What do you think?
Rate this book
The Thundering Years: Rituals and Sacred Wisdom for Teens
Shows teens how to harness the intense emotions and drives of the late-teen years using wisdom from cultures around the world.
• Includes exercises, personal and community rituals, and resources that show how to successfully navigate the Thundering Years without heading toward violence, drug abuse, and other self-destructive behaviors.
• Includes inspiring quotations from many spiritual traditions as well as the words and real-life experiences of other young adults.
• Presents an honest view of the passions and pain that occur during this major life transition.
According to native traditions, the Thundering Years are the time in life to listen to intense feelings, dreams, desires, and goals--to be outrageous and even difficult. The Thundering Years are the teen years, the time when you are journeying into adulthood. They are exciting years, full of potential and creative energy, and they are painful years, full of turmoil and self-examination.
Author Julie Tallard Johnson has collected wisdom from cultures around the world to help you survive your Thundering Years with your soul, creativity, and even sense of humor intact. She offers numerous techniques and traditions to help harness the powerful energy released during this time. She shows that when you connect with your thunder in a respectful way, you are given the confidence you need to accomplish all your dreams.
Mindfulness and energizing meditations
Vision quests
Dream weaving
Drum medicine
Initiations and rites of passage
Rituals for releasing anger and celebrating the seasons
Making your own journals and medicine bags
Finding your creative community
• Includes exercises, personal and community rituals, and resources that show how to successfully navigate the Thundering Years without heading toward violence, drug abuse, and other self-destructive behaviors.
• Includes inspiring quotations from many spiritual traditions as well as the words and real-life experiences of other young adults.
• Presents an honest view of the passions and pain that occur during this major life transition.
According to native traditions, the Thundering Years are the time in life to listen to intense feelings, dreams, desires, and goals--to be outrageous and even difficult. The Thundering Years are the teen years, the time when you are journeying into adulthood. They are exciting years, full of potential and creative energy, and they are painful years, full of turmoil and self-examination.
Author Julie Tallard Johnson has collected wisdom from cultures around the world to help you survive your Thundering Years with your soul, creativity, and even sense of humor intact. She offers numerous techniques and traditions to help harness the powerful energy released during this time. She shows that when you connect with your thunder in a respectful way, you are given the confidence you need to accomplish all your dreams.
Mindfulness and energizing meditations
Vision quests
Dream weaving
Drum medicine
Initiations and rites of passage
Rituals for releasing anger and celebrating the seasons
Making your own journals and medicine bags
Finding your creative community
256 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2000
47 people want to read
About the author
Julie Tallard Johnson
16 books33 followersPraise for The Zero Point Agreement
“In this beautiful book, Julie Tallard Johnson--a gifted teacher and writer--brings fresh insight to an ancient truth: each of us must live from the inside out. This book--full of resources that range from heart-deep insight to helpful, practical exercises--can help us reclaim the treasure-trove of our own experience and being.”
Parker J. Palmer, author of Healing the Heart of Democracy, Let Your Life Speak, and The Courage to Teach
“In this resource-rich book of practical wisdom and wise practices, Julie Tallard Johnson offers readers multidimensional insights, inspiration, and skills for living with greater authenticity, creativity, and happiness. Integrating science, spirituality, and art in an engaging and deeply thoughtful approach to becoming who you already are, this gifted teacher demonstrates how each of us can create more meaning and joy in our lives--in ourselves, in the world around us, and for our power to create and shape the stories we tell ourselves and others.”
Amber Ault, Ph.D., clinical sociologist and psychotherapist
“In The Zero Point Agreement, Julie Tallard Johnson intelligently presents elegantly simple yet remarkably powerful practices for personal and societal transformation. Through the masterful weaving of teaching stories that touch the heart and inspire, she helps foster the development of an authentic identity. This is what our children, our families, our communities, and the land need.”
Corinna Stevenson, ecopsychologist and creator of Dragonfly Healing
“Julie Tallard Johnson’s The Zero Point Agreement is full of wisdom. We are invited to challenge our beliefs, habits, and assumptions and make ourselves vulnerable so that we can easily access the truth within our lives and experiences. Julie teaches us that by becoming our own meaning maker, we transform ourselves and the world in which we live. A true gift!”
