Embodying Transformation


Book Description

The essays in this collection explore transcultural events to reveal deeper understandings of the dynamic nature, power and affect of performance as it is created and witnessed across national and cultural boundaries. Focusing on historical and contemporary public events in multiple contexts, contributors offer readings of transcultural exchanges between Europe, Asia and the Middle East, between colonisers and the colonised and back again. In the process the authors explore questions of aesthetics, cultural anxiety, cultural control and how to realise intentions in performance practice.




Embodying Osiris


Book Description

The modern Western movement to embrace Eastern spiritual traditions usually stops with India and the Orient. Westerners have yet to discover the wisdom that dates back even further to ancient Egypt. With a Jungian perspective, clinical psychologist Dr. Thom F. Cavalli plumbs that wisdom through the myth of Osiris, the green-skinned Egyptian god of vegetation and the Underworld. As no one else has done, Cavalli draws on Osiris’s death and resurrection as a guide to spiritual transformation. The myth represents the joining of the conscious and the unconscious, the light and the dark, life and death, and shows how to live our temporal existence in service to and anticipation of eternal life. Cavalli sees the ancient art of alchemy — which attempted to turn lead into gold — as the key. The alchemical recipe "solve et coagula" (solution and coagulation) encoded in the myth describes the integration of all parts of a person and the method for achieving an experience of immortality in life and eternal life after death. The Osiris myth thus provides a model for the contemporary quest for individuation, the Jungian term for integrating ego and self, body and soul, in the process of becoming whole.




Exceptional Relationships


Book Description

The idea that partners in committed relationships elicit strong reactions in each other is self evident. That these passions are often overlooked in the therapy room is equally a reality. In this ground-breaking book, you will discover an innovative system for helping couples discover all of who they are. The Gleasons ask you to reconsider what it means to trust your intuition, make room for strong energies, work with the body, bring sexuality into the therapy room, and to elicit full emotional expression. Here you will learn to welcome the passionate, erotic, chaotic truths that are often kept under wraps in the therapy room. Exceptional Couples: Transformation Through Embodied Couples Work synthesizes modern developmental theories with the wisdom of somatic psychotherapy and reveals how "embodying" is fundamental to helping couples break their patterns of vitality destroying habits of interacting. The Gleasons invite you on a journey of the highest magnitude where couples can come fully alive. They generously open the door to their practice room, sharing in-depth case examples and effective strategies they've developed over the course of their careers. They ask you to come along with them and live in the mystery of yet-to-be discovered places in every relationship. The Gleasons met in in 1976 in clinical social work graduate school. They have devoted their lives to exploring how couples, including themselves, can have exceptional (beyond the ordinary) relationships. www.exceptionalmarriage.com




The Embodied Brain and Sandtray Therapy


Book Description

The Embodied Brain and Sandtray Therapy invites readers to absorb the magic and mystery of sandtray therapy through a collection of stories. Woven throughout these pages is the neurobiological foundation for the healing and transformation that takes place during deep encounters with sand, water, and symbolic images. Such scientific grounding provides the basis for clinicians to understand how sandtray therapy supports their healing work. In addition to client stories, the authors have also bravely shared their personal experiences, both challenging and rewarding, of being sandtray therapists. Clinicians who are considering becoming sandtray therapists are given an inside peek into the learning journey and its many benefits. Those who are already practicing sandtray therapy will find this book both supportive and affirming.




Embodied Social Justice


Book Description

Embodied Social Justice introduces an embodied approach to working with oppression. Grounded in current research, the book integrates key findings from education, psychology, sociology, and somatic studies while addressing critical gaps in how these fields have addressed pervasive patterns of social injustice. At the heart of the book, a series of embodied narratives bring to life everyday experiences of oppression through evocative descriptions of how power implicitly shapes body image, interpersonal space, eye contact, gestures, and the use of touch. This second edition includes two new "body stories" from research participants living and working in the global South. Supplemental guidelines for practice, updated references, and new community resources have also been added. Designed for social workers, counselors, educators, and other human service professionals working with members of disenfranchised and marginalized communities, Embodied Social Justice offers a conceptual framework and model of practice to assist in identifying, unpacking, and transforming embodied experiences of oppression from the inside out.




