Saturday, July 31, 2010

Announcing the Release of a Good Book

One of my old books! Changing the World One Relationship at a Time: Transformational Listening for Mutual Support & Empowerment came out in 1998 through Crossing Press. It went out of print years ago but copies were still available through Amazon.com. Recently, though, I've heard that those copies have become hard to come by. So today I'm announcing that it is in print again both as a print-on-demand book for $16.49 or as an e-book download for $8.59 through Healing Communication Press. 


Here's what other people had to say about this book when it first came out:

Want to change your life? Get together with a trusted friend and spend an allotted amount of time each week focusing on truly listening to one another. “Changing the World” teaches readers the needed skills for connecting with others, starting on a personal level and advancing to the community and the world beyond. —Sandra I. Smith, Midwest Book Review

I highly recommend this book. Karas provides tools we need to improve the quality of our lives. Her examples, exercises, and meditations teach us how to listen constructively which leads to improved health, happiness, and a sense of well being. —Barbara Hoberman Levine, author of Your Body Believes Every Word You Say

And this is from the back cover:

When the cost of counseling is higher than ever and insurance is less likely to cover it, when people are searching for community and healthy practices to sustain it, the need for simple easy-to-do peer counseling and relationship skills are more important than ever. The re-release of Changing the World One Relationship at a Time: Transformational Listening for Mutual Support & Empowerment could not have come at a better time. Spiritual counselor Sheryl Karas M.A. has written a clear concise and highly readable book to help couples, families, friends and communities help each other through troubled times.

I highly recommend this book for the task of family caregiving in the beginning stages when things are still going well. It helps to create supportive partnerships right from the start—trying to implement a program like this under duress isn't really the best time to start. But for most caregivers the process of easing into caregiving is a more gradual one. Put a great support system into place early on and you'll never regret it!

The book will teach you:
  • Basic attentive listening skills
  • Approaches for effectively working with emotional issues
  • How to stay centered around other people’s emotions 
  • How to work with personal and societal projections 
  • How to create your own support groups 
  • Exercises, guided meditations and more

Author Bio: Sheryl Karas M.A. has a Masters degree in Transpersonal Psychology and 30 years of experience providing informal counseling in a variety of settings. From 1984-1998 Sheryl was a practitioner of Re-evaluation Counseling, a form of peer counseling (co-counseling) where participants learn to exchange mutual support. She taught co-counseling classes and later went on to teach the teachers and certify new ones. When Sheryl developed a more spiritual perspective some of the practices of Re-evaluation Counseling no longer seemed to fit. Changing the World combines some of the most accessible techniques from Transpersonal Psychology with the peer counseling instruction she taught before.