Leda Elliott, "The Five Seasons Method: A Gentle Path toward Emotional and Spiritual Balance" (Scribner, 2026)

A gentle yet powerful blend of ancient wisdom and modern wellness that shows how seasonal living can enrich your days. In the Chinese Five Element system, which links nature’s cycles to our emotional, physical, and spiritual selves, there are five seasons: spring, summer, late summer, fall, and winter. You can feel the energy of that fifth season when the air gets cooler, the light turns golden, and we enjoy a few weeks of transition from the active energy of spring and summer to the calming, restorative energy of fall and winter. Leda Elliott grew up in Japan and has long been a student of the dialogue between East and West, between body and spirit. Drawing from decades of experience in holistic practices, Leda has developed a unique method for embracing the lessons we can learn from each season—late summer brings grounding, fall brings release, winter brings stillness, spring brings vision, and summer brings joy. Incorporating rituals, meditations, and exercises attuned to each season’s energy can help us feel more aligned. Things like the foods we eat, the colors we wear, and where we focus our attention can all deepen our sense of connection to ourselves and the world. Leda’s peaceful spirit radiates onto the page in a book offering tips and exercises, personal stories, illustrations, and testimonials from her students. These heartfelt narratives demonstrate how ancient practices can meet the challenges of modern life, providing support for those navigating grief, stress, and fatigue. The Five Seasons Method: A Gentle Path toward Emotional and Spiritual Balance (Scribner, 2026) will help readers of all ages and abilities get their energy back into balance, one breath and one season at a time. Leda Elliott is a Tai Chi Master, Reiki Master, and the creator of The Five Seasons Method, a wellness program that integrates Tai Chi, QiGong, breathwork, and seasonal energy principles to help individuals cultivate balance, vitality, and inner harmony. She trained under legendary Tai Chi Grandmaster Bow Sim Mark and is the owner of A Thousand Cranes Studio, where she offers in-person classes, private coaching, Reiki healing, and global online workshops.  For more information please visit this website. Elizabeth Cronin, Psy.D., is a clinical psychologist and certified mindfulness meditation teacher in Norwood, MA. You can find her on Youtube or visit her website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

Since time immemorial, water has been a major theme in myth, religion and folklore throughout the world. With its 12,000-mile coastline, as well as a plethora of rivers and lochs, Scotland is a particularly rewarding place in which to explore the spiritual dimensions of what is both the most commonplace and yet the most mysterious of all chemical compounds. Liquid Faith: Scotland's Sacred and Supernatural Waters (Birlinn, 2026) by Ian Bradley is a journey from healing wells, springs, river sources and bogs to the seashore, islands and whirlpools, to discover the legends, superstitions and rituals that have grown up around them. Drawing on spirituality, philosophy and faith as well as history and tradition, Professor Bradley highlights the crucial importance of water over thousands of years, and emphasises its preciousness and vulnerability today and in the future. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

Amy Chavez talks to Don Weiss, currently mid-way through the Shikoku Pilgrimage — Japan's 1,300 km Buddhist route that has been walked for almost as many years. Pilgrims share their journey with Kobo Daishi, patron saint of the 88-temple circuit and founder of Shingon Buddhism in Japan. Don explains his "gratitude pilgrimage," what it means and why he is undertaking it. Along the way, he speaks with fellow pilgrims and priests at a number of temples to assess the experience for international visitors. While the 88-temple route faces challenges — from local depopulation to overtourism — Don finds common ground in conversations with priests about how overseas visitors might help keep the tradition alive, and what temples can do in turn to make the route more welcoming to those coming from abroad. Don's book Echoes of Incense, about his first trip around the ancient pilgrimage route decades ago, is available as an e-book on Amazon in English and Japanese. You can follow Don on his gratitude pilgrimage via his You Tube Channel: Just Walk The Books on Asia Podcast is co-produced with Plum Rain Press . Podcast host Amy Chavez is author of The Widow, the Priest, and the Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island, and Amy's Guide to Best Behavior in Japan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

