Stephen Cope, MSW, is the founder and former Director of the Kripalu Institute for Exceptional Living, which is the world's largest yoga research institute. He is a psychotherapist with a Western education who studies and writes about the relationship between Western psychological paradigms and Eastern meditative traditions. Cope is the author of several successful books, including Yoga and the Search for the Real Self, The Wisdom of Yoga, The Great Work of Your Life, and Soul Friends, and is a Scholar-in-Residence and Kripalu Ambassador in Lenox, Massachusetts.