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John Forsyth
About
I've devoted most of my adult life to writing, speaking, teaching, doing research, and training mental health professionals and the public in the use of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and practices that cultivate mindfulness, loving kindness, and self-compassion. My abiding passion, if you can call it that, is to discover and share more effective ways to alleviate human suffering, awaken the human spirit, and to nurture psychological health and vitality. I've been at this for over 20 years, and have seen the enormous impact that ACT can have in the lives of many, including my life too. My intention is to share my personal journey and experience, balanced with practical insights grounded in scientific evidence, to those wishing to find a path out of suffering and into wholeness.
I've co-authored several popular books, including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Anxiety Disorders (for mental health professionals), and three self-help books for the public: The Mindfulness & Acceptance Workbook for Anxiety, and ACT on Life, Not on Anger, and Your Life on Purpose. I am happy to say that the 2nd edition of The Mindfulness & Acceptance Workbook is now available on Amazon and in most major book stores. I am also excited about a forthcoming book that will be out in 2018, called "Anxiety Happens." This little book is packed with 52 practical teachings and simple strategies to help anyone who may find themselves stuck and struggling with anxiety and fear. And, honestly, that includes most of us. We've all been there.
I am also a Professor of Psychology and Director the Anxiety Disorders Research Program at the University at Albany, SUNY in Upstate New York. This is a job that I absolutely love. But I also wear many other hats. I'm a licensed clinical psychologist in New York, with expertise in the use and application of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for several forms of psychological and emotional suffering. I am also an active researcher, teacher, and consultant and serve as a senior editor of the ACT book series with New Harbinger Publications.
I also travel quite a bit, offering talks and co-leading ACT workshops with my wife for the public and mental health professionals in the United States and abroad. My wife and I regularly offer week long retreat-style ACT workshops at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies in Rhinebeck, NY, The Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, and at 1440 Multiversity in Scotts Valley, CA, where both of us serve as members of the teaching faculty.
In truth, I love what I do. I bring a good deal of energy, humility and compassion to my work, and and am grateful that our down-to earth workshops are consistently praised for their clarity, depth and utility.
Apart from work, my wife and I do our best to practice what we preach, including mediation and yoga. I also absolutely love being away from it all, unplugged - the mountains are my cathedral!
Involution-An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God
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<p>“<em>We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”(</em>Teilhard de Chardin<em>)</em></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;"><em>Involution-An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God </em> is as layered as a French cassoulet, as diverting, satisfying and as rich. Each reader will spoon this book differently. On the surface it seems to be a simple and light-hearted poetic journey through the history of Western thought, dominantly scientific, but enriched with painting and music. Beneath that surface is the sauce of a new evolutionary idea, involution; the informing of all matter by consciousness, encoded and communicating throughout the natural world. A book about the cathedral of consciousness could have used any language to paint it, but science is perhaps most in need of new vision, and its chronology is already familiar.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">The author offers a bold alternative vision of both science and creation: she suggests that science has been incrementally the recovery of memory, the memory of evolution/involution</span><em style="line-height:1.6em;">.</em></p><p>“<em> Involution proposes that humans carry within them the history of the universe, which is (re)discovered by the individual genius when the time is ripe. All is stored within our DNA and awaits revelation. Such piecemeal revelations set our finite lives in an eternal chain of co-creation and these new leaps of discovery are compared to mystical experience</em>” (From a reviewer)</p><p>Each unique contributor served the collective and universal return to holism and unity. Thus the geniuses of the scientific journey, like the spiritual visionaries alongside, have threaded the rosary of science with the beads of inspiration, and through them returned Man to his spiritual nature and origin.</p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">The separation between experience and the rational intellect of science has, by modelling memory as theory, separated its understanding from the consciousness of all, and perceives mind and matter as separate, God and Man as distinct. This work is a dance towards their re-unification: Saints and scientists break the same bread.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">All of time and all the disciplines of science are needed for the evidence. Through swift (and sometimes sparring) Cantos of dialogue between Reason and Soul, Philippa Rees takes the reader on a monumental journey through the history of everything – with the evolution of man as one side of the coin and involution the other. The poetic narrative is augmented by learned and extensive footnotes offering background knowledge which in themselves are fascinating. In effect there are two books, offering a right and left brain approach. The twin spirals of a DNA shaped book intertwine external and internal and find, between them, one journey, Man’s recovery of Himself., and (hopefully) the Creation’s recovery of a nobler Man.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">From the same review “</span><em style="line-height:1.6em;">The reader who finishes the book will not be the same as the one who began it. New ideas will expand the mind but more profoundly, the deep, moving power of the verse will affect the heart.</em></p><p><em>(Marianne Rankin: Director of Communications, Alister Hardy Trust)</em></p><p> </p>