Wake Up before Your Wake Up Call

The Five Pillars for Deeper Love, Joy, and Connection in Midlife

Toni Parker, PhD

Do you wake up most mornings and go along with the day as usual, taking for granted that things will unfold the way they always have? Do you go through your days on autopilot, with no real thought that something life-changing could happen at any moment? By the time we reach our middle years, many of us have established well-worn patterns and habits that no longer serve us—from what we eat to how we relate to others, to how we take care of our bodies or the environment, to how we express compassion for the whole web of living beings. Yet many times our bodies are sending us feelings and sensations meant to wake us up as if from sleepwalking, so that we can be more attuned and alive to our experiences, aligned with our values, and alert to the impulse to change before calamity happens.

Through real-life examples and practical exercises for meditation and self-reflection, Toni Parker unpacks the five pillars for waking up: Body Sensation Awareness, Mind Kindness, Emotional Equanimity, Self-Compassion, and Waking Up to the World. She shows readers how to identify the signs and offers proven strategies for tuning in to the telltale whispers and sensations that alert us to when a wake-up call is building. This self-awareness and strength to stay in the present moment, see and accept a situation for what it is allows us to move forward differently—awake, centered, and prepared for the smallest experiences and the biggest changes in life.

Wake Up before Your Wake Up Call expands on Parker’s work as a therapist and speaker and will help readers live more meaningful and engaged lives through deeper love, joy, and connection.

Reviews

“A must-read for building awareness of our body signals and making calm focus and compassion a part of our everyday lives.”

John Gottman New York Times–bestselling author of The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

“A powerful road map to navigating one’s inner world. With honesty, humor, and grace, Parker covers a wide range of practices designed to transform our lives. Her hard-won insights are an invitation to greater depth, love, and connection.”

David Treleaven PhD author of Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing

“Deeply personal and eye-opening. Don’t wait for your own wake up call to read this book.”

Michael Fulwiler CMO, Gottman Institute

“This insight-packed book lays out a helpful and practical journey of self-understanding. It is filled with exercises promoting mindful awareness and offers a variety of ways we can harmonize mental agitation and turmoil. Our mind can be our friend or our foe, and this book illuminates how to make our mind our best friend, forever. Highly recommended.”

Will Tuttle PhD author of the international bestseller The World Peace Diet

“Dr. Toni Parker makes abundantly clear—waking up is not a one-time event. Wake Up before Your Wake Up Call is beautifully written with profound explorations of a trustworthy path to awakening. A gem—full of courage, meaning, and hope. Her timely and inspiring book is a well-paced interweaving of pith wisdom; an extensive inventory of wise and effective practices, full of compelling real-life examples and stories; and includes some of the most practical, easy-to-implement exercises I’ve ever come across.”

Linda Graham MFT author of Resilience: Powerful Practices for Bouncing Back from Disappointment, Difficulty, and Even Disaster

Toni Parker PhD is a certified mindfulness meditation teacher through Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach’s Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program, which is certified through the Awareness Training Institute and the Greater Good Science Center out of UC Berkeley. She is also a certified Gottman therapist and certified Mental Health Integrative Medicine provider. She holds a Plant-Based Nutrition Certificate from the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies and eCornell. As a Gottman therapist, Toni provides clinical trainings and teaches the Gottmans’ Art of Science and Love workshops in the US and abroad. She has studied various mind-body modalities, including at Harvard University and other institutions. Having been in private practice for more than twenty-five years, providing couples counseling, corporate trainings, and individual and group therapy, Toni has helped many discover their own potential and understand their emotional and compassionate selves and, ultimately, how to lead a more mindful and awakened life. She lives in California.

ISBN 978-1-989025-69-7
$21.00 CAD • $15.95 USD
Published September 17, 2019

5.5 × 8.5 • 328 Pages
Paperback, ebook