In this episode, host Pierce Salguero sits down with Linda C. Ceriello, a scholar of mysticism and popular culture from Kennesaw State University in Georgia. Linda is one of the foremost scholars of metamodernism, with particular focus on contemporary spirituality and mystical experiences. She talks with us about what this concept of metamodernism means, and how it can open up new kinds of more capacious thinking. I’m sure you will agree that a lot of what we’ve been doing on the Black Beryl podcast over the past 4 years — juxtaposing different perspectives, exposing our full selves, exploring the dark sides of spirituality, leaning into sincerity, etc. — has all embodied a metamodern sensibility. Anyway, I think she’s the perfect guest to talk with as we launch season 4, and I hope you’ll enjoy the show. If you want to hear scholars and practitioners engaging in multidisciplinary conversations about Asian healing and mystical traditions, then subscribe to Black Beryl wherever you get your podcasts. Also check out our members area on Substack (blackberyl.substack.com), as each episode our guests share downloadable PDFs of articles, book chapters, and other materials for you. One last thing: we are planning an “Ask Me Anything” episode coming up soon, so reach out via Substack or my website here, and let me know your questions. Ok, on with the show! Resources mentioned in this episode: “What is Metamodern?” website “What is Metamodern? Conversations” on YouTube Bloomsbury Press series: Studies in Metamodernism, Theory and Criticism Across the Disciplines Vermeulen and van den Akker, “Notes on Metamodernism” (2010) Kersten, Polo, Wilbers, Glocal Metamodernisms: European Fiction After Postmodernism (2026) Disambiguation video Recorded lecture: “An Overview of the Academic Research on Metamodernism” (2023) Recorded panel: “A Bodhisattva Move: Popular Mysticism’s Influence on the Metamodern Turn?” (2021) Subscribe on blackberyl.substack.com to unlock our members-only benefits, including these PDFs of Linda’s work: Metamodern Mysticisms (2018) “Toward a metamodern reading of Spiritual but Not Religious mysticisms” (2018) “The Metamodern Bend: Theorizations for Religious Studies” (2022) Black Beryl’s host Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. He has a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia. See www.piercesalguero.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

Pierce Salguero joins us to discuss his new co-edited volume, Meditation Sickness: A Sourcebook on the Dangers of Buddhist Practice. While modern mindfulness frames meditation purely as a wellness tool, the Buddhist tradition has long recognized its inherent psychological and physical risks. We explore multi-tradition historical texts, the anatomy of practice crises, and the ethical responsibility of teachers and app developers to provide something along the lines of informed consent. Key Discussion Points & Timeline Contrasting modern wellness marketing with historical accounts of meditative danger; the book provides a sourcebook for Dharma teachers, clinicians, and serious practitioners. Multi-Tradition Mapping throughout covers Pali, medieval Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan sources, many of which we touch on. Traditional sources diagnose destabilization and even offer a range of physical, energetic, and lifestyle remedies to mediate crisis: whether they would be a good fit for today’s practitioner is another matter. Challenging the modern claim that adverse effects only happen to the unprepared or mentally fragile. Classical lineages show that severe physical ailments and mental destabilization can happen randomly, even to advanced practitioners. The hidden risks of unmonitored, commercialized meditation apps. Why creators have an ethical duty to move past treating meditation as a risk-free panacea and offer clear safety guardrails. How different cultures draw the line between a spiritual breakthrough and clinical pathology. The ongoing project of integrating traditional remedies with modern psychology and neuroscience. Links & Resources Mentioned The Book: Meditation Sickness: A Sourcebook on the Dangers of Buddhist Practice. Guest Website: here (Includes the book's introduction). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

What does it mean to connect with mind and space without the typical baggage of contemporary meditation trends? In this episode of the New Books Network, Matthew Joseph O'Connell sits down with author and practitioner Ronald E. Purser to discuss his timely new book, Mind Space: Discovering Meditation Without the Meditator (Dharma Publishing, 2026). Drawing from his decades-long engagement with Tarthang Tulku’s seminal 1977 work, Time, Space, and Knowledge, Purser offers a refreshing, experimental, and surprisingly playful guide to understanding our structural realities. Rather than preaching a prescriptive self-help routine, Mind Space serves as an experiential commentary that invites readers into a radical, non-dualistic inquiry of how we inhabit our lives. Key Themes from the Episode Beyond McMindfulness: How Mind Space transitions away from corporate, present-moment-focused trends and pivots toward a deeper, more expansive territory of human freedom. The Anatomy of Mind and Space: An etymological and philosophical breakdown of mind as our generative source of knowledge, and space not as a passive, empty container, but as an active, alive, and accommodating dimension. The Myth of the Inner Manager: A critique of the reflexive, modern impulse to over-manage every facet of our internal lives, and how to cultivate a state of un-management. Digital Colonization: Confronting the psycho-physical compression, social comparisons, and anxiety induced by modern screens, and how the acceleration of time flattens our capacity for deep meaning. The Playfulness of Inquiry: Why true contemplative practice thrives on curiosity, experimentation, and humour rather than rigid, sombre discipline. "Space is not a thing. It is what permits experience to be experienced at all. When we realize space is projecting space into space, our rigid focal settings begin to thaw." — Ronald E. Purser Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

