The Eight Human Talents - Hardcover

Gurmukh; Michon, Cathryn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060195487 ISBN 13: 9780060195489

Publisher: William Morrow, 2000

Synopsis

In The Eight Human Talents, Gurmukh, an internationally renowned Kundalini Yoga teacher, explains ancient methods for creating true health of the body, mind, and spirit. She shares the remarkable stories of healing and recovery she has observed in almost thirty years of teaching Kundalini Yoga to everyone from school teachers and waiters to Hollywood celebrities like Cindy Crawford, Courtney Love, and Madonna. Her teaching has helped world-class athletes and paraplegics; she has also worked with infants and seniors. Anyone can benefit from these simple yoga and meditation techniques, which can revolutionize your physical, mental, and spiritual well-being.

The yoga she practices invokes eight chakras, energy centers of our bodies that are the seat of the eight the human talents. These eight uniquely human talents include Acceptance, Creativity, Commitment, Compassion, Truth, Intuition, Boundlessness, and Radiance. Each human talent has a corresponding shadow emotion, namely, Resentment, Guilt, Anger, Fear, Denial, Depression, and Grief. When there is an imbalance in one of the chakras and an overabundance of its shadow side, we sometimes see the creation of illness.

If you have ever longed to increase your creativity, intuition, compassion, health, and prosperity, The Eight Human Talents is for you. If you ever wished that you could escape the fear or anger that cripples you, this book will give you simple, practical tools to change your life profoundly. All that is required is a belief in the possibility of change and a commitment of as little as three minutes a day. Gurmukh makes Eastern wisdom accessible to everyone. The Eight Human Talents will inspire you with stories from her own life and the lives of students who have used these teachings to transform their physical, emotional, and spiritual health. Gurmukh's gentle, wise, and witty counsel has helped thousands of students to make a quantum leap toward happinss, and she can help you, too!

About this title

Review:

Madonna, Cindy Crawford, and David Duchovny have been her students, and now you too can experience the gifts of well-known L.A.-based yoga teacher Gurmukh. In The Eight Human Talents, she shares the spiritual wisdom and exercises of the Kundalini approach, which emphasizes the roles of the eight chakras, or energy centers, in healing and self-fulfillment. A particularly subtle and reflective discipline, Kundalini yoga combines meditation, breathing exercises, and simple poses that focus on awakening and embracing the fundamental qualities of the chakras, which Gurmukh calls talents: acceptance, creativity, commitment, compassion, truth, intuition, boundlessness, and radiance. Through attentive Kundalini practice, Gurmukh says, common personal issues such as relationship troubles, money anxieties, addiction, depression, and sexual insecurities can be overcome, which in turn enables a healthy and happy lifestyle. "Use your yoga practice to feel your emotions on a physical level," Gurmukh advises, "then as you experience them, you can move past them and become victorious over them."

In eight chapters that address each talent, Gurmukh offers personal anecdotes from her years as the proverbial student of life as well as her experience as a teacher, instructive quotes from her guru, Yogi Bhajan, and meditative exercises and stretches (aided by ink drawings) that teach awareness of the chakras and how to nurture the positive talents and stifle the negative "shadow emotions" (i.e., resentment, guilt, anger, greed, denial, and so on). Such techniques as the Exercise to Release Fear, the Anti-Worry Exercise, the Meditation to Heal Depression, and the Meditation to Realize Your Own Greatness require only concentration and no more than 10 minutes, but when done regularly, Gurmukh promises, the reward is self-confidence, wholeness, and increased vitality. Less a stretch-by-stretch manual to a yoga workout and more a self-improvement how-to that will limber you up in more ways than one, The Eight Human Talents is a valuable resource for those whose interest in yoga includes achieving physical as well as spiritual and emotional fitness. --Rebecca Wright

About the Author:

Gurmukh is a pioneer in yoga and the mind-body-spirit connection. Based in L.A., Gurmukh teaches Kundalini yoga, meditation, and pre- and post-natal care. In 1983, she founded the Kundalini Yoga Center, where she is a teacher, manager and course director. Among her clientele are Madonna, Courtney Love, Annette Bening, David Duchovny, Melissa Etheridge, and Rosanna Arquette. She has been featured in Vogue, W, and InStyle.

Cathryn Michon is an award-winning actress, writer, and stand up comic. She performs in comedy clubs throughout the country, and her stand-up show The Grrl Genius Club is seen monthly at the Hollywood Improv. She is also one of the rare Hollywood writers to succeed in half-hour comedy (Designing Women) and drama (China Beach, Sisters). As an actress, she has worked in the theater since she was a child and has done many guest-starring television roles. She is also a playwright and the coauthor of Jane Austen's Little Advice Book.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0060195487
• ISBN 13: 9780060195489
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272