound wisdom should be in the library or backpack of every spiritual seeker. Its advice on embodiment is the best around and the practices Shepherd has evolved are matchlessly effective." -Andrew Harvey, author The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism "This is the best book I have read on embodiment, I cannot recommend it highly enough." -Jill Angelo, author Sacred Space: Turning Your Home into a Sanctuary "Philip Shepherd shakes up our way of looking at ourselves and the world. He challenges the way we were taught to think, and offers us something that could radically change how we live. Reading Radical Wholeness offers us real hope, the kind of hope that sees a way out of the quagmire of living in a unsustainable way in our own lives and our shared world. If there was ever a time for this book-this is it! Read it. Breathe it in. Let it change how you see and live and love your life and the world." -Oriah "Mountain Dreamer" House, author of The Invitation