Io Series

There’s nothing funny about dying … or is there? Malachy McCourt, Jacquelyn Mitchard, and 22 more share hilarious and moving stories of confronting death. Exit Laughing makes death more approachable as it reveals the funny side of “passing on.” As painful as it is to lose a loved one, Exit Laughing shows us that in times of grief, humor can help us with coping and even healing. 
 
Best-selling author Amy Ferris explains how her mother’s dementia led to a permanent ban from an airline. Ellen Sussman writes of flying her mother’s body home and watching the burial wardrobe spill out on the baggage carousel. Broadway and television actor Richard McKenzie shares the riotous story of a funeral procession led by a lost hearse. Bonnie Garvin even manages to find a heavy dose of dark humor in her parents’ three unsuccessful attempts at a double suicide. These stories, along with tales from Joshua Braff, Barbara Graham, Dianne Rinehart, and more, constitute a book whose purpose is to remind readers that when dealing with illness, aging, and dying, there is an important place for laugh-out-loud humor.

A Santa Cruz postpartum doula, a New Hampshire flute-maker, a Zen teacher, a dance therapist, a Sri Lankan film director—these are a few of the grandparents who share their stories in this bracing collection. The essays cover a wide range of experiences as they examine the marrow of this often undervalued relationship from both the grandparent and the grandchild point of view. A common thread running throughout is the special importance of these relationships, which are often as complex and rewarding as the parent-child connection.
 
Wondrous Child is divided into four parts. In Part One, “Settling In,” new grandparents survey the territory and describe their expectations. Part Two, “Balancing Reality and Hope,” takes a deeper look at some of the heartbreak that can occur, as well as complexities: step-grandparenting, spanning geographical distance, the surprise of children living with grandparents. Part Three, “Grandparents Raising Grandchildren,” explores men and women parenting their grandchildren in the absence of parents. Part Four, “Grandchildren Remember” is written by grown grandchildren who catch the tone and feeling of this special person in their life. These vivid essays will appeal to both grandparents, as a celebration of their place in the family, and new parents curious about how grandparents can contribute to their children.

Lewiston, a mill town of about thirty-six thousand people, is the second-largest city in Maine. It is also home to some three thousand Somali refugees. After initially being resettled in larger cities elsewhere, Somalis began to arrive in Lewiston by the dozens, then the hundreds, after hearing stories of Maine’s attractions through family networks. Today, cross-cultural interactions are reshaping the identities of Somalis—and adding new chapters to the immigrant history of Maine.
 
Somalis in Maine offers a kaleidoscope of voices that situate the story of Somalis’ migration to Lewiston within a larger cultural narrative. Combining academic analysis with refugees’ personal stories, this anthology includes reflections on leaving Somalia, the experiences of Somali youth in U.S. schools, the reasons for Somali secondary migration to Lewiston, the employment of many Lewiston Somalis at Maine icon L. L. Bean, and community dialogues with white Mainers. Somalis in Maine seeks to counter stereotypes of refugees as being socially dependent and unable to assimilate, to convey the richness and diversity of Somali culture, and to contribute to a greater understanding of the intertwined futures of Somalis and Americans.

Exploring Body-Mind Centering features 35 essays on Body-Mind Centering (BMC), an experiential practice based on the application of anatomical, physiological, psychophysical, and developmental principles. Using the work of BMC founder Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen as a springboard, the book showcases diverse situations—from medical illness to blocked creativity—in which this discipline is applied with transformative results.

Exploring Body-Mind Centering is divided into three sections, preceded by an introduction framing BMC as a pathway to becoming aware of relationships that exist throughout the body and mind and using that awareness to act. The first section lays the groundwork for this process, with real-life experiences and exercises that encourage readers to interact with the text. Section two contains valuable case stories describing the experiences of BMC students and practitioners as they work with clients. Section three shows how BMC can be integrated with other disciplines and practices that include the arts, medicine, and yoga. The book concludes with a biography of Cohen, a profile of the
School for Body-Mind Centering, and a history of BMC.

