Deep Human Connection ― Why We Need It More Than Anything Else

New in paperback (originally published as Soul Friends): Yoga master Stephen Cope explores the essence of human connections through six types of relationships.

As the Senior Scholar-in-Residence for over 25 years at the renowned Kripalu Center, Stephen Cope has spent decades investigating--and writing about--the integration of body, mind, and spirit and the rich complexity of our relationships with others, and with ourselves. Perhaps the central truth that arises from his work is this: human beings are universally wired for one thing--vital connection with one another.
Now available for the first time in paperback (and originally published as Soul Friends), this book invites us on a compelling journey into the connectivity of the human psyche, the study of which has fascinated scholars, philosophers, and thinkers for centuries. Cope seamlessly blends science, scholarship, and storytelling, drawing on his own life as well as the histories of famous figures--from Eleanor Roosevelt to Charles Darwin to Queen Victoria--whose formative relationships shed light on the nature of friendship itself. In his exploration, he distills human connection into six distinct yet interconnected mechanisms: containment, twinship, adversity, mirroring, identification, and conscious partnership. Then he invites us to reflect on how these forms of connection appear in our own lives, helping us work toward a fuller understanding of "who we have become and who we will become."
Without a doubt, the journey to our most fulfilled selves requires us to look within. But in order to truly thrive, we must make the most of who we are in relation to one another as well. Unsparingly honest, deeply wise, and irresistibly readable, Deep Human Connection gives us a map to find our way.

Stephen Cope is the Senior Scholar-in-Residence at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. He is a Western-trained psychotherapist who writes and teaches about the relationship between Western psychological paradigms and the Eastern contemplative traditions, and is the best-selling author of such books as The Great Work of Your Life and Yoga and the Quest for the True Self. Stephen holds degrees from Amherst College and Boston College. He completed graduate and postgraduate training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy in the Boston area, where he practiced for many years before joining the staff at Kripalu. In its 25th anniversary edition, Yoga Journal named him one of the most important innovators in the developing field of American yoga.