A beautiful, heart-centered offering that broadens our understanding of grief, inviting the body into the conversation, and guides us into relationship with grief. As a palliative care physician who sits with people navigating many forms of loss, I see every day how urgently the world needs this wisdom. Weaving together neuroscience, somatic practices, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, and lived experience, this book offers a way of understanding and being with grief that invites in our full humanity, while also providing practices that create space for healing. In a world that tells us to deny our grief or push it down into the body, Amar Atma offers a different way - honoring grief as an integral part of the human experience, one that deepens our capacity to love - and invites us to care for ourselves with tenderness in times of loss.

The Tender Art of Grieving is a guide for all who seek to understand and embrace life fully, which inevitably demands holding compassionate grief. As I read the pages within, I  hear AmarAtma's warm voice and his heart-forward laugh. His words are written to you, me, our lineages and ancestors - to past, present, and future iterations of ourselves. AmarAtma opens the space for each of us to be held, and to hold ourselves, through and with sacred grief.  At long last, the brilliance of his retreats is now widely accessible through this generous book, including innovative embodiment and somatic practices alongside unparalleled theory deeply studied and tested in practice. Wherever you are on your life and grief journey, AmarAtma will meet you on the path within this text. What a gift to all of us on this journey of life, thank you, AmarAtma! 

As a physician who sits with dying patients and their families every day, I rarely find a book worthy of pressing into their hands at the hardest moment of their lives. The Tender Art of Grieving is that book, which is why it now sits at the top of my recommendation list. AmarAtma's rare gifts of chaplaincy, Traditional Chinese Medicine and grief counseling have alchemized into something deeply moving, scientifically and spiritually rooted yet wildly practical. Our culture tends to offer platitudes and positivity to any human who has known loss but this is a brilliant exception. It's an indispensable guide for anyone who wants to meet their grief where it lives and finally learn the tools to move through it.