The environmental “tipping point” we approach is more palpable each day, and people are seeing it in ways they can no longer ignore—we need only turn on the news to hear the litany of what is wrong around us. Serious reflection, inspiration, and direction on how to approach the future are now critical.

Hope Beneath Our Feet creates a space for change with stories, meditations, and essays that address the question, “If our world is facing an imminent environmental catastrophe, how do I live my life right now?” This collection provides tools, both practical and spiritual, to those who care about our world and to those who are just now realizing they need to care. Featuring prominent environmentalists, artists, CEOs, grassroots activists, religious figures, scientists, policy makers, and indigenous leaders, Hope Beneath Our Feet shows readers how to find constructive ways to channel their energies and fight despair with engagement and participation. Presenting diverse strategies for change as well as grounds for hope, the contributors to this anthology celebrate the ways in which we can all engage in beneficial action for ourselves, our communities, and the world.

Contributors include:
Diane Ackerman
Paul Hawken
Derrick Jensen
Barbara Kingsolver
Francis Moore Lappé
Barry Lopez
Bill McKibben
Michael Pollan
Alice Walker
Howard Zinn

***WINNER, 2011 Lambda Literary Award – Transgender Non-Fiction

While the Jewish mainstream still argues about homosexuality, transgender and gender-variant people have emerged as a distinct Jewish population and as a new chorus of voices. Inspired and nurtured by the successes of the feminist and LGBT movements in the Jewish world, Jews who identify with the “T” now sit in the congregation, marry under the chuppah, and create Jewish families. Balancing on the Mechitza offers a multifaceted portrait of this increasingly visible community.

The contributors—activists, theologians, scholars, and other transgender Jews—share for the first time in a printed volume their theoretical contemplations as well as rite-of-passage and other transformative stories. Balancing on the Mechitza introduces readers to a secular transwoman who interviews her Israeli and Palestinian peers and provides cutting-edge theory about the construction of Jewish personhood in Israel; a transman who serves as legal witness for a man (a role not typically open to persons designated female at birth) during a conversion ritual; a man deprived of testosterone by an illness who comes to identify himself with passion and pride as a Biblical eunuch; and a gender-variant person who explores how to adapt the masculine and feminine pronouns in Hebrew to reflect a non-binary gender reality.

***WINNER, 2011 Golden Crown Literary Award – Anthology

Reconciling queerness with religion has always been an enormous challenge. When the religion is Orthodox Judaism, the task is even more daunting. This anthology takes on that challenge by giving voice to genderqueer Jewish women who were once silenced—and effectively rendered invisible—by their faith. Keep Your Wives Away from Them tells the story of those who have come out, who are still closeted, living double lives, or struggling to maintain an integrated “single life” in relationship to traditional Judaism—personal stories that are both enlightening and edifying. While a number of films and books have explored the lives of queer people in Orthodox and observant Judaism, only this one explores in depth what happens after the struggle, when the real work of building integrated lives begins. The candor of these insightful stories in Keep Your Wives Away from Them makes the book appealing to a general audience and students of women’s, gender, and LGBTQ studies, as well as for anyone struggling personally with the same issue. Contributors include musician and writer Temim Fruchter, Professor Joy Ladin, writer Leah Lax, nurse Tamar Prager, and the pseudonymous Ex-Yeshiva Girl.


Keep Your Wives Away from Them official website: http://www.keepyourwivesawayfromthem.com/

Panic is not a single state with only one set of feelings and predictable emotions. The essays and articles in this book span various disciplines—psychology, medicine, literature, and history—tied together by the common thread of panic, including how it is manifested in culture, tradition, and experience, and its differing treatments. Included are original as well as previously published writings by Peter A. Levine, Paul Pitchford, and Kim Newman.

The Body in Psychotherapy explores the life of the body as a basis of psychological understanding. Its chapters describe the use of movement, awareness exercises, and bodily imagination in work with various populations and life situations. It chronicles somatic work with childhood trauma, political torture, and life transitions such as aging, the loss of parents, and the emergence of a sense of self.

