In John J. Prendergast’s decades of experience as a psychotherapist and spiritual teacher, the area of the body that’s most difficult for many people to connect with, given our experiences with trauma and survival fear, is our physical and energetic ground. This area in the lower belly and at the base of the spine corresponds with the root chakra in the Indian subtle body tradition, the lower dan tien in Taoism, and the hara in Japanese martial arts. While most spiritual traditions focus on opening the mind and the heart, they tend to avoid or undervalue the opening of the ground. Prendergast notes, “It remains largely unconscious and deeply defended.” However, with the correct understanding and quality of attention, we can consciously open our multidimensional ground and, as a result, experience a felt-sense of inner safety and stability that supports the full flowering of inner peace, freedom, and loving awareness - a truly embodied spirituality.Your Deepest Ground invites readers to take a deep dive into their personal, archetypal, and universal ground, and to see through the false ground of their early conditioning and limited identity. Using authentic anecdotes and conversations drawn from his teaching, and accompanied by refined sensing and inquiry practices, Prendergast guides the reader in a unique groundbreaking and ground-opening exploration.

Had Enough? Join activists, organizations, and celebrities to fight human rights crimes in Africa.Human rights activist John Prendergast and Oscar-nominated actor Don Cheadle bring us an empowering and hopeful new book, as they reveal the steps being taken by engaged citizens—"Upstanders"—famous and unknown, here and abroad, to combat genocide, rape, and child soldierdom in Africa, and show how you can be a part of the movement.Learn how a high school student in Chicago rallied fellow students all over his city to raise awareness of genocide... a former child soldier in Uganda formed a group of others like him to aid in reconciliation... and a mother and teacher gang-raped by soldiers in Congo found strength to help other survivors. John and Don present ways for you to form alliances, contact Congress, alert the media, enlist corporations, and use social media to become part of the solution.Featuring testimonies and interviews with:• Ben Affleck • Madeleine Albright • Emmanuelle Chriqui • Sheryl Crow • Ann Curry • Annie Duke • Dave Eggers • Mia Farrow • Ryan Gosling • Mariska Hargitay • Emile Hirsch • Iman • Angelina Jolie • Nicholas Kristof • Joel Madden • Nicole Richie • Martin Sheen • Robin Wright • As well as a number of members of Congress and many others making a differenceFrom the Trade Paperback edition.

“You don’t look like brothers . . .”Peace activist and cofounder of the Enough Project, John Prendergast is known as a champion of human rights in Africa. But the not-so-public face of J.P. is the life he’s led as a Big Brother to Michael Mattocks. As a curious, driven, and emotionally wounded twenty-year-old, J.P. made the life-changing decision to form a “Big Brother/Little Brother” relationship with then seven-year-old Michael, who was living out of plastic bags and drifting from one homeless shelter to the next with his mother and siblings. Lacking a connection with his own brother and distancing himself from a disastrous relationship with his father, J.P. formed a unique bond with Michael the moment they met. Michael and J.P. became like family, with Michael and some of his siblings even living with J.P. one summer. In the years that followed, J.P. took Michael and his brothers on outings, whether it was fishing, playing basketball, patronizing cheap restaurants, or going on road trips. This friendship would continue for over twenty-five years as the two coped with varying degrees of violence, instability, and trauma in their own lives.  Told in duet, Unlikely Brothers follows Michael as he grows up on the tough streets of Washington, D.C., where as a young teenager he watched his best friend get shot, dropped out of school, and started dealing crack cocaine shortly thereafter. By sixteen, Michael had become the kingpin of his neighborhood, guns and drugs always close at hand. Meanwhile, J.P. was traveling to and from African war zones. J.P. offered Michael a refuge from the streets, never really confronting the gravity of what Michael was going through in his adolescence. In turn, Michael afforded J.P. an escape from his own turbulent personal and professional life.As the years go by, the two swoop in and out of each other’s lives, slowly disconnecting as they disappear into their respective worlds, but making their way back to each other at a critical moment for both of them. The effect the two have on each other is extremely significant to both of their paths to redemption.Inspirational and deeply moving, Unlikely Brothers beautifully showcases how life’s most random moments can often be the most profound.  From the Hardcover edition.

An Academy Award-nominated actor and a renowned human rights activist team up to change the tragic course of history in the Sudan -- with readers' help. While Don Cheadle was filming Hotel Rwanda, a new crisis had already erupted in Darfur, in nearby Sudan. In September 2004, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell termed the atrocities being committed there "genocide" -- and yet two years later things have only gotten worse. 3.5 million Sudanese are going hungry, 2.5 million have been displaced by violence, and 400,000 have died in Darfur to date. Both shocked and energized by this ongoing tragedy, Cheadle teamed up with leading activist John Prendergast to focus the world's attention. Not on Our Watch, their empowering book, offers six strategies readers themselves can implement: Raise Awareness, Raise Funds, Write a Letter, Call for Divestment, Start an Organization, and Lobby the Government. Each of these small actions can make a huge difference in the fate of a nation, and a people--not only in Darfur, but in other crisis zones such as Somalia, Congo, and northern Uganda.

