Open to Life invites us to cultivate love in support of ourselves and others. Through six sessions of in-depth teachings, guided meditations, and engaging practices, you'll join this celebrated meditation teacher to explore: how the inner critic hinders our ability to care for ourselves and how to overcome it, practices to bring greater authenticity and balance to our relationships, how to expand our capacity to love difficult people, how fierce compassion protects us, how love opens us to all of life's experiences, and more.

When we feel alone, cut off, or trapped, we can let those difficulties steer us onto a path toward an authentic, flourishing life—living in a way that allows us to find the wholeness that lies within. Even when we’re alone, a sense of community can accompany us through the stormy times. Our words, hearts, and actions can line up with a larger vision, rather than the smaller views our anxious, fearful thoughts arouse in us. To live in a less constricted way—Salzberg says we need to get real about what’s most important.

Thousands of years prove it, and Western science backs it: Meditation sharpens focus. Meditation lowers blood pressure, relieves chronic pain, reduces stress. Meditation helps us experience greater calm. Meditation connects us to our inner-most feelings and challenges our habits of self-judgment. Meditation helps protect the brain against aging and improves our capacity for learning new things. Meditation opens the door to real and accessible happiness. There is no better person to show a beginner how to harness the power of meditation than Sharon Salzberg....

Compassion for others begins by building a foundation of lovingkindness toward ourselves. Sharon Salzberg leads a meditation to help us recognize our own inner suffering with tenderness and awareness, opening us naturally to the ability to love others.

Within your own heart is a limitless source of supreme energy, the energy of love. No other force in the universe compares to it. The world's great spiritual traditions, both past and present, agree on this simple principle. Can love be harnessed and applied to others, used as a "tool" for changing lives? Lovingkindness Meditation teaches a traditional practice for cultivating love, and applying it as a life-changing force.

Ten million Americans will meditate today - and that number is only expected to rise. What's the best way to get started? Learn from an experienced teacher. Sharon Salzberg, known for her ability to make meditation accessible while keeping true to tradition, offers Guided Meditation for Love and Wisdom. With more than a dozen beginner-friendly meditations, this program offers a well-rounded practice that will open your heart and mind.

We tend to think of faith as a commodity you either have or you don't. But in many of the world's wisdom traditions, faith isn't something you possess; it's something you do. "Faith is a willingness to take the next step, to see the unknown as an adventure, to launch a journey," teaches Sharon Salzberg. Now this beloved meditation teacher and author shares her unique understanding of faith, distinguishing it from belief and dogma, to help you cultivate this profound force in your life.

"Just follow your breath." It sounds so simple, but as every seasoned practitioner will tell you, "just breathing" can be surprisingly challenging. To experience the deep rewards of this practice, start off on the right foot with expert help from Insight Meditation Society instructors Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein. They'll help you find the skillful balance of concentration and relaxation that results in a finely attuned state of ease that will stay with you long after you get off the cushion.

Real Love is a creative tool kit of mindfulness exercises and meditation techniques that help you to truly engage with your present experience and create deeper love relationships with yourself, your partner, friends and family, and with life itself. Sharon Salzberg, a leading expert in Lovingkindness meditation, encourages us to strip away layers of negative habits and obstacles, helping us to experience authentic love based on direct experience, rather than preconceptions.

How would you like to be calmer, less distracted, more productive, and more content at your job? You might think it would take more hours in the day, a better boss, more support, less interference, a shorter commute - and the list goes on. Most of the things we think would help are either not in our control or simply not realistic. But there is one thing we can do to achieve the qualities we seek, and it can be done invisibly and often: meditation.

Tara Brach is an in-the-trenches teacher whose work counters today's ever-increasing onslaught of news, conflict, demands, and anxieties - stresses that leave us rushing around on auto-pilot and cut off from the presence and creativity that give our lives meaning. In this heartfelt and deeply practical audiobook, she offers an antidote: an easy-to-learn four-step meditation that quickly loosens the grip of difficult emotions and limiting beliefs.

When we seek comfort and relief from stress, Tara Brach teaches, we often unconsciously turn to false refuges such as material wealth, approval from others, or a preoccupation with the past and future. Yet by cultivating true refuge in this moment, not only can we find shelter from the storms of life but we also open ourselves up to fully experiencing joy and fulfillment. Here, Tara Brach guides a meditation using the therapeutic R.A.I.N. process for releasing fear and healing through self-compassion.

In Good Morning, I Love You, Dr. Shauna Shapiro brings alive the brain science behind why we feel the way we do - about ourselves, each other, and the world - and explains why we get stuck in thinking that doesn’t serve us. It turns out that we are hardwired to be self-critical and negative! And this negativity is constantly undermining our experience of life.

Here Pema provides the tools to deal with the problems and difficulties that life throws our way. This wisdom is always available to us, she teaches, but we usually block it with habitual patterns rooted in fear. Beyond that fear lies a state of openheartedness and tenderness. This audiobook teaches us how to awaken our basic goodness and connect with others, to accept ourselves and others complete with faults and imperfections, and to stay in the present moment by seeing through the strategies of ego that cause us to resist life as it is.

Kristin Neff changed how we talk about self-care with her enormously popular first book, Self-Compassion. Now, 10 years and many studies later, she expands her body of work to explore a brand-new take on self-compassion. Although kindness and self-acceptance allow us to be with ourselves as we are, in all our glorious imperfection, the desire to alleviate suffering at the heart of this mindset isn't always gentle, sometimes it's fierce.

