Which Way Is Up?

A heartfelt guide for meeting difficult times with mindfulness, compassion, and courage—from a psychotherapist and Buddhist practitioner who learned from her own crisis—with practices to transform the three types of fear into opportunities for personal growth.

This three-part guide feels like a friend stepping up to offer support during difficult times. It warmly invites readers into a safe space to contemplate their personal fears and encourages them to re-imagine their personal crisis as a journey that they can emerge from by learning how to work with—rather than against—fear.
    Using personal examples from her own recent bardo crisis—undergoing cancer treatment during the pandemic—and offering contemplative prompts for inner-reflection and a meditation practice in each chapter, psychotherapist and Buddhist practitioner Susan Chapman demystifies the three main types of fear people experience (frozen, awake, and core), and how to meet each with love. This heartfelt guide from someone who’s been there and done the work will help us get through life’s challenges and restore our equilibrium, while also inviting a valuable opportunity for personal growth. 
    Which Way Is Up? draws from traditional Buddhist teachings on the bardo, a Tibetan word most often associated with the period between death and rebirth. Chapman likens the bardo to abrupt episodes in our lives when things seem to turn upside down and we can’t find our footing. In such times of not-knowing—whether it’s navigating the end of a relationship, a health scare, the loss of a career, or other unexpected challenges—our fearful mind tends to panic trying to make sense out of our experience. Instead, Chapman meets the reader in their groundlessness to show how these turning points can force us to let go of our assumptions about the future and allow something new to be reborn.