Amy DeLong, M.D., Ho-Chunk Nation Department of Health
“I was captivated by Julie Tallard Johnson’s accessible treatise on how we are all charged with making meaning in our daily lives. I found The Zero Point Agreement dazzling because it is so packed with actual, practical wisdom. I can honestly say it has already changed my life.”
Meg Cox, author of The Book of New Family Traditions
“I love that the big beautiful zero is a central tenet of this book. What I see is a big round open door through which we can all walk on our journey toward wholeness. It’s a journey with no destination, of course, since wholeness is not a place as much as a perspective, ever-shifting. Put on your dancing shoes; this is not a book to be read propped up in your La-Z-Boy!”
Claudia Schmidt, singer-songwriter
“The Zero Point Agreement offers a clear, practical path to taking control of what you are able to and living the life you want to live.”
Dinty W. Moore, author of The Mindful Writer: Noble Truths of the Writing Life
“Julie Tallard Johnson’s The Zero Point Agreement is a brilliant resource for deep and lasting change. I have used the zero point agreement in my own life and have shared it with clients and students. It is not another pie-in-the-sky promise of change. It is straightforward and effective.”
Tamar Zick, LPC, RYT, licensed psychotherapist and registered yoga teacher
“What a generous, wise, and useful book this is! Each chapter is so filled with quotes, anecdotes, hands-on exercises and more that help and inspire us to fully claim our own lives. There’s enough here to guide and inform you for many years to come.”
Ruth L. Schwartz, Ph.D., award-winning poet, and author of Soul on Earth: A Guide to Living & Loving Your Human Life
“A delightful companion for those of us seeking greater levels of balance, meaning, and joy--this book offers many gems of inspiration as well as the welcomed reminder that the journey toward wholeness always begins within.”
Karen Horneffer-Ginter, Ph.D., author of Full Cup, Thirsty Spirit
“In this beautiful book, Julie Tallard Johnson--a gifted teacher and writer--brings fresh insight to an ancient truth: each of us must live from the inside out. This book--full of resources that range from heart-deep insight to helpful, practical exercises--can help us reclaim the treasure-trove of our own experience and being.”
Parker J. Palmer, author of Healing the Heart of Democracy, Let Your Life Speak, and The Courage to Teach
“In this resource-rich book of practical wisdom and wise practices, Julie Tallard Johnson offers readers multidimensional insights, inspiration, and skills for living with greater authenticity, creativity, and happiness. Integrating science, spirituality, and art in an engaging and deeply thoughtful approach to becoming who you already are, this gifted teacher demonstrates how each of us can create more meaning and joy in our lives--in ourselves, in the world around us, and for our power to create and shape the stories we tell ourselves and others.”
Amber Ault, Ph.D., clinical sociologist and psychotherapist
“In The Zero Point Agreement, Julie Tallard Johnson intelligently presents elegantly simple yet remarkably powerful practices for personal and societal transformation. Through the masterful weaving of teaching stories that touch the heart and inspire, she helps foster the development of an authentic identity. This is what our children, our families, our communities, and the land need.”
Corinna Stevenson, ecopsychologist and creator of Dragonfly Healing
“Julie Tallard Johnson’s The Zero Point Agreement is full of wisdom. We are invited to challenge our beliefs, habits, and assumptions and make ourselves vulnerable so that we can easily access the truth within our lives and experiences. Julie teaches us that by becoming our own meaning maker, we transform ourselves and the world in which we live. A true gift!”
Amy DeLong, M.D., Ho-Chunk Nation Department of Health
“I was captivated by Julie Tallard Johnson’s accessible treatise on how we are all charged with making meaning in our daily lives. I found The Zero Point Agreement dazzling because it is so packed with actual, practical wisdom. I can honestly say it has already changed my life.”
Meg Cox, author of The Book of New Family Traditions
“I love that the big beautiful zero is a central tenet of this book. What I see is a big round open door through which we can all walk on our journey toward wholeness. It’s a journey with no destination, of course, since wholeness is not a place as much as a perspective, ever-shifting. Put on your dancing shoes; this is not a book to be read propped up in your La-Z-Boy!”
Claudia Schmidt, singer-songwriter
“The Zero Point Agreement offers a clear, practical path to taking control of what you are able to and living the life you want to live.”
