Carolyn Hobbs
As author, therapist, teacher, and workshop leader, Carolyn Hobbs has used the heart tools outlined in this book with clients, couples, and workshop students for over thirty years. A licensed marriage and family therapist with a masters degree in humanistic psychology, Hobbs blends her two lifelong passions—Buddhist meditative wisdom and body-centered therapy—into her work, which draws from studies in bioenergetics, Feldenkrais work, Breathwork, as well as Buddhism. This October, Omega Institute in New York will offer Hobbs’s five-day Workshop, “Free Yourself: 10 Life-Changing Powers of your Wise Heart,” to teach participants the ten heart powers outlined in this book. Based on her first book, JOY, No Matter What, Hobbs began in 2004 teaching Everyday Joy workshops each spring at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in the San Francisco Bay Area and lecturing to professional therapists at U.S. Journal’s annual Self and Family Conferences in Santa Fe, NM. Prior to this, she was a visiting professor at Naropa Institute in Boulder, CO, and Ft. Lewis College in Durango, CO. Excerpts and reviews of her first book appeared in such magazines and professional journals as Woman’s World, Woman’s Day, Shambhala Sun, AHP Perspective, Imagine, and Essence. Certified since 1992 as a body-centered therapist by Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks, she works with clients nationally from her home base in Durango, CO.
Books, Courses & Podcasts
Free Yourself
Though the voice of our heart may be buried beneath the shouts of our ego and the clamors of our worries, our heart already has all the characteristics of the person we want to be in the world — it’s trusting, curious, aware, resourceful, compassionate, kind, grateful, forgiving, truthful, and peaceful. And if we manage to listen deeply, we can access these traits and the strengths they bring.
In an encouraging, uplifting voice, therapist Carolyn Hobbs draws from her years of counseling experience and her spiritual practice to present the liberating truth: each of us has within ourselves the power to release ourselves from fear, from past traumas, from our ingrained habits of mistrust and defensiveness. All we have to do is listen to our wise hearts.
Each chapter in this gentle, pragmatic book focuses on a single power of our heart and contains illustrating examples drawn from real life. Hobbs concludes each chapter with clear tools we can use to develop and apply these strengths amid the challenges of daily life. Busy people of all faiths will be able to use these tools to find freedom and inner peace—to tame anxiety, anger, grief, and despair while awakening fearless love.
Warm and inspiring, Free Yourself maps the path to lasting peace and freedom — a path that absolutely anyone can follow, as the way lies within our own hearts.