Press Release

Press Release

RADICAL ACCEPTANCE
Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha
By Tara Brach, Ph.D.
With a foreword by Jack Kornfield
To be published as a Bantam Hardcover on June 17, 2003

"RADICAL ACCEPTANCE is an insightful, warmhearted, and important contribution to the emerging field of therapeutic mindfulness."
---Tara Bennett-Goleman, author of Emotional Alchemy

"RADICAL ACCEPTACE offers us an invitation to embrace ourselves with all our pain, fear, and anxieties, and to step lightly yet firmly on the path of understanding and compassion. Please enjoy this nourishing and healing book."
---Thich Nhat Hanh

"RADICAL ACCEPTANCE is a clear, practical, and caring guide that shows us how to move from shame and self-hatred to a revolution in consciousness: loving ourselves for who we are, and for the innate capacities of the human heart."
---Sharon Salzberg, author of Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience and Lovingkindness

"Through her deep experience as a therapist, Buddhist meditation teacher, yogi, and mother, Tara Brach sheds light upon the vital subject of learning to realize inner completeness, wholeness, and healing."
---Lama Surya Das, author of Awakening the Buddha Within and Awakening to the Sacred

"Tara Brach skillfully weaves together some of the most important new insights in contemporary psychotherapy with one of the central psychological insights of the Buddha: There is no part of ourselves that we need to exile from our awareness and our love. Brach's work fairly overflows with wonderful characters whose struggles we recognize as our own."
---Stephen Cope, author of Yoga and the Quest for the True Self

Tara Brach, Ph.D.--a clinical psychologist as well as a leading teacher of Buddhist meditation and mindfulness--proposes that what lies at the core of so much human unhappiness is the conviction that "something is fundamentally wrong with me." She comments, "I see daily--in therapy clients and meditation students, as well as in myself--the fear and suffering caused by feelings of unworthiness and alienation. This fear causes us to armor our hearts and prevents us from living and loving fully." Now, with RADICAL ACCEPTANCE, she has written the first book to combine modern psychological approaches with Buddhist teachings to heal the core feelings of "not good enough" that are epidemic in our competitive society. RADICAL ACCEPTANCE: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha will be published as a Bantam Books hardcover on June 17, 2003.

The tools for cultivating Radical Acceptance are based in Buddhist awareness practices yet can be used by anyone, regardless of their faith or beliefs. Using personal stories (including her own experiences as a mother), case histories, fresh interpretations of Buddhist tales, and guided meditations, Dr. Brach shows readers how to develop the mindfulness and compassion that together are the essence of RADICAL ACCEPTANCE. Each of the practices helps us learn to see clearly and to embrace kindly whatever we are feeling inside ourselves in any given situation. This path of personal and spiritual healing enables us to:

Recognize the "Trance of Unworthiness" that pervades our culture, distorts our thoughts, and imprisons us in shame, fear and loneliness.
Learn the "sacred art of the pause," to relieve free-floating anxiety, over-reactive behavior, and the tendency to become paralyzed or to lash out at others.
Understand the link between the feelings and sensations in our body and our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, and to realize that we can transcend our fears and challenges.
Reduce cravings and support recovery from addictions to food or cigarettes, overwork or codependent relationships--without self-condemnation.
Transform painful relationship problems, including parent-child conflicts, infidelity and the corresponding loss of trust, and a history of childhood abuse, and learn to increase our ability to love.
Cultivate the inner peace that makes peace in our world a possibility.

Dr. Brach emphasizes that Radical Acceptance does not mean we resign ourselves to living with suffering or abuse. It does not make us passive and without motivation to improve ourselves and the world. She cites psychologist Carl Rogers's famous observation: "The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change." She also describes many instances of deep transformation she saw in clients or students when they began treating themselves with kindness and understanding. They naturally began to break out of limiting beliefs that told them they had no alternatives, or that they didn't deserve better. Having faced and accepted the truth of their experience, they were able to initiate change--in themselves and the world--much more effectively and courageously.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tara Brach, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, lecturer and workshop leader, as well as the founder and senior teacher of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, one of the largest and most active Buddhist meditation communities on the East Coast. Dr. Brach is also a co-founder of the Washington Buddhist Peace Fellowship. She lectures and leads workshops at Buddhist centers and professional meetings throughout North America.

RADICAL ACCEPTANCE by Tara Brach, Ph.D.
A Bantam Hardcover
Publication Date: June 17, 2003
$23.95 / 0-553-80167-8 / 352 pages

Contact: Chris Artis, 212-782-9037
cartis@randomhouse.com
Nicholas Gilewicz, 212-782-9186
ngilewicz@randomhouse.com