Recommended Reading

Here are some great books that have informed this work.  They draw from the field of business, coaching, somatic psychology, leadershop, emotional intelligence, spirituality, therapy, philosophy, Buddhism, and neuroscience.  Books are organized by chapter and order links are provided.  Enjoy!

Chapter One

Leadership Presence: Dramatic Techniques to Reach Out, Motivate, and Inspire by Linda Halpern and Kathy Lubar.  Rooted in theater, these authors have created a practical guide for developing leadership presence: “the ability to connect authentically with the thoughts and feelings of others.” Lots of exercises make this a practical and fun experience in building authenticity as a leader.

The Mandala of Being: Discovering the Power of Awareness by Richard Moss.  Offers a description of the territory of presence and describes the mechanisms by which we get pulled away and how we can return. Moss is a brilliant writer and offers a new map of the territory of being.

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhard Tolle.  This simple book became an international best-seller and offers readers a cognitive understanding of presence along with a direct experience of it. Tolle’s contribution to making the experience of presence explicit for a wider audience is significant, and he embodies this in a powerful way. A wonderful book.

Chapter Two

Mastery by George Leonard.  A must-read for anyone concerned with human development and anyone taking on a consistent practice of any sort. Leonard, based on his long-standing work in aikido, offers the keys to mastery in any discipline. These keys include proper instruction, practice, and surrender.

The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force by Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley.  This lucid and fascinating intellectual journey through quantum physics, neuroscience, and Buddhism describes the research that has led to the startling and profound discovery that we can literally rewire our brains through directed attention and repeated practice. The research is presented against the background of some of the deepest questions we face: Is there free will? What is consciousness? For those interested in the scientific grounding for how mindfulness and practices build sustainable behavior change, this is the starting point.

The Anatomy of Change: East/West Approaches to Body/Mind Therapy by Richard Strozzi Heckler.  An exploration of how the body stores and is shaped by life’s events. An important discussion of how we embody our conditioned tendencies (habits) and how somatic awareness leads to a stronger sense of ourselves, and more meaningful contact with others.

A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber.  Wilber is one of the most notable philosophers of modern times. With a prodigious intellect, he has given us a comprehensive map of the evolution from matter to life to mind to spirit and how human development mirrors the larger patterns of this unfolding. This book provides a sometimes humorous overview of Wilber’s though and a big picture story of how humans transcend and include as we progress along our developmental journey.

Chapter Three

Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others by James Flaherty. One of the most profound and inclusive books on coaching. Grounded in a big picture of how humans change, this book is a gift to the field. Flaherty integrates the work of some of our greatest thinkers into a flexible and elegant approach to coaching; his work has been a significant influence on my own.

Co-Active Coaching: New Skills for Coaching People Toward Success at Work and in Life by Laura Whitworth and Henry Kimsey-House.  An early classic in the coaching field, this book provides a good, question-driven framework for coaching. It is included here because of the emphasis on self-management for the coach. The same authors developed an extraordinary successful leadership program building on the principles described here.

Chapter Four

The Power of Purpose: Creating Meaning in Your Life and Work by Richard Leider.  A philosophical and practical exploration of the need for purpose in our lives. Leider provides lots of practical exercises. For people engaging the questions of purpose, meaning, and contribution, or facing retirement or a reexamination of what their life is for, this is the place to start.

The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos: Humanity and the New Story by Brian Swimme.  Swimme, a mathematical cosmologist, describes how we have come to understand the exact location of the true origin of the universe. Looking back to the Big Bang, Swimme’s elegant and poetic prose will startle you, orient you, and provide you with a powerful realization of exactly where you stand in the order of things.

How to Be a Help Instead of a Nuisance: Practical Approaches to Giving Support, Service, and Encouragement to Others by Karen Kessel Wegela.  Wegela explores the territory of helping, cultivating compassion, and being a resource. Through mindfulness, she offers practical wisdom and guidance for being present with others. This thoughtful book will help you be more available with your clients and less wrapped up in your own distractions.

Chapter Five

Resonant Leadership: Renewing Yourself and Connecting with Others Through Mindfulness, Hope, and Compassion by Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee.  This important business book on emotional intelligence argues that the cumulative effects of challenges and stress make it very difficult for leaders to avoid becoming dissonant. Their prescription for harried executives? “Soft” practices that develop mindfulness, hope, and compassion while renewing the body, mind, and emotions. Lots of exercises and references for further reading.

Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee.  The third in Goleman’s series of books on emotional intelligence, this far-reaching book describes six distinct leadership styles and how each is appropriate for and resonant in specific situations. The book includes an interesting and substantial exploration of neuroanatomy as it relates to emotional intelligence and leadership. The authors conclude with suggestions about how to develop emotionally intelligent leaders and organizations.

Grace Unfolding: Psychotherapy in the Spirit of the Tao-te-ching by Greg Johanson and Ron Kurtz.  This simple and beautiful book takes a series of themes (“welcoming,” “empowering,” “seeking truth,” and others) and, in a very few pages briefly explores the significance of each for the helping relationship. As coaches, we can orient to these, and they will shape how we are present for our clients.

A General Theory of Love by Thomas Lewis and Richard Lannon.  Written by three physicians, this book explores love, emotions, psychobiology, and relationships in a poetic exploration of how humans bond. Understanding the nature of limbic resonance is important in working with the relational field that we establish with our coaching clients. This reassuring book will remind you of what it means to be human and of the possibility of fulfillment and happiness that comes latent in our bodies.

