This listing is for the e-pub version of the book. Customers will receive links to download their digital products in the thank you page of the checkout, along with an emailed link that will last for 30 days.
 
Openings: Grounding Exercises for Students and Practitioners in Spiritual Care and Psychotherapy by Amy Panton is a reflective and practical resource designed to support presence, curiosity, and embodied learning. Rooted in lived experience and deep listening, this book offers more than 30 grounding exercises that can be used in spirtual care and psychotherapy classrooms, supervision, and personal practice.
 
Divided into four chapters—Becoming, Feeling, Listening, and Encountering—Openings explores how grounding practices can deepen awareness, create space for reflection, and cultivate a sense of belonging. This book holds space for difficult emotions and experiences; it engages with uncertainty, anger, grief, tiredness, burning, binding, and even ripping as part of the process of learning and transformation.
 
Each exercise includes opening words, facilitator instructions, the exercise itself, and notes for integration, making it accessible for both structured and spontaneous use. Through movement, mindfulness, and creative engagement, Openings invites readers into a slow, intentional practice of attunement—to self, to others, and to the sacred. Visual elements are also woven throughout the book, inviting contemplation and mystery—like stepping through a doorway into deeper reflection. These images are invitations, offering new ways to engage with the themes of grounding, presence, and becoming. 
 
Whether you are a student, practitioner, or educator, Openings serves as a gentle and brave companion for those engaged in the work of spiritual care.
 
Excerpt from Openings:
 
Exercise: Weaving
Duration: 7-8 minutes
Theme: Integrating different elements of learning, experience, and identity in spiritual care practice
 
Opening Words: As spiritual care providers, we gather many threads into our practice - threads of learning, lived experience, cultural wisdom, and sacred understanding. Like skilled weavers, we learn to bring these threads together, creating something both strong and beautiful from their intersection. Today, we take time to acknowledge and honour these various threads that are becoming woven into your unique way of offering care.