WORTHY STOKES

Worthy Stokes is a bestselling author of meditation books that offer non-religious practices for spiritual resilience, inner healing, and creative transformation. (Rockridge Press)

She is the founder of The HeartMind® Meditation Process.

EDUCATION*

BA in Documentary Journalism, graduate work in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University, and advanced training in mindfulness, which includes over a decade of retreat, personal study, and practice transmissions with Tibetan teachers of Dzogchen. Worthy's enduring love of neuroscience was sparked at the age of 27, when she met Dr. Candace Pert at a conference on psychoneuroimmunology and healing.

This meeting with the late Dr. Pert, PhD, inspired what would become a lifelong quest to understand the power of the mind, the presence of the soul, and the path of the body as a knowing, temporal vehicle of illuminated wonder.

INTERPERSONAL NEUROSCIENCE

Since 2017, Worthy has attended live workshops and online trainings with clinical researchers and Western experts who view the neuroscience of mindfulness through a trauma-informed lens: Dr. Willoughby Britton, PhD, Dr. Dan Siegel, MD, Dr. Richard P. Brown, MD, Dr. Patricia L. Gerbarg, MD, Dr. Deborah Norris, PhD, Professor Robert A.F. Thurman, PhD, Dr. David Treleaven, PhD, and others who track the mind's capacity for safe, healing-centered transformation.

NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE

In 2014, Worthy's direct encounter with fully awakened bliss (during her NDE and a near-fatal accident that rendered her partially blind) irreversibly shifted the course of her life and transformed her perspective of consciousness. As a result, her projects are infused with a supernatural faith, and she plays (works) in liminal spaces, where transdisciplinary threads of neuroscience, metagnosis, narrative inquiry, and mysticism touch our waking, embodied lives.

As a polyneurotrauma survivor with expertise in spiritual integration, she holds a uniquely grounded view: the mind, body, and soul are not "connected." They are the same, unified presence in space and time.

MEDITATION AND AWARENESS

Prior to losing half of her vision field and some mobility, Worthy was an ocean swimmer and outdoor explorer.

Due to the nature of her body's sudden, physical limitations after injury and pivotal, new insights gleaned from her NDE, she turned her passion for external discovery into a practice of inner vision; she focuses on vast ecosystems of inner space, where deep stillness meets creative momentum in spheres of emergence.

Here, in the subtle interstices of being and remembrance, a felt sense of presence illuminates one's awareness with abiding, regenerative hope.

Her writings are endorsed by MDs, psychologists, bestselling authors, survivors, thought leaders, life coaches, and founding CEOs.

HEALING ARTS

She is certified in Adult Mental Health First Aid and Coherent Breathing with Breath Scientist Stephen B. Elliot.

Additionally, Worthy is a member of: The National Association of Poetry Therapy, The International Women's Writing Guild, The Institute of Noetic Sciences, and The Association of Writers & Writing Programs.

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She has studied a number of healing modalities that encourage creativity and nourish states of awareness. Areas of interest and/or trainings she has attended include: mindful writing and journaling for narrative restoration, ecoliteracy, sound healing with Sara Auster, DEEP LISTENING practices (as developed by Composer Pauline Oliveros), Reiki (now studied in clinical trials and offered at select hospitals), dowsing, Clean Language (as developed by David J. Grove), attachment theory, methods for somatic integration, retreat design, windows of PTG, and more.

CLIENTS

Together with her husband, a trained meditation teacher (Level II certified in Breath-Body-Mind®) and lifelong education professional (MA, Teacher's College, Columbia University), she designs meditation programming, writing courses, and contemplative resources. Her clients include creatives, change agents, and helping professionals who seek a holistic perspective of heartfelt presence, awakened consciousness, and the art of sense-making in difficult times.

PUBLICATIONS

HeartMind®Meditations are scripted, edited, and produced in NYC. They have been free on Insight Timer (world's largest meditation app) since 2018, and Worthy's voice has touched tens of thousands worldwide.

INTERNATIONAL WORK

Prior to her career in mindfulness, Worthy worked at an international level in leadership positions for renowned, Indigenous-led organizations, where she was responsible for advocating on behalf of Indigenous assets such as: spiritual healing traditions, traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), plant medicine rituals, holistic land management principles, and best practices for FPIC as adopted by the United Nations for use by/with CEOs and stakeholders in areas of corporate social responsibility.

HERITAGE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Her genetic heritage is Scots-Irish American. Worthy was born in Northwest Montana near the Canadian border, where the spectacular beauty of wilderness, rivers, and land belongs to the Sɫq̓etkʷmsčin̓t.

*NOTE: She does not acknowledge co-opted Indigenous practices or commercialized systems of spiritual oppression that seek to control, extract, or exploit the elegant genius of one's sacred, human consciousness, which functions as its own kind of open source code and responds intimately (and adapts intuitively) to intricate frameworks within one's proximal surroundings.

To buy her bestselling books on meditation, simple practices for spiritual resilience, and mindful writing, follow the links below.

You may also search for gently used copies online or visit your favorite independent, local bookstore to inquire about special orders.

The Daily Meditation Book of Healing

The Mindfulness Journal for Creativity

The Morning Meditation Journal

The Evening Meditation Journal