A Healing Space: Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times, Paperback

A gifted teacher explores how both hardship and joy can lead us back to the sacredness of ordinary life.

What does healing mean to you? For many of us, to "heal" is to solve a problem--to remove an illness, put a trauma behind us, or change something we don't like in our life so we never have to deal with it again. Yet does that idea of healing serve us ... or does it cut us off from life's gifts? "True healing is not a state where we become liberated from feeling, but freer and flexible to experience it more fully," writes Dr. Matt Licata. "When we experience our suffering consciously, it reveals sacredness and beauty we might not expect. Healing will always surprise us."

With A Healing Space, Matt extends an invitation to explore the endless richness of your life--without minimizing or turning away from hardship, nor by seeking the shelter of comfort or certainty. "I do not have any answers for you," he writes. "Rather, I see my role as helping to illuminate the immensity and even magic of the questions themselves." On this journey, you'll learn to use new tools and perspectives to find your own sources of guidance, including:

- Slowness--in a speed-obsessed world, rediscover the revolutionary power of slowing down, listening, and letting the fullness of each moment unfold
- Uncertainty--why we often protect ourselves from the unknown at any cost, and how we can gradually learn to open to the gifts of uncertainty
- Alchemy--explore the wisdom of transmutation as an inner process of things falling apart and then coming back together in ways that are more integrated and whole
- Depth Psychology--integrating modern advances in psychotherapy and neuroscience with the timeless power of a soul-based psychology
- Embodied Spirituality--discover the healing potential of an approach to spirituality that honors the body, emotions, relationships, and the shadow
- Love--allow yourself to awaken to the revolutionary call to love and participate in the full-spectrum of life, dissolving the "trance of postponement" with the power of an open heart

A Healing Space is not a book to be absorbed and processed in one sitting--instead, you will find yourself returning again and again, whenever your soul calls you to examine, transform, and renew yourself. "At times," writes Matt, "we need to crumble to the ground at the magnificence of it all, awestruck at the bounty that has been laid out before us. To fall apart. To fail. To get back up. To be humbled again. To start over. To be a beginner in the ways of love. To make this journey with our fellow travelers, and the sun, moon, and stars."

About author(s):

Matt Licata, PhD, is an independent scholar, psychotherapist, and teacher based in Boulder, Colorado, who has spent the last 30 years immersed in the study of both psychological and contemplative approaches to healing and spiritual transformation. Matt is author of The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You and editor of A Healing Space blog. He offers online courses and in-person retreats to readers, students, and seekers around the world.

To learn more about Matt and his work, please visit mattlicataphd.com.