The Body in Psychotherapy is the third in a groundbreaking series that provides a theoretical and practical context for the emerging field of Somatics. The first and second book of the series are Bone, Breath, and Gesture and Groundworks.

Groundworks gives accounts of the actual processes of working with individuals in six major schools of Somatics by either the creator of the method itself or a leading teacher of the method. The creators are Robert Hall of Lomi School, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen of Body-Mind Centering, and Emilie Conrad Da’oud of Continuum. Leading teachers of methods include Michael Salveson on Rolfing, Elizabeth Beringer on Feldenkrais work, and Darcy Elman on F. M. Alexander Technique. Each therapist describes how he or she approaches and diagnoses a patient’s problem, how he or she determines what and where to work, and the progress of a session. Each therapist shows the complexity of working with somatic processes and the resulting reward for client and therapist both.

As Buddhism is assimilated into the West, it is imperative that women reshape its patriarchal structures and carve out a fully legitimate, empowering position for themselves. Marianne Dresser brings together the likes of Pema Chodron, Tsultrim Allione, and bell hooks, 30 women in all, who are doing just that. Writers, nuns, scholars, priests–even a martial arts master and a private investigator–discuss women in Buddhism in a range of essays. Several pieces question the suppression of emotion required for selflessness, appealing to the undeniable reality of day-to-day living. Others discuss their experiences as women in Buddhism, whether as nuns or as lay practitioners. Still others address the history of women in Buddhism, racial questions, meditation, poetry, compassion, social activism, and sexual orientation. Most of these writers have been in Buddhism for two or three decades and offer a wealth of experience and insights, targeted at women readers but no less valuable to men.

This book is a collection of writings on principles and techniques by the pioneers of bodywork and body awareness disciplines. Together, they represent a historical record of the field of somatics. Ranging from hands-on workers like Ida Rolf to phenomenologist Elizabeth Behnke, their lives span this century. In these lectures, writings, and interviews, editor Don Hanlon Johnson has sought to revel the unbroken lineage, theoretical differences, and major similarities of these originators.

Deep ecology, a term coined by noted Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, is a worldwide grassroots environmental movement that seeks to redress the shallow and piecemeal approache of technology-based ecology. Its followers share a profund respect for the earth’s interrelated natural systems and a sense of urgency about the need to make profound cultural and social changes in order to respore and sustain the long-term health of the planet. This comprehensive introduction to the Deep Ecology movement brings tgether Naess’ groundbreaking work with essays by environmental thinkers and activists responding to and expanding on its philosophical and practical aspects.

Contributors include George Sessions, Gary Snyder, Alan Drengson, Dll Devall, Freya Matthews, Warwick Fox, David Rothenberg, Michael E. Zimmerman, Patsy Hallen, Dolores LaChapelle, Pat Fleming, Joanna Macy, John Rodman, and Andrew Mclaughlin. The Authrs offer diverse viewpoints- from ecofeminist, scientific, and purely philosophical approaches to Christian, Buddhist, and Gandhian-based principles. Their essays show how social, technological, psychological, philosophical, and institutional issues are aall fundamentally related to our attitudes and values toward the natural world.

In this updated revised second edition of Dharma Family Treasures, Sandy Eastoak combines previous essays by lay and ordained Buddhist practitioners, children, spiritual teachers, young adults, educators, parents, writers and poets, including Diane Di Prima, Barbara Gates, and Thich Nhat Hanh, with nine new essays by Robert Aitken, Richard Nelson, Jin Harrison, Sandy Eastoak, and others. This revised edition also includes a new section containing playful and educational children’s Buddhist songs.

Aikido and the New Warrior includes essays which illuminate Aikido concepts as they apply to many different walks of life: sports, nature, anger, martial arts training, death, and aging to name a few. Please note that this book does not include information on martial arts techniques.