The Practice of Embodying Emotions


Book Description

“A grand accomplishment.” —Dr. Peter Levine, developer of Somatic Experiencing® and author of Waking the Tiger and In an Unspoken Voice A body-based, science-backed method for regulating behavior, thoughts, and feelings and improving well-being--shown to shorten therapy time and improve emotional outcomes. In the first book on Integral Somatic Psychology™ (ISP), clinical psychologist Dr. Raja Selvam offers a new, complementary approach for building more capacity to tolerate emotions using the body--especially emotions that are difficult or unpleasant. The ISP model shows readers how to expand and regulate emotional experiences in the body to improve different therapeutic outcomes--cognitive, emotional, behavioral, physical, energetic, relational, and even spiritual--in life and in all types of therapies, including other body psychotherapy and somatic psychology approaches. You will learn the physiology of emotions in the brain and body and how to: Access different types of emotions quickly Facilitate embodiment and regulation of feelings Process and heal different traumas and attachment wounds A go-to guide for emotional integration, The Practice of Embodying Emotions is of value in the treatment of a wide range of clinical problems involving difficult emotions--from ordinary life events to psychosomatic or psychophysiological disorders, developmental trauma, prenatal and perinatal trauma, attachment disorders, borderline personality disorder, complex PTSD, collective trauma, and intergenerational trauma--and in improving outcomes and shortening treatment time in different therapies including psychoanalysis, Jungian psychology, and CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy).




The Art of Somatic Coaching


Book Description

The Art of Somatic Coaching introduces the concepts and principles of coaching with practices that include body awareness, bodywork, and mindfulness for both the coach and the client. Author and expert coach, Richard Strozzi-Heckler, PhD, explains that in order to achieve truly sustainable changes in individuals, teams, and organizations, it is necessary to implement body-oriented somatic practices in order to dissolve habits, behaviors, and interpretations of the world that are no longer relevant. He explains that these ways of being are integrated in the body--at the level of the musculature, organs, and nervous system. By implementing a somatic approach, these patterns can be shifted in order for transformation to occur. Opening with a discussion of the roots of Somatic Coaching, the book describes the emotional and physical cost of being distanced from our bodies. Originating from the rationalistic idea that the mind and body are separate, this sense of disconnection spurred the emergence of the field of somatics that views the body as not just a physiological entity, but as the center of our lived experience in the world. Out of this philosophy, Somatic Coaching was developed as a way to cultivate the self through the body. Methods in this book include: • Somatic awareness--becoming aware of sensations • Somatic opening--includes bodywork to release held patterns in the body • Somatic practices--meditation, movement, and being present in everyday life The social context in which one is raised, the supportive, healing force of the outdoors and nature as well as acknowledgment of the spirit are also woven into the practice. Through these practices, a rhythm of unfolding occurs in what Strozzi-Heckler describes as an Arc of Transformation--moving in stages from conditioned tendencies to a new satisfying and fulfilling way of being that is fully embodied. Contents: Introduction; Chapter One: A Short Distance but a Big Cost; Chapter Two: Coaching; Chapter Three: Somatics and Somatic Coaching; Chapter Four: The Methodology; Chapter Five: The Rhythm of Action; Chapter Six: The Somatic Arc of Transformation




Embodied Relating and Transformation


Book Description

"What kinds of embodied and relational learning can come from developing a responsive relationship with a horse? What insights might such ways of learning offer counselors and educators? In this book, the authors explore how women challenged by disordered eating develop transformative relational and embodied experiences through Equine-Facilitated Counseling (EFC). Embodiment refers to how we engage with others and the world in often habitual and taken for granted ways that shape who we are and the relationships we have. These habitual ways of being provide us with a sense of stability, but they can sometimes become constraining and problematic (as in the case of eating disorders). Our corporeal engagement with the world structures such habits, but it can also afford us opportunities to experiment, modify, and challenge problematic patterns, and in some instances, create new and preferred ones. The horses that participate in EFC present a vastly different sort of other who can help clients interrupt their sedimented ways of being and foster moments of responsivity that hold the power to become transformative. This theoretical context presents a different way of thinking about and practicing counseling – one that adds to a growing language of embodiment across a variety of disciplines. Chapters set forth a theoretical context for understanding the following: relationally embodied processes of stability and change, EFC, client stories from our research associated with riding horses in EFC, and implications we see for practice across different healing and learning contexts. "




Embodied Leadership


Book Description

We don't need leaders who know about leadership - we need leaders who embody the capacity to lead in the midst of ambiguity and complexity. The concept of embodied leadership is derived from somatic coaching, a unique approach that brings the body forward as an advocate in creating a place for change and transformation. It brings together language, action, feeling and meaning and is based on the idea that the mind and body are inextricably linked: to develop one, you must cultivate the other. Embodied Leadership deconstructs our thinking about the body using key discoveries in neuroscience to demonstrate the uses and benefits of a somatic approach, particularity in the area of emotional intelligence.There are practical exercises throughout to develop embodied leadership skills and personal development.




Embodying Authenticity


Book Description

Transformative change begins with those who seek to lead it and who are awake to who they are, their relationships and the wider organisation. As we lead and partner organisations, the powerful instrument we have is the person we are. Simply put who we are is how we lead.