This charming book is a manual for self-stabilization that helps readers align their communications and behaviors to be more harmonious, respectful, and forward oriented. Hernandez's guide is the only book of its kind to align the Native American value system with psychological practice and apply it to modern day life. As professional as it is warm and inviting, it offers concrete methods to not only improve our personal mental health but also to feel better about the effect we have on others. A powerful, indispensable personal resource, Hope, Harmony and Respect is a hands-on guide to making positive changes in our lives-and to being happy while doing it. Native American biopsychosocial principles shine through many established healthy ways of thinking and through psychological practices such as Neurolinguistic programming (NLP), SR, basic Ericksonian techniques, and also through the teachings of other prominent psychologists such as Csikszentmihalyi and Bateson. All of these approaches strive to align the needs and interests of the mind, body, soul, and environment in individual decision-making. Living such an integrated lifestyle, wherein decisions and behaviors flow from well-practiced attitudes and values based upon compatible core beliefs, our daily lives will become less dramatic and more peaceful. Such a lifestyle, of course, is also going to be inherently flexible and open to new ideas. At high levels of functioning, where our behavior influences the world and other people, a higher level of moral reasoning is required, where the emphasis is on the greater good rather than personal benefit-which, as readers will see, is exactly where the Native American belief system is strongest. As Jeanne Hernandez writes in her first chapter, the Native Americans' mindset has always been one of interconnectedness. They viewed the interconnected nature of themselves, their community, and their world to be concentric, emanating out into the universe. This view informed every single aspect of their cultures. Within this view, we cannot help but look at the discussion of life paths, destinies, and life choices in an entirely new light. Despite our western-centric existentialism, the truth is that we are not alone, that we are indeed part of an ecosystem at minimum and, according to Native American beliefs, perhaps part of something far more intrinsic to the world and even universe. Exploring seventeen generic yet traditional Native American principles and spiritual anchors, Hernandez uses them as a backdrop and source for the book through which she combines explanations, examples, and exercises from her modern psychologist's toolbox of activities. The results are nothing short of remarkable. The similarities in the approach to life between Native American culture and advanced psychotherapy methods are indeed astonishing and offer a quick, holistic way of improving our lives and our relationships.
About the Author: Jeanne Hernandez, PhD, MSPH, is a psychotherapist and published psychologist with training and experience in public health, community psychology, psychosomatic medicine and personal and professional coaching. She has given many presentations and published many articles and book chapters on a diverse range of topics related to mental health, wellness and mind/body medicine. She is the author of Tame you Pain: Inner dialogues that relieve your suffering. As a psychotherapist and as a personal coach, she helps people from all walks of life and a wide variety of backgrounds solve life problems. She is also a long-term avid and respectful student of Native American traditions as a functional way of life. Her work highlights the spirituality which is prevalent in Native American and other indigenous cultures. Her tool book of exercises taps Ericksonian hypnotherapy, NLP, basic psychological principles and her long-time experience helping people relate well to others and feel good about their lives. As a left hander and a hypnotherapist, she strives to help others hone their right-brain thinking for better problem solving and more creative problem solving; such thinking is more respectful, community oriented and environmentally sound, as is the Native American approach to life.