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On Sale: Oct 15, 2024
Page Count: 272 pages
Publisher: Running Press
ISBN-13: 9780762485772

Build and deepen your personal spiritual practice with this empowering, radical reframing of prayer as a secular tool for healing, personal growth, societal change, and profound joy.

Prayer is an ancient practice—one that has been utilized and embraced by cultures around the world and across time. There is not one correct way to pray, and no tradition holds a monopoly on what prayer is or means. In The Uncommon Book of Prayer author, psychosomatic therapist, and flower essence practitioner Heidi Smith reveals that prayer does not even need to be practiced within a religious tradition, though it can be. Instead, she reintroduces readers to the idea of prayer as a highly personal practice that can bring joy and enlightenment, heal deeply felt trauma, and work toward planetary healing.

Readers will encounter a new definition of prayer: An active agreement that you make between your soul and the Divine (whatever that means to you). It is a sacred practice that can be called upon to bring about states of grace, healing, and change. Through this expansive, heart-centered experience readers will explore their own existing feelings about prayer and learn to build a personal practice that is authentic and sustaining.

In inviting chapters grounded with historical context, sample prayers, and stunning illustrations inspired by illuminated manuscripts, readers will learn to:

Refine a prayer practice.
Explore ambivalence around prayer and some of its difficult associations.
Integrate a prayer practice into co-creative and healing work.
Facilitate prayer circles in your community.
Open and strengthen communication with the heart, our most potent tool of resonance and the seat of true wisdom in the body.
Create space and possibility for hope and dreaming (which are not frivolous, but instead life-sustaining and changing practices).
Create vital and creative solutions for your life and our world.

There are many ways in to healing. A conscious prayer practice formed by reading The Uncommon Book of Prayer is a way into co-creating with the universe and accessing all the gifts that lie therein.

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"A timely guide to living in a heart-centered, grounded, and fearless way. Vivid and eloquent, with a wide spectrum of different cultural interpretations, methods, and templates to incorporate prayer-a most important, yet underestimated, component of healing."
Lata Chettri-Kennedy, community herbalist, teacher, and founder of Flower Power Herbs & Roots
"I have never had a relationship to prayer before, and never thought I would. But Heidi's book helped me understand that praying didn't have to be some rote thing I did before sleeping or eating, but rather a continuous conversation with myself and the universe. There is something about both the power and simplicity that this book offers that connected with me so deeply, that the first time I admitted I was praying. I found myself crying the whole time."
Marisa Meltzer, author of THIS IS BIG, GIRL POWER, and GLOSSY
"For years now, Heidi Smith's mission has been to resacralize experience and to rediscover and resurrect hard ancient methods and mysteries and plant them in busy, complex, messy modern life. This astute, encyclopedic, frequently wise book continues that project. It's a gift and a reminder. Much of the time it can seem like prayer is all we have. Maybe-now and again-it's all we need."
William Todd Schultz, PhD, author of THE MIND OF THE ARTIST
"This is the book on prayer that I have been waiting for! Inspiring, thoughtfully researched, and beautiful, THE UNCOMMON BOOK OF PRAYER offers an inclusive and modern approach to the sacred, universal act of prayer."
Nicole Pivirotto, designer and author of PRISM ORACLE and COLOR, FORM, and MAGIC
“THE UNCOMMON BOOK OF PRAYER lovingly guides you away from the patriarchal, white supremacist, and heteronormative ideas about prayer, and brings you into a world where prayer is a valuable tool in your arsenal of self-care practices, encouraging you to connect to the divine during moments of joy—not just in moments of desperation—which in turn helps you deepen your relationship with yourself. This book is a beautiful offering to the collective.”
Claire Goodchild, author and artist of THE BOOK OF ANCESTORS and the ANTIQUE ANATOMY TAROT
“Building upon the extraordinary insights of Heidi’s first book, THE UNCOMMON BOOK OF PRAYER is itself a prayer for collective healing co-created through Heidi’s devoted attunement to the unseen, the divine, ancestral wisdom, and ecological intelligence; and in respectful dialogue with a multiplicity of diverse social and cultural perspectives, traditions, and cosmologies. With so much to feel helpless about at this moment, this book is a timely offering, reminding us of great power in each of us to harness prayer as a means of intentionally committing to interconnectedness, mutuality, solidarity, and love.”
Nicole Daunic, PhD, founder of Black Hole Hollow
“THE UNCOMMON BOOK OF PRAYER is the awakening we need right now for the healing of self, our communities, and the Earth. This book is a remembrance of our connection to our hearts and souls, Spirit, and each other.”
Linda Lopes, Ra Illuminare Multidimensional Healer and Sacred Drum Practitioner
“I have always loved the quote, “Prayer is speaking to God. Meditation is listening to God.” But THE UNCOMMON BOOK OF PRAYER reminded me that being in a life of prayer is communing with God in every second. That being in wocekiye (relationship) is living in love with my heart’s communication with and from the Divine.”
Grace Harry, author of THE JOY STRATEGIST
“A beautifully written book that empowers us all to believe prayer can be used to effect change in our lives. I read it late into the night and found myself thinking about it first thing every morning.”
Lydia Fenet, author of THE MOST POWERFUL WOMAN IN THE ROOM IS YOU

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Heidi Smith

About the Author

Heidi Smith, MA, RH (AHG), is a psychosomatic therapist, registered herbalist, flower essence practitioner, and the author of The Bloom Book. Within her private practice, Moon & Bloom, Heidi works collaboratively with her clients to empower greater balance, actualization, and soul-level healing within themselves. She is passionate about engaging both the spiritual and scientific dimensions of the plant kingdom, and sees plant medicine and ritual as radical ways to promote individual, collective, and planetary healing. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her partner and two cats. For more, visit moonandbloom.com.

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Chelsea Granger

About the Illustrator

Chelsea Granger is a multidisciplinary artist. Painting, drawing, illustration, murals, and tattoos are the foundation of her practice. She recently self-published a zine about death and grief titled So Many Ways to Draw a Ghost. After the death of her mom as well as a dear friend, she started seeing her art as a way to sing up life, with the hope that her art can act as a doorway to create conversations about death and grief. Chelsea’s art is of the everyday, inspired by the overlap of earth/spirit dimensions, and woods as church. She is interested in painting as medicine, painting as a portal, painting as a spell. Her work has been exhibited across the Northeast, and her murals exist across New England. For more than twelve years, Chelsea has collaborated with Thyme Herbal, making medicine posters and zines. Chelsea holds a bachelor’s degree in painting from UMass-Amherst and a certificate in therapeutic recreation from Gateway Community College. Her work celebrates life while honoring death and walking gently into the unknown.

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