Beautiful practice : a whole-life approach to health, performance and the human predicament

Overview: As we all know, today’s world presents us with an unprecedented set of perplexing challenges: habitat destruction, lifestyle disease, crushing stress, fragmented attention, anxiety and social conflict. Our bodies are suffering, our minds are confused and our spirits are in turmoil. We need knowledge and understanding, but we also need experience, participation and engagement. In other words, we need a practice. Beautiful Practice is a multi-disciplinary guide to the art of living skillfully and mindfully in the modern world. This book will lead you through a progressive series of lessons, each designed to reveal one crucial aspect of living our beautiful adventure. Use these lessons to develop a personal practice, refine an existing program or create a new practice from scratch. This book is for trainers, coaches, classroom teachers, yoga teachers, martial artists, professionals, managers and parents; the ideas in this book will enhance your efforts in any discipline. So please join in. Sweep the dojo, empty your cup, bow to the mat and let’s begin. How do you respond to your encounter with "The Knowledge?" How do you react to the terrifying realization that our biosphere and our future are in grave and imminent danger? Do you retreat into the comfort of denial, hopium, and inactivism, or do you take a stand for the planet and the future? In the popular imagination, activism is usually seen as an inconvenient, difficult, and stressful enterprise. But what if we're wrong about all that? What if there are genuine health benefits that come with engagement? Could activism actually make the human animal stronger? This book offers a positive vision and a path towards meaning and relevance in the face of extreme, almost unbearable circumstances. If your hair is on fire about the state of the planet and you're in need of medicine, this book is for you.