Book Picks - Soul Friends: The Transforming Power of Deep Human Connection, by Stephen Cope

"Lovingly crafted, deep, richly engaging, and wise, Soul Friends is a beautiful work. It will inspire your friendships, expand your understanding, and uplift your heart."~ Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart

As a Senior Scholar-in-Residence for over 25 years at the renowned Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, yoga master Stephen Cope has focused on a global integration of mind, body, and spirit. One truth that has become evident through his experiences is that human beings are universally wired for one thing: connection.Starting with our neural networks and extending to our external relationships, the human psyche as a contingent and social construction has fascinated scholars, philosophers, and thinkers for centuries. Integrating wisdom learned from practice, meditation, intensive study, and life experience, Cope takes a fresh eye to the idea of connectivity and the human spirit.Cope’s contemplative exploration of friendship in both its traditional and metaphysical forms breaks down human connection into six distinct yet interconnected mechanisms. Through the mechanisms of containment, twinship, adversity, mirroring, identification, and conscious partnership, we can become attuned with our essential selves and attain a deep, resonant connection with the greater network of humanity.The journey to our most exulted and fulfilled selves most certainly involves significant introspection, but in order to truly thrive as human beings, we must make the most of who we are in relation to one another.

Stephen Cope is a Senior Scholar-in-Residence and a Kripalu Ambassador. He is a Western-trained psychotherapist who writes and teaches about the relationship between Western psychological paradigms and the Eastern contemplative traditions. Stephen holds degrees from Amherst College and Boston College. He completed graduate and postgraduate training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy in the Boston area, where he practiced for many years before joining the staff at Kripalu. In its 25th anniversary edition, Yoga Journal named him one of the most important innovators in the developing field of American yoga.Hardcover: 25.99