When Illness Takes Hold: Hopeful Words for Sadhakas explores the challenges and opportunities we face when dealing with illness (or losses and other obstacles) while practicing bhakti.

The book has three essays exploring the authors’ personal experiences and the spiritual solutions they found; a question and answer section; and a collection of quotes from our acaryas that are meditations for coping with illness.

Pranada dasi and Arcana-siddhi dasi, both disciples of Srila Prabhupada, have each suffered from chronic illness for several decades. Here they combine the wisdom garnered from their experiences in a fairly comprehensive, and loving, treatment of the subject.

Arcana-siddhi is a Licensed Clinical Social Work who has been counseling devotees for nearly thirty years. Her husband of thirty-two years, Karnamrta das, recently passed away after a five-year battle with cancer.

Devotees around the globe submitted questions for their Question-and-Answer section.

The authors deal with the following questions and many more:

• What core themes do you encounter when speaking with devotees struggling with illness or loss?
• How do you cope with chronic pain or severe insomnia?
• How does one make decisions about taking practical actions for how to proceed with healing an illness?
• How can we be grateful, joyful, and connected in service to Kṛṣṇa, even with chronic illness?
• What are some practical ways to practice bhakti yoga while being in the hospital?
• How can we better learn to set boundaries for ourselves and others in a way that is respectful to ourselves and others?
• Am I sick because of offenses? Is it because of a lack of faith or purity? Is there something wrong with my attitude?
• How do you deal with it when people don’t understand? Do you often find that people who don’t deal with regular or chronic illness, or haven’t experienced acute illness, cannot understand?
• What are some practices we can do to fortify our faith so we don’t fall into fear?

This free book is available to everyone. Help spread the word and share freely.

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