ComingBacktoLifeComing Back to Life: The Updated Guide to The Work That Reconnects is the new version of the old stand-by for WTR facilitators, Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World. I love this new book, and I recommend it for anyone reading this newsletter. It lays out the same basic information as the earlier version, with some substantive additional topics, which I’ll get to in a moment.

But even familiar topics are newly engaging. Sometimes the text is verbatim, freshened by a clearer and more open layout. In areas where the context and practice of the work have broadened or refined over the past 20 years, subjects are presented anew. For example, the topics “Psychological sources of repression” and “Socioeconomic sources of repression” are combined, with a few new subheadings, into “What deadens heart and mind?” Anyone intrigued (or baffled) by the brain food segments of workshops, will find much of that material presented here with utter clarity. The sections on guiding the work have also been updated.

So what’s in the 100 additional pages that this edition includes? “Learning with Communities of Color” is co-written by Joanna and colleagues of hers from within those communities. Other new chapters focus on working with children and teens; using the work in a corporate setting; integrating movement in workshops; and using the spiral in writing workshops.

I paid full price for this book at my local indy bookstore, and I will be repaid many times over. (Or order from the publisher at www.newsociety.com) A big thank you to authors Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown for their efforts.

–Paula Hendrick