Chapter Six

Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart by Tara Bennett-Goleman.  Offers wisdom on working with difficult emotions. Mindfulness, short-circuiting habits, shifting perceptions, and making conscious choices about our relationships with our thoughts and emotions will sound familiar to readers of Presence-Based Coaching. A very useful book on working with difficult emotions.  

Mindfulness in Plain English by  B.H. Gunaratana. A thorough, practical introduction to meditation and mindfulness. How to meditate, what to do with your mind and body, how to work with problems and distractions, ways to carry mindfulness into everyday life. Common sense and down to earth.

Get Out of Your Mind and into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy by Steven Hayes.  An exciting book for people who want to be their own coach. A rich exploration of the contribution of our minds to suffering, this is essentially a workbook for becoming familiar with how our minds create our own suffering and how we can move to acceptance and presence. Based in solid research, this practical book goes far past the shallow prescriptions of the self-help genre to offer rigorous practices that more closely resemble Buddhism than popular psychology.

The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. A delightful book that explores Buddhist teachings in a thoroughly modern narrative. Reading it, one can’t help but feel happier! The interwoven threads of mindful awareness, neuroscience, and quantum physics provide a fascinating and at times humorous story about what it means to live a mindful, happy life. Highly recommended for skeptics.

The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-Being by Daniel Siegel. A robust exploration of well-being and awareness, grounded in a rigorous integration of brain science, personal experience, and professional clinical application. For those looking for a deeper exploration of what’s going on beneath the surface of awareness and interested in bringing this knowledge to bear on helping others, this will be an important book.

Chapter Seven

Focusing by Eugene Gendlin. A tiny classic centered around why some people seem to be able to change readily while others get stuck in old patterns that prove difficult to change. Gendlin argues that being able to access the “felt sense,” a somatic sensibility within our bodies, is critical to being able to change. This book shows us how to access the felt sense in a clear, simple, step-by-step approach that is nonetheless profound.

Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness by Jon Kabat-Zinn.  Kabat-Zinn is best known for developing mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), a program that has well-documented physical and psychological health benefits and has been replicated in many other places. This book is practical and accessible and designed to enable the reader to learn the basic MBSR program at home. Full of practices, this is a comprehensive and useful book. Supplementary meditations and body scan CDs can be ordered from http://mindfulnesstapes.com.

Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine. An overview of Levine’s fascinating work with trauma. Levine presents a revolutionary theory about how our fight/flight/freeze reactions are stored in the body, determining our unconscious and habitual reactions.

The Leadership Dojo: Build Your Foundation as an Exemplary Leader by Richard Strozzi-Heckler.  The most recent of Strozzi-Heckler’s books, the one most focused on leadership and the one most accessible to a business audience. This work lays out the centrality of the somatic self in developing leaders. Integrating martial arts, body work, psychotherapy, meditation, and  educational psychology into an elegant synthesis, this book is must reading for anyone concerned with developing authentic leaders. This author’s work is a significant influence on my own; I often provide this book to coaching clients. 

Chapter Eight

The Heartmath Solution by Doc Childre and Howard Martin.  Provides specific techniques for accessing the heart’s intelligence and maintaining clarity in the midst of stressful and emotional events. This work is heavily researched and provides the basis for training programs, tapes, and other resources used widely in business and other high-stress professions. This classic book is very practical, with tools and exercises throughout.  

The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times by Pema Chödrön.  Chödrön, a teacher in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, offers practical guidance for cultivating compassion and loving kindness and extending it to others. This is a great book for those interested in a mindfulness-based approach to compassion and the heart.

Encouraging the Heart: A Leader’s Guide to Rewarding and Recognizing Others by James Kouzes and Barry Posner.  Two of the best-selling authors in the leadership field present this practical and easy-to-read approach to communicating caring and appreciating employees in a business environment. Loaded with business examples and practical suggestions. 

The Heart’s Code: Tapping the Wisdom and Power of Our Heart Energy by Paul Pearsall.  Gathers in one place a lot of current information about the heart as an energy system with its own intelligence. Heavily footnoted, this book is a good starting point to learn more about the power of the heart, connecting with your own heart, and connecting with others.

Part Four

You Are What You Say: A Harvard Doctor’s Six-Step Proven Program for Transforming Stress Through the Power of Language by Matthew Budd and Larry Rothstein.  This easy-to-read book provides a practical approach to working with the body, mood, and language to be more fulfilled and effective in life. Budd, a physician, goes far beyond a simple self-help book; his teachers includes some of the heavyweights in psychobiology, linguistics, and somatics. This is a good starting point for busy readers.

Deep Coaching: Using the Enneagram as a Catalyst for Profound Change by Roxanne Howe-Murphy.  Integrates presence, somatic and heart intelligence, mindfulness, generative practices, and fieldwork with the Enneagram (a framework of nine personality structures) into a practical coaching structure. The strong developmental orientation in this book makes it a valuable contribution to the field. Highly recommended.

The Life We Are Given: A Long Term Program for Realizing the Potential of Body, Mind, Heart, and Soul by George Leonard and Michael Murphy. Two pioneers of the human potential movement make a case for long-term practice that integrates the body, mind, emotions, and spirit. The authors include a specific kata or routine; other elements could easily be included. A good field guide to integrative cross-training.

The Zen of Listening: Mindful Communication in the Age of Distraction by Rebecca Shafir. Shafir puts mindfulness into practice with a guide to listening fully to others and understanding how different interpretations might create confusion, and mindful self-listening, so that your communication is likely to be clearer.