The time you take to read this book, written by a psychologist and yoga teacher with a strong mindfulness meditation practice, may create more space to do what your love.  Reading it and following the practices, can help you make choices about your work, your play, the time you spend with family and friends that make those moments meaningful and sacred. Horneffer-Ginter writes as though she’s your true friend, the one who tells you not what you want to hear but what you need to hear to save your life or to simply have a better experience than the one you’re having now.  She writes with great understanding because she’s been there, done that–has run on empty, trying too hard to “serve” or was that “to please”?  She calls herself a “recovering replier,” who felt guilty if she didn’t respond to every phone call and answer every email and as quickly as possible.  How can we do the real work we are meant to do, the larger service to the world we live in, if we are constricting ourselves to the daily barrage of email?  She teaches us ways to prioritize so that we know when to say “no.”

Within each chapter there are short, practical teaching sections that use anecdotes from her practice as a psychologist and from her own life and are then followed by self-inquiry questions and concrete practices that can help bring us back into balance.  She uses the analogy of a pie with six slices, each one representing a different aspect of our lives–everything from  Home & Family to Work Service and Spirit. As I looked at the aspects of my life laid out as wedges of a pie, it was easy too see where some slices were overwhelmingly large, which gave little room for aspects of my life that are undernourished.

Hornerffer-Ginter endears herself to the reader–how human she is as she panics on a roller coaster with her daughter and despite years of meditation, calls out to God to be with her 100s of times.  In her genuine disclosure of her panic and fear, we see ourselves reflected and know we’re not alone.  As she shares her own Topsy-turvy moments, her vulnerabilities and her missteps, she creates a map for us out of the dense forest of our own overwhelming busyness.  We learn from the cow paths and dead ends she’s taken on the way.  Every question she asks the reader to consider, she has asked of herself.  We sense that the author’s balance has been hard won, and so we trust her to bushwhack a path toward living a fuller, more meaningful life.

Order Full Cup, Thirsty Spirit here.

For active meditations that are appropriate for mood disorders, where there is too much rumination to begin with mindfulness, click here.