This book invites us to celebrate our strengths and work with our weaknesses by learning to identify and utilize five basic personal styles or energies. Written in a playful and accessible way, this is the first general-audience book on a Tibetan Buddhist system known as "the five buddha families"-an insightful way of understanding human behavior and promoting personal growth. Each of the five wisdom energies is associated with particular ways of perceiving and interacting with the world and also with particular colors, elements, senses, seasons, and times of day. With easy, fun, and engaging exercises and stories, Irini Rockwell shows us how to identify which energies are active in our lives, and how we can work with them in any situation to improve self-awareness, communication, and creative expression. According to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, each of us has one or two dominant energies, but these can shift and change over time, and we can manifest different energies in different areas of our lives. Each of the five energies has its unique wisdom, but also its neurotic tendencies. By learning to recognize which energies we possess-and which are present in those around us-we can learn to relax and appreciate our natural traits and those of others, and we can move away from our neuroses toward the wisdom-aspects of our character.

Irini Rockwell is a senior teacher in the Buddhist lineage of Tibetan meditation master Chögyam Trungpa. She holds a master’s in contemplative psychotherapy and is the director of the Five Wisdoms Institute, an organization offering training programs to enhance self-awareness, communication, and effectiveness. She is also the author of The Five Wisdom Energies: A Buddhist Way of Understanding Personalities, Emotions, and Relationships. For more information, visit www.fivewisdomsinstitute.com.