Moving Consciously


Book Description

The popularity of yoga and Zen meditation has heightened awareness of somatic practices. Individuals develop the conscious embodiment central to somatics work via movement and dance, or through touch from a skilled teacher or therapist often called a somatic bodyworker. Methods of touch and movement foster generative processes of consciousness in order to create a fluid interconnection between sensation, thought, movement, and expression. In Moving Consciously , Sondra Fraleigh gathers essays that probe ideas surrounding embodied knowledge and the conscious embodiment of movement and dance. Using a variety of perspectives on movement and dance somatics, Fraleigh and other contributors draw on scholarship and personal practice to participate in a multifaceted investigation of a thriving worldwide phenomenon. Their goal: to present the mental and physical health benefits of experiencing one's inner world through sensory awareness and movement integration. A stimulating addition to a burgeoning field, Moving Consciously incorporates concepts from East and West into a timely look at life-changing, intertwined practices that involve dance, movement, performance studies, and education. Contributors: Richard Biehl, Robert Bingham, Hillel Braude, Alison East, Sondra Fraleigh, Kelly Ferris Lester, Karin Rugman, Catherine Schaeffer, Jeanne Schul, and Ruth Way.




Conscious Moving


Book Description

Conscious Moving extends from one transformative belief: we feel more human, more empowered, and more ourselves when we live from that place within us—and all around us—that simply moves. And when we examine and trust in the emerging and evolving movement of our minds and bodies, we can better harness the tools needed to expand our creativity, wellbeing, and learning. Body-based psychotherapist, movement specialist, and renowned author-educator Christine Caldwell (Oppression and the Body) offers a radically ambitious mode of somatic awareness and inquiry—and shows how designing our own conscious movement practices can improve not only our own lives, but our relationships, communities, and culture. This anthology explores how movement practices can help us be more present; more grounded and intentional in responding to and working with experiences in the moment; and claim our own bodily autonomy. Caldwell and contributors explore these key benefits and applications in four critical areas: Creativity Contemplation Healing Learning Rooted in both ancient and modern scientific ways of knowing, Conscious Moving imparts fundamental principles and tools applicable to a broad spectrum of fields and professions. Topics explored in partnership with conscious movement practice include: Trauma and Oppression, Isolation and Loneliness, Addiction, Group Therapy, Sexuality, Creative Arts, and Grief. Encouraging each reader to pay attention to—and honor—their own embodied intuition, Conscious Moving is a non-prescriptive guide to accessing body-based wisdom for personal growth, community impact, and widespread social change.




Moving Consciously


Book Description

The popularity of yoga and Zen meditation has heightened awareness of somatic practices. Individuals develop the conscious embodiment central to somatics work via movement and dance, or through touch from a skilled teacher or therapist often called a somatic bodyworker. Methods of touch and movement foster generative processes of consciousness in order to create a fluid interconnection between sensation, thought, movement, and expression. In Moving Consciously , Sondra Fraleigh gathers essays that probe ideas surrounding embodied knowledge and the conscious embodiment of movement and dance. Using a variety of perspectives on movement and dance somatics, Fraleigh and other contributors draw on scholarship and personal practice to participate in a multifaceted investigation of a thriving worldwide phenomenon. Their goal: to present the mental and physical health benefits of experiencing one's inner world through sensory awareness and movement integration. A stimulating addition to a burgeoning field, Moving Consciously incorporates concepts from East and West into a timely look at life-changing, intertwined practices that involve dance, movement, performance studies, and education. Contributors: Richard Biehl, Robert Bingham, Hillel Braude, Alison East, Sondra Fraleigh, Kelly Ferris Lester, Karin Rugman, Catherine Schaeffer, Jeanne Schul, and Ruth Way.




Just Move!


Book Description

This step-by-step guide, written by a best-selling author and former Wall Street titan, provides all the information--and inspiration--you need to feel better, reduce aches and pains, and push back against aging with a personalized fitness program that's right for you. Whatever your fitness goals or preferences, this book is designed to help you pursue the health program that works for you. An inspirational speaker, author, and former Wall Street rainmaker, Jim Owen was 70 when he decided he had to get fit. Years of a chair-bound lifestyle were taking their toll. Realizing that the old bodybuilding approach was no way to tackle the stiffness, weakness, and aches and pains that come with age, he set off on a journey of discovery and transformation. With help from the experts, he developed a common-sense, step-by-step program that can be tailored to any level of physical ability. Along the way he learned why cardio machines aren't enough, what it takes to be "functionally fit" for daily life, and how to stay motivated. Today, Owen is in better shape than he was at 25, and he is a passionate evangelist for fitness as a way of life. He has proved that you don't have to be powerless in the face of advancing years: if you make a commitment to "just move," you can take charge of the aging process and make your coming years the best they can be. The book is divided into two sections, with the first providing fascinating information and the second showing step-by-step details of how to put the best fitness principles into practice.




