Calm the mind and tune in to your inner sense
Deepen authentic presence and see through self-illusions
Open yourself to the natural ease and wonderment of being

The human predicament is such that we strive to fill an inner sense of wanting that afflicts and dominates us throughout our lives. The lifelong sense of discontent, fueling the desire for something less (bad) or more (enjoyable) than what is actually happening, gives rise to compulsive thinking and emotional reactions that cause us endless anxiety, guilt and despair. Opening Yourself presents an understanding of the human condition informed by Buddhist and radical Existential psychology. It details how the self we constantly strive to fulfill, promote and defend is nothing but a chimera, a mental-emotional construct no more real than an image in a mirror.

Respecting this dizzying truth, Dr. Ken Bradford presents a contemplative yoga approach to free yourself and others from self-illusions. This existentially-robust approach integrates the skillful means of experience-near therapy, Buddhist meditation and the nondual wisdom of Dzogchen - the highest Tibetan yoga - in the service of opening ourself to who we truly are rather than who we merely think we are.

In the service of broadening the range of psychological inquiry and deepening the reach of spiritual realization, this book offers a practical guide for therapists, therapy clients, Dharma teachers and truth seekers. It proceeds by tuning deeply in to innate intelligence, in order to see through self fixations to the unfettered freedom, effortless ease and ecstatic lucency of being as such.

Opening Yourself: The Psychology and Yoga of Self-Liberation, Buddhist Insight, Existential Therapy, Dzogchen; Ken Bradford; Sumeru Press Inc.; Paperback; 202 pages; $24.95

G. Kenneth Bradford,PhD, is a licensed psychologist in private practice in the San Francisco BayArea. He is an adjunct professor at John F. Kennedy University and theCalifornia Institute of Integral Studies, where he teaches courses onExistential-Contemplative Psychotherapy and psychological assessmentintegrating Mindfulness and Phenomenological perspectives. He offers advancedtraining, workshops and lectures in the United States and Europe, integratingExistential therapeutic sensibilities with the principles and practices ofBuddhadharma. Ken studied Existential Psychotherapy as a protige of James Bugental beginning in 1988, joining him as a teaching associate in 1994. His clinical background includes training in European and Relational Psychoanalysis, Focusing (with Eugene Gendlin) and Nondual Therapy (with Peter Fenner). Ken has been a vipassana student since 1975, being most indebted tothe instruction of Joseph Goldstein and Ruth Denison. He met his root dzogchen master, Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, in 1980, and has studied with other masters of Vajrayana Buddhism, including, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Tarthang Tulku and Dudjom Rinpoche. He has published a number of professional articles and coedited Listening from the Heart of Silence with John J. Prendergast.