Julia Paulette Hollenbery - The Healing Power of Pleasure: Seven Medicines for Rediscovering the Innate Joy of Being

With thanks to all my teachers family and friends, formal and informal, flora and fauna that informed my growth from silenced shut to dynamically expressive.

Especially to my mother Susan who with passion modelled making the world a better place.

And with great thanks to divine destiny that has protected and guided me.

THE HEALING POWER OF PLEASURE

Julia Hollenbery guides us to connect more deeply with our natural selves and recognize the abundant joy that always resides there.

David R. Hamilton, Ph.D., scientist and author of I Heart Me: The Science of Self-Love

Hollenberys recipes for pleasure introduce readers to the Universe of Deliciousness that awaits them just around the corner, within their own bodies. Read and enjoy.

Sarah Peyton, neuroscientist and author of Your Resonant Self and Your Resonant Self Workbook

Julia Hollenbery has taken the journey and now shares it in her own inimitable style. I had a teacher once who told me that learning through pleasure was the highest form of learning. As Julia shares in her own poetic and soul-deep style, she didnt begin there. She arrived there after a long journey. In The Healing Power of Pleasure, she shares the fruit of her work. As anyone who has taken the journey knows, fruit is the result of years of digging and composting. The more real the journey, the sweeter the medicine. Go on, take a sweet apple from this Tree of Knowledge.

YaAcov Darling Khan, shaman, cofounder of Movement Medicine, and author of Jaguar in the Body, Butterfly in the Heart

In this thoughtful exploration of our emotional, logical, creative, and sensual selves, Julia Paulette Hollenberys innate gentle wisdom, knowledge, and understanding shines through on every page. A book to keep on your shelf and return to whenever you need more insight and guidance into greater awareness and understanding of the unique delights of the lived experience that are on offer to you.

Judy Piatkus, publishing entrepreneur and author of Ahead of Her Time

The Healing Power of Pleasure is a book of immense scope, a comprehensive and masterful reminder that no matter the complexities of modern life and no matter what life throws at us, the capacity for great joy resides at the centre of our being and can be accessed by all. This is an important book, a celebration of the simple life, as we learn to listen to and honour the deepest wisdom of our souls, rediscover the joys of living sensually, and become one with the magic of the natural world around us. Julia Hollenbery takes us on an important journey that is both personal and universal and deserves to be richly savoured and absorbed.

Clare Martin, psychological astrologer and teacher, patron of the faculty of Astrological Studies, and author of Alchemy: The Soul of Astrology and Mapping the Psyche

What a pleasure to journey through Julias profound and healing book. She offers a rich and enjoyable feast of wisdom and practical suggestions. The depth and authenticity of her sharing is both moving and inspiring, and her suggested practices are life changing. To the very end I felt captivated, challenged, and liberated. This is without doubt a must-read book that could change your life and powerfully enhance your capacity to experience pleasure and embodiment in the world.

Lynne Sedgmore, CBE, author of Crone Times and Healing Through the Goddess

I found Julias exploration of pleasure and deliciousness so powerful. She looks at our societys present and past tendency to overlook the realities of life, to get lost in ego and need. As Julia writes, The modern perspective on life is often divisive, emphasizing analysis, cause or effect, compare and contrast. She orients the reader to the messiness of our life and explores how we can shift our orientation from conditioning and fear to spontaneity and pleasure, to appreciate the mess we are in and live life to the fullest. I so appreciated her writing and can highly recommend it!

Franklyn Sills, cofounder of the Karuna Institute and author ofThe Polarity Process, Being and Becoming, and Foundations in Craniosacral Biodynamics

This book is a doorway to an inner world, allowing us to enter a new adventure while still very much being fully in the body and in the creative magical mystery of life.

Steve Nobel, spiritual coach, founder of Soul Matrix Healing, and author of The Enlightenment of Work and Freeing The Spirit

A helpful handbook toward a new birthing in our hearts, encouraging us to savour the delights to be found within a lifetime in the material world. It also serves as an introduction to discovering the deeper and less visible dimensions of life within the rapidly changing context for our lives today. This is a journey of our time.

Janice Dolley, author of Awakening to a New Realityand coauthor of The Quest

Julia has created a meaningful and moving exploration of joy and pleasure at a time when the world needs the uplift of this wisdom. A courageous and stimulating book.

Malcolm Stern, psychotherapist, cofounder of Alternatives, and author of Slay Your Dragons with Compassion

Julias call to inhabit our bodies fully, to become aware of and attend to the delight inherent in every moment, speaks to the deepest sense of ourselves. She shows us a way of being in the world that is nothing short of revolutionary.

Alison Jones, publisher and host of The Extraordinary Business Book Club

Very personal, individual, and readable in its fluency, this book is filled with information and ideas gathered from readings, observations, thoughts, experiences, and imagination, richly and wisely put together.

Maggie McKenzie, director of the Spectrum Centre for Humanistic Psychotherapy

The Healing Power of Pleasure connects us to Divine Life through the portal of interconnectedness, bringing us into relationship with our bodies and senses and pointing the way to how we reclaim our darkness as well as our light. It honours life as profoundly relational and shows us how to access the innate sensuality of the place where body and soul meet. This is a glorious celebration of a book and also an important book for our times, as living through this relational lens naturally gives us respect for Earth, for each other, and for the oneness of all lifehuman and nonhuman, visible and invisible. It points toward a way of being for both men and women that includes a deep honouring of the feminine principle, which is the missing element in our culture and has the potential to lead us deeper into the new story we so urgently need.

Justine Huxley, Ph.D., director of St. Ethelburgas Centre for Reconciliation and Peace and editor of Generation Y, Spirituality and Social Change

This book is a much-needed remedy! I heartily recommend this powerful, lovely, fun, interesting, magical, comprehensive, and practical guide to doing intimacy and life well. Enjoy the inspiring real spirituality, interesting grounded science, and practical well-being exercises for your personal and our planetary happiness. We all need this embodied warm wisdom.