Writing and the Body in Motion


Book Description

Based upon the author's lifetime practices as a dancer, poet and teacher, this innovative approach to developing body awareness focuses on achieving self-discovery and well-being through movement, mindfulness and writing. Written from a holistic (rather than dualistic) view of the mind-body duality, discussion and exercises draw on dance, psychology, neuroscience and meditation to guide personal exploration and creative expression.




How to Die Consciously: Secrets from Beyond the Veil


Book Description

The author had a near-death experience in 1971 and was given certain information to bring back with her to share with others. For the past 40 years she has been working in the field of death and dying as a spiritual counselor, hospice volunteer, and is the author of several books and a major NDE web site, Beyond the Veil. She recently created a training course to teach people to be Transition Guides for those who are getting ready to leave their bodies and return to their spiritual home -- according to their own beliefs. Her message is that we don't die, only our bodies die -- but we don't need them any more. Our consciousness survives the death of our body. We are beautiful spiritual beings of light on an eternal journey and shedding our skin is part of our spiritual growth and the evolution of consciousness.How to Die Consciously is a handbook for caregivers and patients offering a simple method of meditation and guided imagery practice of remembering who we really are while still in our body by practicing to die consciously before we die physically so that when we do, we are prepared and aware of what's happening when we find ourselves out of our body -- no matter how it died. This book is for every one because we are all, after all, going to die one day, but it is especially for anyone who has received a diagnosis of an illness that has even the slightest potential to cause death and for adult children caring for their aging parents. It will help you and your family have the conversations you need to have about end of life care, last wishes and quality of life and death. It will help the person leaving reconcile their life and prepare for a peaceful transition on their own terms.You'll find information about palliative and hospice care, final arrangements, and Death With Dignity laws. You'll delve into the subject of near-death experiences and the current research into the survival of consciousness, and the ancient mysteries that gave birth to our understanding of death and the afterlife. This is no ordinary book and it is guaranteed to change your life!




Empowerment and Integration Through the Goddess


Book Description

Empowerment and Integration Through The Goddess is perhaps the most profound and informative book written on the subject of the Divine Feminine and how women and men can integrate The Goddess energies into self and the world. Since early in Earth's history, abuse, denial, and ignorance of the Divine Feminine has led to the enormous patriarchal attitudes that pervade mass consciousness and even Spiritual literature. This book provides one of the most in-depth studies of this issue ever written; from the Divine Mother, Archangels and inner plane Ascended Masters' perspective! This is for all who are looking for spiritual growth! Collectively, we are shifting out of polarity consciousness and choosing empowered, balanced lives. This must-read book braids polarity into oneness, reveals the disparity of heart/mind, internal/ external, compassion/will, experience/knowledge, love/power, and assists us across the bridge of transition into the return of full consciousness. You will discover: How the imbalance began, What Goddess energy really is, How to balance Feminine and Masculine, Why experiencing the Heart is vital, Manifestation through The Goddess, Feeling into Physical Ascension, Meditations/Attunements to activate the Divine Feminine, What a balanced Master is, and How to Balance Love, Wisdom and Power.




Enactivist Interventions


Book Description

Enactivist Interventions is an interdisciplinary work that explores how theories of embodied cognition illuminate many aspects of the mind, including intentionality, representation, the affect, perception, action and free will, higher-order cognition, and intersubjectivity. Gallagher arguesfor a rethinking of the concept of mind, drawing on pragmatism, phenomenology and cognitive science. Enactivism is presented as a philosophy of nature that has significant methodological and theoretical implications for the scientific investigation of the mind. Gallagher argues that, like the basicphenomena of perception and action, sophisticated cognitive phenomena like reflection, imagining, and mathematical reasoning are best explained in terms of an affordance-based skilled coping. He offers an account of the continuity that runs between basic action, affectivity, and a rationality thatin every case remains embodied.Gallagher's analysis also addresses recent predictive models of brain function and outlines an alternative, enactivist interpretation that emphasizes the close coupling of brain, body and environment rather than a strong boundary that isolates the brain in its internal processes. The extensiverelational dynamics that integrates the brain with the extra-neural body opens into an environment that is physical, social and cultural and that recycles back into the enactive process. Cognitive processes are in-the-world rather than in-the-head; they are situated in affordance spaces definedacross evolutionary, developmental and individual histories, and are constrained by affective processes and normative dimensions of social and cultural practices.




Questioning Consciousness


Book Description

"Questioning Consciousness" brings together neuroscientific, psychological and phenomenological research, combining in a readable format recent developments in image research and neurology. It reassesses the mind-body relation and research on 'mental models', abstract concept formation, and acquisition of logical and apparently 'imageless' inference skills. It is argued that to be conscious of an object is essentially to imagine in a habituated way what would happen if we were to perform certain actions in relation to the object; and that mental images fit together to build up abstract concepts. This analysis shows why conscious information processing is so structurally different from yet interrelated with non-conscious processing, and how mind and body interrelate as a process to its substratum in the way that a sound wave relates to the medium through which it passes. (Series A)




Concepts of Philosophy


Book Description