Throughout our lives we long to love ourselves more deeply and find a greater sense of connection with others. Our fear of intimacy—both with others and with ourselves—creates feelings of pain and longing. But these feelings can also awaken in us the desire for freedom and the willingness to take up the spiritual path.

When we feel alone, cut off, or trapped, we can let those difficulties steer us onto a path toward an authentic, flourishing life—living in a way that allows us to find the wholeness that lies within. Even when we’re alone, a sense of community can accompany us through the stormy times. Our words, hearts, and actions can line up with a larger vision, rather than the smaller views our anxious, fearful thoughts arouse in us. To live in a less constricted way—Salzberg says we need to get real about what’s most important.

Finding Your Way is the newest audiobook from one of the most beloved and bestselling meditation teachers. In dozens of clear and inspiring entries, listeners will be reminded that there are many ways to stay calm and move forward. From choosing to simply "do the good that is in front of you," to reading a meaningful piece from an interview with a kind leader, to quotes from people Sharon admires, and reminders of how to practice meditation, Finding Your Way will show listeners that they are always on the right path, because it is their own.

Ten million Americans will meditate today - and that number is only expected to rise. What's the best way to get started? Learn from an experienced teacher. Sharon Salzberg, known for her ability to make meditation accessible while keeping true to tradition, offers Guided Meditation for Love and Wisdom. With more than a dozen beginner-friendly meditations, this program offers a well-rounded practice that will open your heart and mind.

In today's fractured world, we're constantly flooded with breaking news that causes anger, grief, and pain. People are feeling more stressed out than ever, and in the face of this fear and anxiety they can feel burnt out and overwhelmed. In Real Change Sharon Salzberg, a leading expert in loving-kindness meditation, shares sage advice and indispensable techniques to help free ourselves from these negative feelings and actions. She teaches us that meditation is not a replacement for action, but rather a way to practice generosity with ourselves and summon courage....

We tend to think of faith as a commodity you either have or you don't. But in many of the world's wisdom traditions, faith isn't something you possess; it's something you do. "Faith is a willingness to take the next step, to see the unknown as an adventure, to launch a journey," teaches Sharon Salzberg. Now this beloved meditation teacher and author shares her unique understanding of faith, distinguishing it from belief and dogma, to help you cultivate this profound force in your life.

"Just follow your breath." It sounds so simple, but as every seasoned practitioner will tell you, "just breathing" can be surprisingly challenging. To experience the deep rewards of this practice, start off on the right foot with expert help from Insight Meditation Society instructors Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein. They'll help you find the skillful balance of concentration and relaxation that results in a finely attuned state of ease that will stay with you long after you get off the cushion.

Open to Life invites us to cultivate love in support of ourselves and others. Through six sessions of in-depth teachings, guided meditations, and engaging practices, you'll join this celebrated meditation teacher to explore: how the inner critic hinders our ability to care for ourselves and how to overcome it, practices to bring greater authenticity and balance to our relationships, how to expand our capacity to love difficult people, how fierce compassion protects us, how love opens us to all of life's experiences, and more.

Compassion for others begins by building a foundation of lovingkindness toward ourselves. Sharon Salzberg leads a meditation to help us recognize our own inner suffering with tenderness and awareness, opening us naturally to the ability to love others.

In Cultivating Intuitive Faith and True Surrender, the second program in the Cultivation series, Ram Dass is joined by Sharon Salzberg, Krishna Das, Rameshwar Das, Mirabai Bush, Raghu Markus, and special guest KK Sah, a close Maharaji devotee, to explore the nature of faith beyond the mind and surrender as it’s known in the Bhakti tradition.

Mindfulness, teaches Thich Nhat Hanh, is like the power of the sun: It illuminates the parts of your life that are in darkness. Instead of suppressing anger, fear, and guilt, mindfulness welcomes all experience. Mindful Living is a special gift-boxed collection of this beloved Zen master's most popular audio sessions, with heartfelt advice on coming fully alive to yourself and the world.

Why is it often so hard to truly connect with others, even those we care most about? "Our capacity to engage fully in relationship starts with becoming more awake and aware within ourselves," says Tara Brach. With Nourishing Intimacy, this renowned teacher offers an intensive training in tools, skills, and insights for cultivating self-compassion, overcoming inner obstacles, fostering authentic communication, and opening ourselves to healthy, openhearted relationships.

The profound techniques of Vipassana (or insight meditation) are all rooted in the Satipatthana Sutta, the Buddha's practice-oriented teaching on the four foundations of mindfulness. With Mindfulness, Joseph Goldstein brings you a series of core teachings and guided practices for "looking directly at the nature of the mind and body, at how suffering is created, and how we can awaken and be free."

Love might not be what we think it is. We all seek the happiness that comes from loving and being loved, yet we often find ourselves dissatisfied in our relationships and unable to grasp the cause. Thich Nhat Hanh here shows the way to overcome our recurrent obstacles to love - by learning to be mindful, open, and present with ourselves and others. As he explains, "training is needed in order to love properly; and to be able to give happiness and joy, you must practice deep looking directed toward the person you love."

Great teachers like the Buddha, Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, and Gandhi were all born with brains built essentially like anyone else’s—and then they changed their brains in ways that changed the world. Neuroscience now reveals how the flow of thoughts actually sculpt the brain, and more and more, we are learning that it’s possible to strengthen positive brain states. By combining breakthroughs in science with insights from thousands of years of mindfulness practice, you too can shape your own “Buddha’s Brain” for greater happiness, love, and wisdom.