People often ask me which books have accompanied me on my path and which ones I recommend to those who want to work on themselves. Here you find my personal recommendations in one place. These are books I have read, loved and applied in my own healing work.
Why books alone are not enough, and why they are still so valuable
Inner transformation means making the unconscious conscious and taking your time to become aware. Much of what steers us in daily life lies in our subconscious, which has stored everything that has ever happened to us. Alongside it there is our conscious mind, with which we think and run our daily life. And there is a higher level within us that carries many names, the Higher Self, Atma or higher consciousness. It knows why we are here and what we are meant to learn. Everything you need to know is already inside you. The art is to connect to all three levels, subconscious, conscious and higher consciousness to learn and grow.
Phyllis Krystal describes the purpose of inner work like this: everything that has ever happened to us is still active at the subconscious level, as if it had just happened. So we not only need to nurture the connection to our higher consciousness, we also need to look at what lies in the subconscious and separates us from that guidance.
A good book can give you the map. The path itself you walk in practice, in exercises, with guidance or in a healing session. This is exactly why I love the following books, because they do not only explain, they also show you how.
Healing old wounds
Malcolm Southwood: “Teach Me How to Love So I Can Heal” Malcolm is my main mentor, with whom I did my healing therapy education in 2009. We spent most of that education making old wounds conscious and healing them, in ourselves and in others. His books show how early stored experiences, often from conception to the age of eight, later turn into symptoms, and how their cause can be resolved. I describe what this work looks like in a session in my article on Southwood Healing.
Phyllis Krystal: “Cutting the Ties that Bind” and “The Flight of the Phoenix to Liberation” Phyllis Krystal developed methods to release obstacles from the past and live more consciously in the present. I have worked a lot with her Figure 8 exercise myself. “The Flight of the Phoenix” builds on her best-known book and carries the work further.
Teal Swan: “The Completion Process” Teal Swan describes how split-off fragments from past painful experiences can be found and reintegrated. The book is practical and deep at the same time, and it helps you understand why the inner child can be frozen in a past moment and how it may grow onwards.
Victor Sanchez: “The Toltec Path of Recapitulation” I know this path of recapitulation through my teacher Natalia Rose. It comes from the shamanic field and shows how to look at your past systematically and retrieve the energy that is bound in old experiences.
All these paths have something in common: we carry wounds from the past within us, we may heal them, and we receive back the energy that was bound there. This is never about blaming others. It is about taking back responsibility and love for ourselves. And with every healed wound, compassion for others grows too, because we understand what people can carry within them.
Connection and relationships
Teal Swan: “The Anatomy of Loneliness” I truly love this book. It shows what loneliness is made of, namely a feeling of separation, shame and fear, and how we can care for these feelings instead of pushing them away or belittling them. It then moves on to how real connection to yourself and others is created and kept, a connection that takes emotions seriously and builds on trust and intimacy. One thought from it that touches me: belonging is one of our most basic human needs, and we cannot meditate a need away, we can only meet it in a healthy way.
Love and forgiveness
Marianne Williamson: “Return to Love” A modern classic about returning to love as an inner stance, built on “A Course in Miracles”. The book reminds us that behind our fears lies the longing for love, and that forgiveness is the path on which we find inner peace.
Gabrielle Bernstein: “May Cause Miracles” A very practical companion with small daily exercises over several weeks. It is a lovely starting point, because it translates big themes such as fear, self-worth and forgiveness into doable steps.
Spiritual classics
Elisabeth Haich: “Initiation” An extraordinary book about the inner path of initiation, told along a life story. It is nourishment for the soul and for everyone who wants to understand the spiritual path in its depth.
Phyllis Krystal: “Sathya Sai Baba, The Ultimate Experience” Here Phyllis Krystal tells very personally about her spiritual path. If you like her practice books, you will find here the background from which her work has grown.
How to work with these books
Choose the book that speaks to you most right now, and do not only read it, but do the exercises in it. A book can carry you far. And sometimes the point comes when you sense that you want to reach a deeper layer that is hard to reach on your own. This is exactly where my healing work begins, because some causes are easier to resolve with guidance.
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