Cover design — Lars Wedel Design
Paperback US$15.99
eBook US$8.99 — free with Grokkist membership
Direct orders send more to Jim. Compare the two routes ↓
About the book
A book about coming back.
Most of us don't go missing from our lives all at once. We keep everything running — the work, the messages, the ordinary days — and step back from our own experience by inches, until we're living a little outside it. Nothing breaks. Nothing looks wrong. We're simply no longer quite here.
The Practice of Being Alive is about that distance — the slow thinning of the ground beneath a life — and how we come back into contact with it. It names a kind of health we don't have a word for: not of the body, which we call physical, or of the mind, which we call mental, but of your relationship to your own existence.
And instead of one more program for fixing yourself, it offers something plainer and sturdier — a way of staying inside the life you're actually living, without waiting for it to resolve.
For anyone who is functioning fine and still feels absent, this is a book about coming back.
Ways to read it
Pick a format, then pick where to buy it.
Same book either way. The difference is only in how it reaches you, and how much of it reaches Jim.
Published 13 October · pre-orders open now
Paperback
A paperback made to be held, returned to, marked up, and lent.
- Perfect-bound, 148 pages
- 203 × 127 mm · white paper
- Matt laminated cover
- Printed on demand, worldwide
eBook
The complete book, set for comfortable on-screen reading.
- EPUB · Kindle-compatible
- Phones, tablets, e-readers
- Instant download
- Free with Grokkist membership
Where to order
Direct from Grokkist
Pre-order the paperback or eBook now. The route that sends a substantially larger share to Jim.
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Amazon & other booksellers
eBook pre-orders open now. Paperback at retailers from 13 October. One link, every retailer — Amazon, Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and bookshops that can order it in.
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- Reviews there genuinely help the book find readers
Buy wherever suits you — we'd rather you read it than optimise for us.
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Each paperback is printed on demand, reducing waste and unnecessary stock — printed close to you in the US, Canada, the UK, Europe or Australia, with worldwide delivery. Our printing partners operate with a strong commitment to responsible sourcing and environmental care.
Author
Jim Palmer
Published
13 October 2026 · Grokkist Press
Extent
148 pages
Format
203 × 127 mm (8 × 5 in)
ISBN · paperback
978-1-0672817-4-8
ISBN · eBook
978-1-0672817-3-1
Existential health
A kind of health we don't have a word for.
Not the health of the body, which we call physical, or of the mind, which we call mental — but the health of your capacity to inhabit a life rather than merely manage one. It has four dimensions, and the book watches each one thin, then return.
Praise for this book
“Jim Palmer writes about the unnerving moment when your life is technically working and you realise you are no longer fully inside it — a book for anyone who has ever held everything together while wondering where they went.”
“This is a book for anyone willing to find out who they are once they set down the project of improving themselves — only your own life, already underway, waiting for you to be inside it. I can't remember the last time a book like this refused so completely to sell me anything.”
“In spiritual direction, the work isn't to fix someone's life — it's to help them stay present to it. He doesn't give answers, rush belief into certainty, or mistake functioning for being alive. I'll be recommending this book to the people I sit across from.”
“Palmer invites us back into presence, relationship, belonging, grief, and mystery. This book calls us into the unknown, unfinished work of life itself.”
“His development of existential health offers an important framework for human flourishing, bringing intellectual depth, lived wisdom, and a deep respect for human agency to the work of becoming more fully alive.”
“Palmer's work brings philosophical depth into conversation with the realities of human experience — a thoughtful framework for engaging some of the most enduring questions of being alive.”
About the author
Jim Palmer
“I'm not writing from the far side of these things. I'm writing from inside them, still.”
Connect with Jim on the Network ↗Jim Palmer is the founder of the Center for Non-Religious Spirituality and the Institute for Existential Health. A former megachurch pastor turned author, educator and certified spiritual director, he has spent decades helping people navigate questions of meaning, identity, purpose and self-trust beyond inherited certainties.
Drawing from existential philosophy, psychology, anthropology, neuroscience and human development, he has built an interdisciplinary framework for how human beings meet meaning, belonging, mortality and uncertainty — and created the Existential Health Practitioner Training and Certification Program.
He is the author of eight books, and is helping establish existential health as a distinct field of inquiry and practice.
Read him every day
Longer essays, works in progress, and the thinking that fed this book — sent out as he writes it.
jimpalmerauthor.substack.com ↗
A short passage each morning from the Center for Non-Religious Spirituality — the practice this book describes, one day at a time.
nonreligiousspirituality.com ↗
About Grokkist Press
Grokkist Press publishes thoughtful, human-scale writing for people who like to take ideas seriously without taking themselves too seriously. Our books tend to be reflective rather than prescriptive, curious rather than conclusive, and grounded in care for the reader.
In keeping with that, Grokkist Press shares net receipts 70/30 in the author's favour. Buying this book supports Jim directly, while sustaining a small independent publishing ecology built around care, fairness, and long-term creative work.
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For anyone who is functioning fine and still feels absent.
Published 13 October · Paperback US$15.99 · eBook US$8.99