Here you'll find people and things that have influenced my work and my life in the most positive ways.  I hope you'll find them useful, or at the very least, interesting and thought provoking.  Books are at the bottom of the page because that's going to be a long list!

Acupuncture

Jacob Chinn, Walnut Creek, CA

I love acupuncture in the hands of an accomplished practitioner, and Jacob is a true healer.  His technical skills are strong, but he's also deeply compassionate, caring, and intuitive, and will always be able to share helpful information about your challenge.  He has some services that he can offer at a distance, so even if you're nowhere near California you can still work with him, which I highly recommend doing in some capacity.  Find more information on his Web site.

Art

Diana Vehuni, Los Angeles, CA

Diana makes beautiful art using fractals, and also just happens to be a really lovely person!  Go check out her Web site here.

Articles

Fighting the Fire:  Emotions, Evolution, and the Future of Psychology

Chiropractic

Alex Callister, San Francisco, CA

I'm never without a chiropractor.  This is one of the most helpful natural health modalities I know of, and Dr. Callister is the best of the best.  Always learning, super-intelligent, determined, and the nicest person ever.  If you're in the Bay Area, run, do not walk, to his practice.  Unless you've hurt something.  Then by all means walk, and let him help you.

Public Speaking and Vocal Production Training

Bridget Brady/The Voice Genius

Bridget is a powerhouse of a speaker and trainer.  She's got years of experience in theatrical and vocal performance to draw from, and she's also an expert in sales technique.  Taking one of her classes can truly help you find your voice and start getting comfortable in front of an audience, which is something many people fear deeply!  You'll learn about how to market yourself as well as products and services.  She makes it all fun with her enthusiasm for life and the growth and success of others, while at the same time refusing to let you off the hook until you make major progress.  Want results?  You'll love her classes.

EFT/Tapping

The Tapping Solution

This is one of the most highly trafficked Tapping-related  Web sites out there.  It was through their efforts that I learned about Tapping myself, and I'll always be grateful to them for publicizing information about it so widely; the tone here is upbeat and positive, and I think you'll enjoy exploring everything they have to offer.  You can also find me and other EFT professionals on their practitioner list, just in case you want to work with someone, but don't feel that I'm the right person for you.

EFT Universe

The founder of this Web site, Dawson Church, has done a great deal to further the scientific evidence for the efficacy of Tapping, and you can find an enormous amount of great information and a library of articles by practitioners here.  This is also one of the most-visited sites with the largest community, and they too have a list of available practitioners.  I think you'll find this site to be a wonderful resource.

EmoFree

This is where you can find the work of the founder of EFT, Gary Craig.  There's an excellent in-depth tutorial area that will teach you how to use EFT, including numerous videos in which you can see Gary at work.  If you want to learn directly from the source, this is it.  I actually don't agree with all aspects of his viewpoint, but for the most part I think what he offers is fantastic.  He is generous enough to make this information free to the public where others would have protected their intellectual property and kept it out of the hands of the many, and I think that's extraordinary.  I am incredibly grateful for the ways in which his work has changed my life for the better, and for the tools he has made available to all of us.

Yoga

Jenn Webster, Los Angeles, CA

I know, I know.  Everyone and their dog is a yoga instructor nowadays.  Many are good.  But some are masterful.  Jenn is one of these.  She has a wide open heart, a truly impressive knowledge base, and she teaches in an engaging, creative way that will bring you to surprising accomplishments and new parts of yourself through gentle but consistent challenge.  She's also gorgeously patient, calm, and loving, and just an all-around good person you can't help wanting to support once you experience her class.  It's a beautiful, uplifting experience.  Go try it for yourself and you'll see what I mean.

Loren Cherrstrom, Las Vegas

I know, I know.  Bikram yoga is considered highly questionable within many yoga communities.  But for a time in my life, I needed to avoid upper-body-weight-bearing exercise, but wanted to remain fit and be challenged, and I tried it out.  I took classes led by a bunch of people, and unlike most teachers you'll find in this branch of yoga, Loren displays an utterly mind-boggling understanding of anatomy/physiology and can communicate in fine detail how the slightest adjustments in posture can change everything.  He'll say more about the minutiae of using your body in the space of a single class than you could take in over the course of a week, and he'll do it with a sassy sense of humor that somehow remains positive despite its slyness.  With many Bikram teachers, it's the same class every time.  With Loren, every moment is a revelation.  He also teaches other styles of yoga both privately and for groups.