I spoke with author Aliza Einhorn about her new book Tarot of the Unconscious: Uncovering the Hidden Link Between Psychoanalysis and the Cards (Weiser Books, 2026) United States: Red Wheel Weiser. Aliza Einhorn is a Psychoanalyst in training at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies in New York City. She's a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a longtime tarot reader, tarot teacher, and astrologer. “My book is a method” Einhorn tells me. The method is free association. This is the link to psychoanalysis. Einhorn wants us to free associate to the cards as one free associates to dream imagery. “Let’s break it down. In any given Tarot card, as in a dream, there are images, visual details (what Freud might call the manifest meaning), and then there are the hidden meanings beneath those images (what Freud might call the latent meaning), which we only discover after we analyze it.” (p.44) She is enthusiastic about the “infinite” meanings of the cards. In Einhorn’s world Card 7, The Chariot, is on Freud’s royal road to the unconscious. While Tarot books have historically engaged with Jungian though, Einhorn’s book is a “love letter to Freud.” One of the book's most striking ideas is that people develop a transference to their deck — that how you treat your cards mirrors relational patterns from your past. In this interview we discussed an approach to transference adopted by Modern Psychoanalysis and referenced a foundational paper on countertransference. Listeners interested in the specifics of this approach to transference can find it here Clevans, E. L. (1983) On Countertransference. Modern Psychoanalysis 8:129-130. Einhorn concludes “if there’s one thing I want to teach you in this book, one thing I hope you will remember, it’s that your unconscious is your friend. It’s good to get to know it.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

What do you want out of life? To make a lot of money―or work for justice? To have children―or travel the world? The things we care about in life―family, friendship, leisure activities, work, our moral ideals―often conflict, preventing us from doing what matters most to us. Even worse, we don’t always know what we really want, or how to define success. This insightful book offers invaluable advice about living well by understanding your values and resolving the conflicts that frustrate their fulfillment. What Do You Want Out of Life?: A Philosophical Guide to Figuring Out What Matters (Princeton University Press, 2024) is an essential guide to helping you understand what really matters to you and how you can thoughtfully pursue it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

In Prioritize Play: Express Your Creativity, Boost Your Confidence, and Foster Deeper Connection (Balance, 2026), host of the Chaotic Creatives podcast and play enthusiast Rachael Renae reveals that play is more important to our wellbeing than productivity or career titles and should be prioritized as readily as getting groceries, paying your rent, or getting your work done. When we connect to ourselves through play, we become more curious and intentional in how we express ourselves and connect with other people. Within these pages are: Mindset shifts to start seeing play in the everyday Guidance to help you find your version of play Strategies to turn play into a regular practice Exercises to release expectations on your creativity Lessons in becoming your own hype pal Through introspection and fun challenges, you’ll see that play is the solution toward overcoming our creative blocks, caring less about what people think of us, and showing ourselves that we do deserve to prioritize our creative ideas. Even when they don’t make money. Even if we’re not “good” at them. Even if they’re not a “traditional” creative outlet. Because we all deserve our version of our Big, Juicy Life! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

A journey into the power of conscious breathing for therapy and everyday life. Breathing is at the center of our lives, yet we are only beginning to tap into its full potential as a tool for healing. Conscious breathing is a powerful mechanism for transforming our physiological, emotional, and brain states, and is the fastest way to cultivate integrated presence. However, its full capacity for facilitating healing, personal development, stronger relationships, self-actualization, and personal and collective love is vastly unrecognized and underutilized. In Breathwork and Psychotherapy: Clinical Applications for Healing and Transformation (W. W. Norton, 2025), breathwork expert Jessica Dibb offers compelling reasons to integrate the power of breathwork with psychotherapy and other healing and wellness practices. Here readers will find inspiration for daily breathwork practice as well as the methods, case examples, and actionable advice needed to incorporate breathwork into therapeutic sessions. Seamlessly marrying ancient wisdom with contemporary science, this insightful guide is for clinicians, breathwork practitioners, and anyone interested in exploring the transformative power of breath. For 20% off the purchase price of the book: Breathwork and Psychotherapy: Clinical Applications for Healing and Transformation by Jessica Dibb, for a 20% discount, in the U.S. click here, in the UK, Ireland, Europe, the Middle East, India, Pakistan and South Africa: Click here and use promo code: WN286 To learn more about the Universal Breathing Declaration — the project Jessica Dibb mentioned in our interview — please visit the Universal Breathing Declaration website. It was launched in March 2026 by Jessica Dibb, Dan Siegel, and Jack Kornfield.   Be part of co-creating a world where all can breathe safely, freely, joyously! Jessica Dibb Through life-long exploring of pathways for physical and psychological health and development, awakened consciousness, and living from love, Jessica Dibb’s work centers conscious breathing—synthesizing depth psychology, consciousness studies, science, individualized spirituality, and somatic, emotional, and cognitive energy and wholeness. Extensively trained in ballet and yoga, during biology and pre-med studies at UC Irvine, she had an epiphany: Breathing is a universal and unifying medicine in every situation, for everyone. Jessica advocates rigorous training and ethical standards that support powerful, safe, multi-dimensional, nuanced Breathwork to access our deepest potential. She founded a 1200+ hour Breathwork and Psychospiritual Facilitation Program at Inspiration Consciousness School; is the Global Professional Breathwork Alliance founding co-director and ethics chair; and created the "Breath Immersion—From Science to Samadhi" conferences. Jessica develops innovative processes for embodying psycho-spiritual wholeness using Breathwork with established and emergent wisdom teachings to cultivate presence, wisdom, and love throughout our lifespan—in relationship with all life and this breathing planet. For more information about Jessica and her work, please visit her website here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness