I have come across some wonderfully inspiring books and documentaries that I believe would immensely benefit those who comes into contact with them.  Some of these have changed my life in previously unimaginable ways.  They have greatly expanded my consciousness and my capacity for stepping strongly into empowered sexuality, greater ability to give and receive love, and so much more ease, abundance and freedom in my lived experience.  Liberation!  I am certain that you will enjoy them as much as I do!  Feel free to let me know your thoughts and feelings about them as you are reading.  I'd love to exchange notes with you!  And please let me know if you have any recommendations that you would like to see added to this list.  Always on the lookout for more amazing spiritual content to support our awakening, expansion and liberation!

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FOR YOUR SACRED SEXUALITY JOURNEY | NEO-TANTRA

 

Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire | David Deida

A must read for both men and women!  This book helped me understand myself like I never had before...and it's written by a man!  This guy has unbelievable insight into women and will help you to connect more fully and authentically to your healthy masculine energy.  Raising our vibrations for sure!  His writing style does rub some people the wrong way and I'll admit that some of what he says makes me cringe a bit, but I still recommend it highly.  Take what you like and leave the rest!

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Tantric Secrets for Men: What Every Woman Will Want Her Man to Know About Enhancing Sexual Ecstasy | Kerry Riley with Diane Riley

A really helpful book to support your bringing greater presence to love-making, to relationships, to your own sexual energy.  Great tips and techniques to enhance sexual experience and open you up to a whole new way to approach your sexual expression and your ways of relating. 

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She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman | Ian Kerner, Ph.D.

I'm not usually a huge fan of technique books, as I feel empowered sexuality needs to go much deeper than technique.  Still, though, this is an important read and it will help greatly expand your understanding of how to physically connect with people who have vulvas.  This could change your life.  This guy really knows his stuff and his easy to understand and fun approach makes this an excellent read and a serious benefit to man- and woman-kind. 

 

Tongue Tied: Untangling Communication in Sex, Kink, and Relationships | Stella Harris (a local sex and intimacy coach whom I have had the very excellent pleasure of meeting with)  I cannot say enough amazing things about this book.  It will blow the doors open on your intimate experiences and bring you to previously unimaginable realms of pleasure.  Seriously.  (See my blog for more info on this book!)

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Sacred Pleasure: Sex, Myth, and the Politics of the Body | Riane Eisler

An extremely empowering and insightful book that opened my eyes to the depth, complexity, history, and far-reaching implications of living in a patriarchal world. Gloria Steinhem writes, "Sacred Pleasure makes the links between sacralizing pain and justifying war, between child abuse and sado-masochism, between patriarchy and the war of the sexes, between the intimate and the political. Only by sacralizing pleasure can new links be forged to peace, equality, and empathy." This is a really important read.

 

The Ethical Slut | Janet W. Hardy and Dossie Easton

The back of the book touts: "The guide of choice for people curious to move beyond conventional monogamy, and for anyone interested in learning better skills for love, sex, and intimacy."  Need I say more?  Seriously though - amazing book for this day and age as we try to find our way out of oppressive societal relationship norms.  A must read!

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Finding God Through Sex | David Deida 

Another powerful read and extremely eye-opening and thought-provoking.  An important read on the path of sacred sexuality.

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Mating in Captivity | Esther Perel

Can emotional intimacy and carnal passion co-exist in marriage or other long-term committed relationships?  Esther explores the challenges of keeping eroticism alive in relationships and why so many relationships fail in this department - and what we can do about it.  I freaking LOVE this book! 

 

FOR YOUR SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

 

The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning | Katherine Ketcham and Earnest Kurtz

(This one changed my life!)

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Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One | Dr. Joe Dispenza

I am so totally all about empowering ourselves to create our own reality with love and positivity - this book strengthens our ability to do so and validates what I have come to know as true for myself. We create our reality with our thoughts, behaviors, and mindset. Negativity breeds negativity ~ positivity breeds positivity. It really is that simple. Simple, but not exactly easy to embody and master. It takes work (A LOT OF WORK!!!) to deprogram all of our negative thought processes and habits - this book helps with that!!!! "Once you break the habit of being yourself and truly change your mind, your life will never be the same!" Amen to that!

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The Power of Now | Eckhart Tolle

A truly life changing book - I cannot say enough good things about this one and I am in excellent company.  This has been a pivotal book for hundreds of thousands of people around the globe.  This really helps us to understand how our ego keeps us stuck in fear worrying and stressing about the past and the future - and how devastating that truly is for our well-being, our joy, our happiness, our relationships.  We only ever have this present moment and the more we can bring ourselves to live in this moment, the more free we are from the bondage of fear, stress, anxiety, health issues, relationship challenges, and the list goes on.  Do yourself a huge favor - read this book!

