Dawson Church has edited or authored many books in the fields of health, psychology, and spirituality. He has collaborated on articles with many of the leading voices of our time, including Larry Dossey, Bernie Siegel, Caroline Myss, Barry Sears, and John Gray. He earned his doctorate in Integrative Healthcare at Holos University under the mentorship of distinguished neurosurgeon Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D., founder of the American Holistic Medical Association. He went on to receive a postgraduate Ph.D. in Natural Medicine.

Church and Shealy coauthored a compendious survey of spiritual healing throughout history called Soul Medicine. Church founded Soul Medicine Institute (SMI), a nonprofit dedicated to education and research into science-based medical interventions which use consciousness and energy as primary modalities. He is the author of several studies published in peer-reviewed journals, and lectures at many medical and psychology conferences each year.

He presents workshops on peak performance for athletes and organizations through EFT Power Training. He performed the first randomized blind trial of EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) for athletes, the first study of EFTs effects on healthcare workers, and a large nationwide study of PTSD in war veterans as part of the Iraq Vets Stress Project.

His research summarizes the biomedical evidence for consciousness-based treatments. The Genie in Your Genes outlines the latest studies on the effects of psychospiritual experiences on gene expression, and predicts that consciousness will reach the front line of medicine in the coming decade. It has been hailed as a brilliant contribution to the literature by many reviewers.

You can visit his website at The Genie in Your Genes

Welcome to Beyond the Books, Dawson. Can we start out by telling us whether you are published for the first time or are you multi-published?

My first book was with Penguin USA. It was an anthology called The Heart of the Healer, in 1987. I’ve edited many anthologies, as well as publishing books when I saw a gap in the market, as I did with The Genie in Your Genes (www.GenieBestseller.com), which applies the insights of epigenetics to healing and consciousness.

What was the name of your very first book regardless of whether it was published or not and, if not published, why?

My first book-length manuscript was a play about the Byzantine empress Theodora. She was a fascinating historical figure who fought for women’s rights a millennium before the concept was developed. Though she was a prostitute, she married the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire. I had no luck getting it performed or published, though I tried very hard.

For your first published book, how many rejections did you go through before you either found a mainstream publisher, self-published it, or paid a vanity press to publish it?

It’s sitting in a box in my bedroom, and I doubt it will ever see the light of day. Most longtime authors have six unpublished manuscripts on their hard drive. I don’t know what’s magic about that number six, but the average seems to hold!

I recommend being very careful about which genre you publish in. I and my agent were gung ho on a one of my books five years ago, and did not find a publisher. Looking back, I am very glad that book did not get published, because it would have put me in the wrong genre. I plan to stick to the science and spirituality genre for the long haul.

How did the rejections make you feel and what did you do to overcome the blows?

I first get angry and defensive. Then, when my ego has been suitably humbled, I read the critics views very carefully, and learn whatever I can from them. If they’re valid, I improve. If I don’t consider them valid, I have engaged in a useful exercise of self-scrutiny, and the chorus of self-doubt in my head is temporarily silenced.

When your first book was published, who published it and why did you choose them?

I had a good agent, and she recommended Penguin. We turned down an earlier offer from Random.

How did it make you feel to become published for the first time and how did you celebrate?

I had a good agent, and she recommended Penguin. We turned down an earlier offer from Random.

What was the first thing you did as for as promotion when you were published for the first time?

I didn’t do enough for promotion the first time. And for my previous book, Soul Medicine, I did a limited amount, and so only sold about 5,000 copies. That taught me that you can’t be half-hearted about promotion. I sold 15,000 copies of Genie in Your Genes hardcover, and I am determined to sell at least 50,000 of the softcover.

If you had to do it over again, would you have chosen another route to be published?

Most routes are acceptable, with the exception of print on demand books or ebooks. Reviewers will not review them, bookstores will not stock them, and you are swimming in a sea in which quality control is unknown.

What has been the biggest accomplishment you have achieved since becoming published?

It’s not the book per se that counts. It’s all the promotion you do around the book. It’s the workshops, the radio shows, the ezines, the consulting, and all the ways you get your message to the world. The book is part of that whole range of communications, and only if they’re coordinated can your message be powerfully delivered.

If you could have chosen another profession, what would that profession be?

I’m fortunate in that I do scientific research part time, and also run a specialized independent publishing company, Energy Psychology Press. So being an author is only one of my hats, though it fits into my overall mission.

Would you give up being an author for that profession or have you combined the best of both worlds?

Never accept less than your highest potential.

Where do you see yourself in ten years?

I expect to be one of the opinion leaders who shapes our understanding of the link between science, spirituality, health and species survival.

Any final words for writers who dream of being published one day?

I observe people often giving up right at the point of breakthrough. Persist. Be excellent. When you face adversity, keep going. It’s not how many times you fall down that determines success. It’s how many times you pick yourself up.