Web Sites

SelfGrowth.com

In the words of the site owner, "SelfGrowth.com is the most complete guide to information about self-Improvement, personal growth and self-help on the Internet. It is designed to be an organized directory, with articles and references to thousands of other Web sites on the World Wide Web."  It's a fun place to click around and find articles on this kind of topic as well as lots of vendors providing services.  Happy hunting!

Books (in no particular order)
 

The Highly Sensitive Person
Elaine N. Aron, Ph. D.

The main thesis of this book is that roughly 20% of any animal population is born with a more sensitive nervous system than the other 80%, though it's a continuum rather than an absolute.  If you're one of the humans in this category, you have certain talents, but they may not be seen as strengths.  This book can help explain the benefits of being this way, and how to navigate the challenges.

What Color Is Your Parachute?
Richard Nelson Bolles

This is an excellent, highly practical resource for those considering new career paths.  It's chock full of useful exercises to help you figure out what you enjoy and what you're good at, as well as how to find and win or create the job you want. It gets updated often, so newer versions keep up with rapidly changing times.

Crucial Conversations
Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan & Al Switzler

We all struggle with communication sometimes.  Each of us tends to do so in different ways, and this book gives us some great insights into how we can work ourselves out of our most persistent negative patterns.  It's somewhat focused on the business world, so the more artistic will find it to be less a rollicking romp and more technical than they might prefer, but there is humor, and I personally find it to be an engaging read.

A Return to Love
Marianne Williamson

I found this to be both challenging and wonderfully instructive.  Marianne's work is based on a book called A Course in Miracles.  I find the principles to be universal to many religions, though the language in which they are expressed is Christian.  I've found that I enjoy her take on the Course more enjoyable than the article itself.  True to its title, this book encourages us to find ways to keep turning back toward love in all the moments of daily life.

Mastery
Robert Greene

A discussion of what mastery is, why it's important, and the essential steps for getting there.  Greene uses case studies of both famous and more obscure but fascinating people to illustrate various ways to go about becoming a master of your chosen subject.  Each story is very different.  I loved reading about the efforts and the coincidences/connections that led each person to extraordinary results.

Calling In the One
Katherine Woodward Thomas

This book is a lovely, astonishingly comprehensive work about how to work toward having a wonderfully loving relationship with a partner.  It's also a recipe for the work we all need to do, whether partnered or not, to become the best and most healthy people we can be emotionally.  Really, this book is fantastic if you want a how-to approach to lead you through a step-by-step process toward a happier you.

Ask and It Is Given
Esther Hicks

This one can seem a bit "out there" to some, so you need an open mind to enjoy it.  Esther seems to have been the first to use the term Law of Attraction, and her books are better than most of the material you'll find out there if this is your bag.  Even if it's not, there are two things in this book that I found priceless:  1. There's a chart showing which emotions are improvements over others that draws you a road map to taking incremental steps out of a slump.  I've never seen anything like this anywhere else, and there are some surprises in there.  2. She includes some fantastic exercises at the end of the book to improve the direction of your thinking and your emotions, and who among us can't use some pointers on that?

A Bug Free Mind/Using a Bug Free Mind
Andy Shaw

A fantastic system for training your mindset to be more conducive to success and happiness.  Really well thought out content written in detail, from someone who has both been highly successful in life and experienced losses and failures on a large scale.  It's obvious that he has thought deeply over time about what makes success possible, and he hands us all of his keys here.  This is the kind of material you can work on for years and still find new insights with every reading.  I will warn you that the author seems to have excitedly rushed these books to market; I found them a bit hard to read sometimes because the grammar and sentence construction is all over the place.  But the information is some of the best I've ever encountered anywhere.

Eat Right for Your Type
Peter J. D'Adamo

When I was in the midst of some pretty severe digestive issues in my late 20's, I found that eating in accordance with the suggestions laid out in this book for my blood type helped tremendously.  It wasn't the only thing I needed to do in order to get back to a better internal balance, but it was very clear to me that it was worth learning about this.  Full disclosure:  I'm not a scientist!  But the science discussed in the first part of the book seemed plausible, and I was desperate, so I gave it a go.  I think we're all unique and that you need to learn your body for yourself, but if nothing else, this gives you a good starting place on how to customize a healthy daily diet for your body's unique needs.

The Field
Lynne McTaggart

This book shows us examples of some of the principles of quantum physics in action.  Even though these principles have been in evidence in lab experiments for over 100 years, most fields of scientific inquiry haven't caught up with them.  In part, this seems to be because they're just so darned challenging to minds raised on the Newtonian model.  I found this book evocative, and a lot of fun to read.