It is with a deep sense of gratitude that I thank some of the many people who have helped to create this book. I start with my literary team: Janis Vallely, my agent, who called me with an idea for a book and who has shepherded this process with calm grace and firm patience. Nancy Hancock, the talented editor at Simon & Schuster, who took on this project with a degree of energy, commitment, and intelligence that I had only remotely hoped to find. Alison Rose Levy, a gifted writer with a passion for this subject, who helped with some of the early writing. And a very special thanks to Rachel Kranz. Our collaboration has been a natural and joyful one. Her energy, enthusiasm, and humor infuse this book with a life that I could not have given it alone. I am grateful for the end result, but also for the delightful process.
I thank the generous readers of my early manuscript, Jan Swanson, Sue Towey, and Sandy Kosse. All are friends and colleagues who not only read and revised, but helped shape the ideas in this book through our many years of working together. And I owe a great debt to Lisa DeLeon, whose reading and comments were done with a degree of care and competence that surprised and renewed me at just the right time.
I feel most fortunate to have had so many gifted colleagues, fellow teachers, and healers. Thanks to my partners in mindfulness teaching, Maggie Kessel, Dave Von Weiss, Joe Nelson, Julie Rice, Terry Pearson, and especially to my dharma sister, Kaia Svien, who brings a degree of love and compassion to her work that continually astounds me. Also, thanks to the many wonderful psychotherapists with whom I have had the good fortune to work, including my friends Susan Bourgerie and Sandy Kosse at the Loring Mindfulness Therapy Center. I am also surrounded by a community of healers, and I thank Hilmar Wagner, Jan Swanson, Jennifer Blair, Carolyn Denton, Bob Decker, Bohdan Melnychenko, Jeff Richards, Davis Taylor, and Gary Carlson for their unfailing support and encouragement. And a most gracious thanks to Mary Jo Kreitzer, Karen Lawson, and all the staff of the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota, where I have been given so many opportunities to teach, learn, and share the lessons included in this book. I am particularly grateful to the Inner Life of Healers team, including Cass McLaughlin, Beth Somerville, and my wonderful teaching friends, Mary Catherine Casey and Laura Kinkead, with whom I learn and enjoy so much. I also wish to thank Andrea Nelson and Beverly Pierce, Horst Rechelbacher, Bill and Penny George, and the Fetzer Foundation for helping to get that program off the ground.
I have had many exceptional teachers over the years who cannot know the impact they have had on me in the shaping of my mind and heart. Deepak Chopra and David Simon provided a sound background in Ayurvedic and Mind-Body medicine. James Gordon taught mind-body skills groups with great skill and passion. Jon Kabat-Zinn ignited my love of mindfulness meditation and changed the course of my career, as indeed he has changed the course of American medicine. His clarity, strength, and resolve continue to be an inspiration to me. Parker Palmer has taught me so much about the inner life and has done so with a humility and grace that makes him all the more loveable. His skill with the craft of writing and speaking about things that matter most deeply serve as a model that I could only hope to replicate. More than a mentor, I gladly count Parker and his wife, Sharon, among my friends. And Joe Bailey, who was first a teacher, then a colleague, and now like a brother. I thank both Joe and his wife, Michael, for their constant love and friendship.
I also want to acknowledge, with great tenderness and appreciation, the blessings that I have received from my patients. I have encountered thousands of souls, in varying degrees of suffering, who have entrusted to me some part of their lives and have enlarged my life in the process. Whatever benefits they have received from our work together, I have gotten back many times over. I thank them for partnering with me in the constant search for wholeness, which I understand as a never-ending movement toward love.
And finally, a warm embrace to my family: my wife, Jane, for her unwavering encouragement and support, and to our boys, Eric and Mark, who have been most gracious and patient to me in this entire process. They are, quite simply, my most constant source of love and joy.