In John J. Prendergast’s decades of experience as a psychotherapist and spiritual teacher, the area of the body that’s most difficult for many people to connect with, given our experiences with trauma and survival fear, is our physical and energetic ground. This area in the lower belly and at the base of the spine corresponds with the root chakra in the Indian subtle body tradition, the lower dan tien in Taoism, and the hara in Japanese martial arts. While most spiritual traditions focus on opening the mind and the heart, they tend to avoid or undervalue the opening of the ground. Prendergast notes, “It remains largely unconscious and deeply defended.” However, with the correct understanding and quality of attention, we can consciously open our multidimensional ground and, as a result, experience a felt-sense of inner safety and stability that supports the full flowering of inner peace, freedom, and loving awareness - a truly embodied spirituality.Your Deepest Ground invites readers to take a deep dive into their personal, archetypal, and universal ground, and to see through the false ground of their early conditioning and limited identity. Using authentic anecdotes and conversations drawn from his teaching, and accompanied by refined sensing and inquiry practices, Prendergast guides the reader in a unique groundbreaking and ground-opening exploration.

Had Enough? Join activists, organizations, and celebrities to fight human rights crimes in Africa.Human rights activist John Prendergast and Oscar-nominated actor Don Cheadle bring us an empowering and hopeful new book, as they reveal the steps being taken by engaged citizens—"Upstanders"—famous and unknown, here and abroad, to combat genocide, rape, and child soldierdom in Africa, and show how you can be a part of the movement.Learn how a high school student in Chicago rallied fellow students all over his city to raise awareness of genocide... a former child soldier in Uganda formed a group of others like him to aid in reconciliation... and a mother and teacher gang-raped by soldiers in Congo found strength to help other survivors. John and Don present ways for you to form alliances, contact Congress, alert the media, enlist corporations, and use social media to become part of the solution.Featuring testimonies and interviews with:• Ben Affleck • Madeleine Albright • Emmanuelle Chriqui • Sheryl Crow • Ann Curry • Annie Duke • Dave Eggers • Mia Farrow • Ryan Gosling • Mariska Hargitay • Emile Hirsch • Iman • Angelina Jolie • Nicholas Kristof • Joel Madden • Nicole Richie • Martin Sheen • Robin Wright • As well as a number of members of Congress and many others making a differenceFrom the Trade Paperback edition.

“You don’t look like brothers . . .”Peace activist and cofounder of the Enough Project, John Prendergast is known as a champion of human rights in Africa. But the not-so-public face of J.P. is the life he’s led as a Big Brother to Michael Mattocks. As a curious, driven, and emotionally wounded twenty-year-old, J.P. made the life-changing decision to form a “Big Brother/Little Brother” relationship with then seven-year-old Michael, who was living out of plastic bags and drifting from one homeless shelter to the next with his mother and siblings. Lacking a connection with his own brother and distancing himself from a disastrous relationship with his father, J.P. formed a unique bond with Michael the moment they met. Michael and J.P. became like family, with Michael and some of his siblings even living with J.P. one summer. In the years that followed, J.P. took Michael and his brothers on outings, whether it was fishing, playing basketball, patronizing cheap restaurants, or going on road trips. This friendship would continue for over twenty-five years as the two coped with varying degrees of violence, instability, and trauma in their own lives.  Told in duet, Unlikely Brothers follows Michael as he grows up on the tough streets of Washington, D.C., where as a young teenager he watched his best friend get shot, dropped out of school, and started dealing crack cocaine shortly thereafter. By sixteen, Michael had become the kingpin of his neighborhood, guns and drugs always close at hand. Meanwhile, J.P. was traveling to and from African war zones. J.P. offered Michael a refuge from the streets, never really confronting the gravity of what Michael was going through in his adolescence. In turn, Michael afforded J.P. an escape from his own turbulent personal and professional life.As the years go by, the two swoop in and out of each other’s lives, slowly disconnecting as they disappear into their respective worlds, but making their way back to each other at a critical moment for both of them. The effect the two have on each other is extremely significant to both of their paths to redemption.Inspirational and deeply moving, Unlikely Brothers beautifully showcases how life’s most random moments can often be the most profound.  From the Hardcover edition.

An Academy Award-nominated actor and a renowned human rights activist team up to change the tragic course of history in the Sudan -- with readers' help. While Don Cheadle was filming Hotel Rwanda, a new crisis had already erupted in Darfur, in nearby Sudan. In September 2004, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell termed the atrocities being committed there "genocide" -- and yet two years later things have only gotten worse. 3.5 million Sudanese are going hungry, 2.5 million have been displaced by violence, and 400,000 have died in Darfur to date. Both shocked and energized by this ongoing tragedy, Cheadle teamed up with leading activist John Prendergast to focus the world's attention. Not on Our Watch, their empowering book, offers six strategies readers themselves can implement: Raise Awareness, Raise Funds, Write a Letter, Call for Divestment, Start an Organization, and Lobby the Government. Each of these small actions can make a huge difference in the fate of a nation, and a people--not only in Darfur, but in other crisis zones such as Somalia, Congo, and northern Uganda.