Inward Bound: Exploring the Geography of Your Emotions

The author of the New York Times bestseller Fire in the Belly guides us on an enlightening journey across the emotional landscape of our own inner psyches. Using self-tests and practical advice, Inward Bound teaches us to master the art of emotional literacy--how to understand what our minds and bodies are really telling us through the ups and downs of our emotions.

Paying special attention to "negative" emotions such as fatigue, depression, grief, and especially boredom--the undiagnosed disease from which most "normal" people suffer--Sam Keen shows us how the low periods in our lives can actually be the impetus for the most profound and lasting change. While most people deny emotional lows in the hopes that they will go away; eat, drink, or tranquilize themselves; take mood elevators; or otherwise fill their time with empty activities, Keen instead teaches us how to re-vision negative emotions as positive way stations on the path to self-discovery.

In Inward Bound, Keen shows us how to recover the full spectrum of our feelings and points the reader on a journey to greater health, intimacy, vitality, and a renewed joy in life.

Sam Keen is a noted author and lecturer who has written thirteen books on philosophy and religion. He earned graduate degrees from the Harvard Divinity School and Princeton University, and spent twenty years working as an editor of Psychology Today. Keen coproduced the Emmy-nominated PBS documentary Faces of the Enemy, and was the subject of a PBS special with Bill Moyers entitled Your Mythic Journey with Sam Keen. When not writing or traveling around the world lecturing and giving seminars on a wide range of topics, Keen cuts wood, tends to his farm in the hills above Sonoma, takes long hikes, and practices the flying trapeze.