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The Wisdom of the Council: Channeled Messages for Living Your Purpose | Sara Landon

When you are ready to move out of the fear-based, limited experience of the 3D into the freedom and love of the 5th Dimension, this is an excellent book to support your process.  Break free from so much limitation and open to a whole new way of experiencing life and living in Heaven on Earth - the New Earth Consciousness.  Let go of forcing your way through life and allow abundance, joy, adventure, love and freedom to flow to and through you.  Amazing teachings!  The Council's teachings have been an absolute game-changer for me and kicked my experience into an entirely new dimension - one filled with soooo much abundance, love and freedom.  Seriously powerful!

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The Five Stages of the Soul | Harry R. Moody and David Carroll

A gorgeous exploration of the different stages that we tend to move through as we embark on our spiritual journey.  Wonderfully insightful, supportive, and inspiring.  I loved this book and could hardly put it down.  Extremely affirming and validating of the ups and downs of the spiritual path.  A great support to help us navigate and give us courage to continue to move forward towards so much freedom, expansion, and love.

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The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying | Sogyal Rinpoche

A spiritual classic!  An excellent intro to the spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism and another one that was hard to put down.  Super practical, super informative, super enlightening!  From Wikipedia: the book explores the message of impermanence; evolution, karma and rebirth; the nature of mind and how to train the mind through meditation; how to follow a spiritual path in this day and age; the practice of compassion; how to care for and show love to the dying, and spiritual practices for the moment of death.

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The Power of Intention | Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Another spiritual classic - take control of your life and create the life of your dreams by learning the power of setting intention.  Where attention goes, energy flows.  When we learn to be more intentional with our thoughts, our words, our actions - powerful things start to happen in our life.  Don't take my word for it though - try it for yourself and watch the magic happen in your life!

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AUTHENTIC TANTRIC PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE

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Sadhana: The Path of Transformation | From the Teachings of Swami Sivananda Saraswati and Swami Satyananda Saraswati

A really important book to support our understanding of why we engage in spiritual practice (sadhana), where it is taking us, best practices, pitfalls to avoid, foundations for spiritual practice and what we might encounter along our path.  It is important to keep in mind, when reading any of these books, that our experience in The West is very different and we live in a very different culture and very different time than when and where these traditions originated, so following these instructions to the T is highly unlikely for us, but still, this gives us an excellent understanding of the purpose behind the practices and supports our ability to incorporate as much as we are inspired to.  This book really took my practice to the next level and continues to do so!

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Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha | Swami Satyananda Saraswati

Why are we doing these yoga postures?  What is the purpose behind this breath work?  What are those funny hand positions I see people doing when they meditate?  Just what is a 'bandha' anyway and should I be incorporating it into meditation?  All of this answered and soooo much more!  Again, much is being taught here in The West without the proper understanding or philosophy behind what we are doing.  In our desire to make things super simple and super fast here in The West, we can lose the essence of what we are engaging with and therefore lose a great deal of the benefits and actual spiritual growth that accompanies these practices.  This book explains what is happening body, mind and spirit when we engage in these practices and greatly supports our experience of spiritual awakening.  When we are able to engage all aspects of ourselves into our practice, we get much richer results.  A super important book if you are interested in engaging in Tantra at a deeper level.

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Prana and Pranayama | Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati

Breath-work is uber powerful and a very important practice on the Tantric path.  Breath is life.  Learning to work with it and control it can drastically change our lived experience.  This book dives deep into the purpuse, function, and experience of working with the breath and shares various practices to get started - including the whens, whys, wheres, hows, whats, and whos.  There are so many people teaching various breathworks out there without including any instruction on why or what or who - just the how.  It is important to understand why we are engaging in a practice and what it is moving us towards.  Excellent, rounded understanding of this extremely important and foundational element of Tantra.

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Kashmir Shaivism: The Secret Supreme | Swami Lakshman Jee

A short intro to the basic tenets of Tantric philosophy according to Kashmir Shaivism. 

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Self-Realization in Kashmir Shaivism: The Oral Teachings of Swami Lakshmanjoo | John Jughes

Another enlightening discourse on various aspects and elements of tantra according to the Kashmir Shaivism philosophy.  Some great nuggets in here! 