Dinty W. Moore, author of The Mindful Writer: Noble Truths of the Writing Life
“Julie Tallard Johnson’s The Zero Point Agreement is a brilliant resource for deep and lasting change. I have used the zero point agreement in my own life and have shared it with clients and students. It is not another pie-in-the-sky promise of change. It is straightforward and effective.”
Tamar Zick, LPC, RYT, licensed psychotherapist and registered yoga teacher
“What a generous, wise, and useful book this is! Each chapter is so filled with quotes, anecdotes, hands-on exercises and more that help and inspire us to fully claim our own lives. There’s enough here to guide and inform you for many years to come.”
Ruth L. Schwartz, Ph.D., award-winning poet, and author of Soul on Earth: A Guide to Living & Loving Your Human Life
“A delightful companion for those of us seeking greater levels of balance, meaning, and joy--this book offers many gems of inspiration as well as the welcomed reminder that the journey toward wholeness always begins within.”
Karen Horneffer-Ginter, Ph.D., author of Full Cup, Thirsty Spirit
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 31, 2022
Nevím, co si o téhle knize myslet. Téma je rozhodně zajímavé a vlastně i podstatné. Ale nejsem si jistá, pro koho je to vlastně určené. Puberťáci, kteří by to potřebovali ji určitě číst nebudou. Spíše by se hodila zaměřená na rodiče a učitele. Celkově je jazyk knihy úplně mimo - cílí na dospívající lidi, většina je hodně filosofická a ezo vymývání mozku. Zároveň může jít snad jen o americkou mládež, která zjevně žije v naprosto separovaném světě, nemají páru o životě a jsou nesamostatní.
Některá cvičení jsou zajímavá, hodila by se jako tipy na aktivity do třídy a na tábory. Informace ze života kmenů a jejich mytologie jsou super, škoda jen, že jsou nesmyslně rozházené a neuspořádané. Na konci každé kapitoly je rozšiřující seznam četby a webové odkazy. Tipy na některé meditace a rituály jsou užitečné.
Hlavní myšlenka by se dala shrnout takto - zpomalte, choďte do přírody, vyhněte se závislosti a lenosti. Buďte laskaví a rozvíjejte se.
Kniha je spíše souborem citátů. Na každé stránce jich je X. Obrázky na pozadí dělají text často nečitelným. Slovosled je často podivný (nebo jde jen o nešikovný překlad?). Některá cvičení jsou zdlouhavá a nudná - většinu problémů řeší zápis do deníčku. Občas jsou návody fakt prodebilické - opravdu je potřebné psát postup, jak jít na procházku a co si brát s sebou? Některé praktiky jsou v podstatě nebezpečné - opravdu doporučují dospívajícímu se samotnému vydat do lesa, bez jídla, bez mobilu, zůstat přes noc....vše bez přípravy. Celkově je tam plno paradoxů a nerovnováhy.
Některá cvičení jsou zajímavá, hodila by se jako tipy na aktivity do třídy a na tábory. Informace ze života kmenů a jejich mytologie jsou super, škoda jen, že jsou nesmyslně rozházené a neuspořádané. Na konci každé kapitoly je rozšiřující seznam četby a webové odkazy. Tipy na některé meditace a rituály jsou užitečné.
Hlavní myšlenka by se dala shrnout takto - zpomalte, choďte do přírody, vyhněte se závislosti a lenosti. Buďte laskaví a rozvíjejte se.
Kniha je spíše souborem citátů. Na každé stránce jich je X. Obrázky na pozadí dělají text často nečitelným. Slovosled je často podivný (nebo jde jen o nešikovný překlad?). Některá cvičení jsou zdlouhavá a nudná - většinu problémů řeší zápis do deníčku. Občas jsou návody fakt prodebilické - opravdu je potřebné psát postup, jak jít na procházku a co si brát s sebou? Některé praktiky jsou v podstatě nebezpečné - opravdu doporučují dospívajícímu se samotnému vydat do lesa, bez jídla, bez mobilu, zůstat přes noc....vše bez přípravy. Celkově je tam plno paradoxů a nerovnováhy.
September 20, 2012
Excellent resource! Empowering, insightful, and creative.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews