
Melissa Burch Author
Melissa Burch is a bestselling, award-winning author who inspires people to embrace their spiritual journey. Her memoirs, "My Journey Through War and Peace" and "Yearning for Magic," and explore the Heroine's Journey through her experiences as a filmmaker, war journalist, spiritual seeker, and homeopath. She also wrote "The Four Methods of Journal Writing" and the "Sensation Manual" for homeopaths.
HEROINE'S JOURNEY, BOOK 1
“Burch’s memoir recounts her remarkable experiences over eight years as a photographer covering the war in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s and as a filmmaker, and also her own personal and spiritual journey as a young woman…. Her accounts provide revealing glimpses into the conflict, Afghan culture, and the dangers of war reporting, particularly for a woman.”
~ Publishers Weekly
“In this memoir, a documentary filmmaker describes her dramatic journeys, both outward and inward… An absorbing, well-written memoir by a brave adventurer who discovered her own life.”
~ Kirkus Reviews
“At twenty-two, Melissa Burch headed to Afghanistan with a camera… determined to film a war for CBS and to find herself. MY JOURNEY THROUGH WAR AND PEACE is the dizzying and dazzling account of that journey.”
~ Foreword Reviews
MY JOURNEY THROUGH WAR AND PEACE
Explorations of a Young Filmmaker, Feminist and Spiritual Seeker
MEMOIR 2017 SILVER WINNER OF IBPA* BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AWARD • 2016 SILVER Foreword INDIES AWARD WINNER
In this adventurous spiritual memoir, Melissa Burch discovers that by facing her near death, living outside her comfort zone and trusting her intuition, she could find herself and set a new course for her life.
My Journey Through War and Peace: Explorations of a Young Filmmaker, Feminist and Spiritual Seeker is based on Melissa Burch's experiences as a war journalist for BBC, CBS, and other networks. Her team was one of the first documentary crews allowed in the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, and she was featured in a New York Times story about her time in Afghanistan. She was just in her twenties when she traveled with the mujahideen, filmed an attack on a Soviet convoy, slept with an Afghan commander, and climbed 14,000-foot mountains in the Hindu Kush.
My Journey Through War and Peace examines how, through outward action and inward exploration, life can unfold in mysterious ways, far beyond cultural and family expectations. In looking back at this momentous decade, Burch shares why she pursued such dangerous and difficult circumstances at such a young age and continued to live on the edge. She now understands that she was seeking self-discovery, a connection to something greater, and ultimately inner peace. This exciting memoir will resonate with fans of "Eat Pray Love," "Wild," and other popular memoirs that describe extraordinary inner and outer journeys.
*Independent Book Publishers Association Benjamin Franklin Award is regarded as one of the highest honors in the independent publishing field.
HEROINE'S JOURNEY, BOOK 2
YEARNING FOR MAGIC
Spiritual Journeys of a Mother, Healer, and Lover
In her debut memoir, My Journey through War and Peace, Melissa Burch told the compelling story of how she braved a war zone as a young woman and found her voice as a filmmaker and feminist.
Yearning for Magic continues Melissa’s adventures as she explores new horizons as a mother, lover and healer. She learned that while traveling with the Mujahadeen was hard, it took just as much courage to face down her fears on home soil, grapple with infertility and embark on her new calling as a homeopathic healer.
Join Burch as she discovers meaning and joy in surprising places: from a christening on a Greek Island to life in an East Village Quaker community, and from a miraculous healing in Brazil to a life-changing spiritual experience in India.
Her most daring journey was her voyage within. “Sometimes I kept having the same thought over and over. I must do something that felt exciting and fearful, like rappelling off a cliff — most often this idea worked out for the best,” Burch recalls.
Yearning for Magic will inspire you to stay open to the unknown, listen to your inner wisdom, learn to live in the here and now .... and seek out your own heroine’s journey.
“Yearning for Magic is a beautifully written, brutally honest account of a woman going through the adventure of motherhood and its revelation of new layers of knowledge and spirituality. After having her child, Melissa Burch’s mind opened to realms of conscious parenting, passionate long-term marriage and energy healing— all deeply connected to her newly discovered womanly potential. Her journey brought her to Homeopathic Medicine, a gentle system with deep and long lasting curative effects that the author ended up fully embracing to the point of becoming a practitioner. In the age where motherhood is taken for granted and mothers become unsung heroes with little or no soulful information about how bringing children to the world transforms women’s views and stances, this book is a jewel to be coveted by any woman who needs a map to navigate our life experiences as females, mothers, lovers and wives.”
~ Susana Aikin, Award Winning Author of “We Shall See the Sky Sparkling,” and Emmy Award Winning Filmmaker
FOUR METHODS OF JOURNAL WRITING
Finding Yourself Through Memoir
Would you like to learn how to discover yourself through journal writing? Have you thought about writing a memoir, but don’t know where to begin? Do you have memorable life stories that you’d like to share with others? If so, you’ll benefit form the valuable journaling tools, writing advice and inspiration in this helpful guide. Using the ideas in The Four Methods of Journal Writing: Finding Yourself Through Memoir will reveal amazing insights from your wise inner self that will shift personal blocks so you will feel freer, more joyful and energized.
Based on over thirty years of journal-keeping, fifteen years as a homeopath and teacher, and writing a memoir about her journalism days in Afghanistan in the 80s, Melissa Burch provides powerful tools for getting to know yourself better, healing difficult issues and writing your life story as a spiritual path of enrichment and purpose.
Discover what your soul wants you to know: strength, wisdom, creativity and wholesomeness. Burch’s journal-writing techniques will help you experience deep personal reflection, navigate life’s transitions and nurture your creativity and personal growth. With powerful step-by-step journaling methods, samples of her own journal pages, and stories of personal transformation through journaling, Burch takes readers on an inspiring voyage of self-discovery.
Journal writing:
• supports you to process raw emotions
• helps you find your calling
• reveals buried memories, wishes and dreams
• creates a safe space to explore and release your dark side
• nurtures your soul
• connects you to Source.
Finding yourself through memoir writing:
• opens the possibility of new directions
• jumpstarts your creative self
• shows the major themes in your life
• transforms your past experiences
• celebrates your uniqueness and value
• encourages you to be a role model and teacher for others
• organizes your history
• enables you to write and publish your life story.
THE VITAL SENSATION MANUAL
The Vital Sensation Manual is a series of five units for homeopaths to learn how to apply and take homeopathic cases using the Sensation Method. The manual is an interesting read for non-homeopaths, but is not meant to be used by lay-people who are not formally trained in homeopathy. This second unit focuses on levels using the Sensation Method.
The in-depth course provides a comprehensive understanding of the methods used to prescribe and treat patients homeopathically based on Dr. Rajan Sankaran’s theories, research, teaching and practice.
The Sensation Method developed by the Bombay Group led by Dr. Rajan Sankaran improves your self confidence because there are clear indications of how to follow the case and to narrow the prescriptions.
Easy to Understand, Logical, Many Examples, Understand The Principles And Apply Them…
The manual explains where you are when taking a case, and how to use a mapping system when using this approach:
-
Begin with the chief complaint
-
Discover the Vital Sensation (where the mind and body connect)
-
Follow the various levels (going beyond the level of Delusion to the levels of Sensation and Energy where the qualities of the substance are described by the patient)
-
Differentiate the four kingdoms–Mineral, Plant, Animal and Imponderable
-
Apply the tools of miasms
-
Make an accurate prescription based on Source and Sensation language and confirmed through traditional methods of the repertory and Materia Medica when available.
Unit 1: Casetaking in Homeopathy
Unit 2: Levels in Homeopathy
Unit 3: Kingdoms in Homeopathy
Unit 4: Miasms in Homeopathy
Unit 5: Vital Expression in Homeopathy
About Me

I’m Melissa Burch, a bestselling and award-winning author, teacher, and speaker who inspires men and women to live an adventurous life and to develop their own spiritual practice rooted in the teachings of the heroine’s journey.
My newest memoir, Yearning for Magic: Spiritual Journeys of a Mother, Healer, and Lover, The Heroine’s Journey Book 2, explores the meaning and joy I discovered in surprising places: from a christening on a Greek Island to life in an East Village Quaker community, and from a miraculous healing in Brazil to a life-changing spiritual experience in India, and learning homeopathy.
I’m happy to announce My Journey Through War and Peace: Explorations of a Young Filmmaker, Feminist and Spiritual Seeker, The Heroine’s Journey Book 1, won the Silver Award in the memoir category for both the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards and the Foreword INDIES book of the Year Award, and was a #1 Amazon bestseller.
Prior to doing this work, I was a filmmaker, producer and former war journalist for the BBC, CBS, and other networks. My team was one of the first documentary crews in the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, and a story about me in Afghanistan was featured in The New York Times. I was just in my twenties when I traveled with the mujahedeen, filmed an attack on a Soviet convoy, slept with an Afghan commander, and climbed 14,000 foot mountains in the Hindu Kush. These experiences and many more are featured in my adventurous spiritual memoir, My Journey Through War and Peace: Explorations of a Young Filmmaker, Feminist and Spiritual Seeker.
My Journey Through War and Peace shares remarkable stories written from the feminist perspective of a young woman coming of age in a new era. These experiences reflect those of millions of American women who had the freedom to pursue their sexuality, their ambitions, their creativity and their spirituality without judgment.
The book was also featured in “The Heroine’s Journey Road Trip and Quest,” a 17-city indie book tour (which included readings at Parnassus Books, Antigone Bookstore, Books & Books, Book Passage, etc.). An Amazon Bestseller in the Literary Travel Category, My Journey was excerpted in the Utne Reader and Burch was featured in a KPBS Midday Edition interview with Alison St. John.
Yearning for Magic and My Journey Through War and Peace are the first of several memoirs I hope to publish, each one focused on a different decade of my life. More adventures continued—even more unusual than a woman war journalist and becoming a homeopath. I am inspired to write these memoirs and help others navigate their own adventures and spiritual journeys.
Since my early teenage years, I’ve been on a spiritual quest, which was initially based on the Buddhist tradition. I followed my father’s beliefs as he became a Zen Master in the Rinzai tradition. I searched for answers about the meaning of life and how to navigate life from intuition and an inward knowing connected to the Divine. My Journey Through War and Peace, focuses on ten years, during my twenties when I was compelled to act in courageous ways (going to a war zone and to the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War), while propelled by an intense anxiety that led to insight, transformation and new challenges.
During that same time period, I was coming to terms with her alcoholic mother, who was Sylvia Plath’s roommate at Smith College, my weight issues and my desire to be a filmmaker. It all seemed to be happening at once–my news stories on Afghanistan were broadcasted on CBS, BBC, ZDF, NHK and other international television stations. I was also featured in The New York Times’ article “Afghan Areas show How War Cuts Fabric of Life.” This was followed by my experience and news story on American teenagers traveling in the Soviet Union that was broadcasted on CBS. All these life experiences led me to produce a national public television series called, Women in Limbo Presents, a five-part series using an autobiographical format for women to tell their truths. It was a life-changing decade.
Memoir writing became my next quantum leap, which gave me the opportunity to expand my horizons and re-emerge as a teacher of life. I began writing My Journey Through War and Peace right after I turned fifty years old. A good time to review a half-century of a life. I spent the previous year reviewing my past in ten five-year-blocks following a journal writing exercise I described in my Amazon #1 Bestselling book, The Four Methods of Journal Writing: Finding Yourself Through Memoir.
After the birth of my son, my interest was focused on health care and discovering the power of homeopathy over mainstream medical care in healing childhood diseases such as otitis media, flus, and coughs. I took courses and then began the formal study of homeopathy. This form of medicine connected my understanding of energy, consciousness and healing. This expansive paradigm integrated my spiritual practices and medicine. I became an advocate for homeopathy, hosted a weekly radio show on homeopathy for Voice America, co-founded Catalyst School of Homeopathy, and wrote five books for homeopaths’ practices, Vital Sensation Manual, Units 1-4: Based on the Sensation Method & Classical Homeopathy. The books were translated into German, Portuguese and Spanish and are bestsellers in the homeopathy field.