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Mantra Yoga & Primal Sound: Secrets of Bija Mantras | David Frawley (Pandit Vamadeva Shastri)

A highly digestible exploration of the importance of sound, vibration, and mantra on our spiritual path and in regards to the reality of our Universe - our entire existence is made of vibration, so understanding and learning to utilize sound and mantra is key for our spiritual path and to support our clearing out limiting and unhealthy energy patterns (belief systems, fears, conditioning) in our body, mind and spirit.  An excellent intro to the power of the Sanskrit alphabet!

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Kashmir Saivism: The Central Philosophy of Tantrism | Kamalakar Mishra

Dive into the philosophy behind Kashmir Saivism - "the principle philosophy in the Tantric system - it integrates the goals of enjoyment and liberation, worldly involvement and renunciation."  Super practical philosophy for living in the world of the senses and of the spirit -  bringing it all together for ultimate fulfillment, Divine love from within, empowerment, and enjoyment of this gorgeous world in these amazing bodies! 

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SPIRITUAL DOCUMENTARIES

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Samadhi Part 1 (Maya the Illusion of the Self) | Josh and Rebecca Tickell

A super powerful movie!!!!  From IMDB: Samadhi Part 1 (Maya the Illusion of the Self) is the first installment in a series of films exploring Samadhi. Samadhi is an ancient Sanskrit word which points toward the mystical or transcendent union that is at the root of all spirituality and self inquiry. The saints, sages and awakened beings throughout history have all learned the wisdom of self surrender.  The whole series is free on YouTube.

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When the Iron Bird Flies | Kamalakar Mishra

The inspiring story of how Eastern teachings were intentionally brought to The West by Buddhists to support the evolution of humanity.  A wonderful and inspiring documentary.

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Crazy Wisdom| Kamalakar Mishra

A great documentary exploring the life, teachings and wisdom of Buddhist "bad boy" Chogyam Trungpa.  Sex, drugs, and spiritual enlightment!  Anything goes with Chogyam - bring it ALL on the path!

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Ram Dass: Fierce Grace | Kamalakar Mishra

A powerful look at the power of an authentic spiritual practice to move through life's challenges and find the deeper meaning.  A beautifully inspiring story of awakening, gratitude, and devotion.

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Heal | Kelly Noonan Gores

An amazing documentary highlighting just how much power we have when it comes to healing our bodies.  When we step strong into this new understanding of energy and the quantum reality we are living in, we realize how powerful we are when it comes to healing ourselves and that new possibilities are available to us.  A must see!  Youtube says: A documentary film that takes us on a scientific and spiritual journey where we discover that by changing one's perceptions, the human body can heal itself.

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Awake: The Life of Yogananda | Paola di Florio

An excellent recounting of the life and times of Yogananda - the author of the transformative and life-changing book Autobiography of a Yogi.

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Baraka and Samsara | Both by Ron Fricke

Stunning non-verbal visual documentaries highlighting the beauties and challenges of the human journey and life here on planet Earth.  Gorgeous, thought-provoking, must-see movies!  I watch these easily at least once per year. 

 

Kumare | Vikram Gandhi

According to IMDB: A documentary about a man who impersonates a wise Indian Guru and builds a following in Arizona. At the height of his popularity, the Guru Kumaré must reveal his true identity to his disciples and unveil his greatest teaching of all.  Damn entertaining, very funny, quite thought-provoking, confronting and an important lesson on the spiritual path - especially in regards to our attachments, expectations, illusions, discernment, and the truth of the love and beauty we all possess within.  We do not need to find a guru to find ourselves!

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What the Bleep Do We Know | Kamalakar Mishra

An excellent introduction into quantum phyics and a serious game-changing movie - might change your entire perspective of reality!  

 

The Earthing Movie | Josh and Rebecca Tickell

The unbelievable healing power of simply putting our bare feet onto the Earth for a few minutes a day - this practice can be a total game-changer for our body, mind and spirit.  This documentary dives into the science and personal stories of this wonderfully simple practice.  You are going to love this!  Free on YouTube.

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GAIA TV | Conscious Media, Streaming Yoga, Videos and More!

For absolutely all of your spiritual programming and endless hours of awakening and enlighenment - this site has it ALL!  Ancient civilizations, quantum physics, meditations, yoga, spiritual documentaries, health shows, astrology, Buddhism, Christianity, magic, Wicca, nature-based spirituality, shamanism, UFOs, channeled messages, personal development, amazing series, mind expansion - and I could go on and on and on.  For $10 a month (I believe) you get all this and tons more.  Imperative programming for your spiritual journey!  I can't recommend any more highly.  I have learned soooo much here!