Getting Our Bodies Back

A habitual movement as common as nail-biting or toe-tapping can be the key to pulling out addictive behavior by its roots. These unconscious movement "tags" indicate the places where our bodies have become split off from our psyches. When brought to consciousness and confronted they will often tell us very plainly where our psychological suffering originated, showing us where to begin reconnecting body and soul. Christine Caldwell, a pioneer in the field of somatic psychology, has created an original model for working with body wisdom called the Moving Cycle. She describes how this form of therapy has worked effectively in her own practice, and she provides practical techniques to show how we can learn to listen to what our bodies are telling us, confront addictive habits, and learn to celebrate our inherent wisdom and elegance.

A habitual movement as common as nail-biting or toe-tapping can be the key to pulling out addictive behavior by its roots. These unconscious movement "tags" indicate the places where our bodies have become split off from our psyches. When brought to consciousness and confronted they will often tell us very plainly where our psychological suffering originated, showing us where to begin reconnecting body and soul. Christine Caldwell, a pioneer in the field of somatic psychology, has created an original model for working with body wisdom called the Moving Cycle. She describes how this form of therapy has worked effectively in her own practice, and she provides practical techniques to show how we can learn to listen to what our bodies are telling us, confront addictive habits, and learn to celebrate our inherent wisdom and elegance.

Covering such techniques as Hakomi, Dreambodywork, and The Moving Cycle, the founders of body-centered psychotherapy explain how they developed their methods, what happens during a therapy session, and who can best benefit from them. Original. Tour. IP.

“moore provides a blueprint for how to veer outside of fixed expectations and still remain unflinching in her love for herself.” — The Mantle “We Want Our Bodies Back is a lyric encyclopedia, a psalm book, a conflagration of fire and fierce black joy. And jessica Care moore is the 21st Century poet warrior America desperately needs.” — Tracy K. Smith, U.S. Poet Laureate “Our plump, perfect, shea-buttered bodies. Our sun-scarred sinewy selves. Our stout tree-trunks, our walls. Our muscled forearms, our thick thighs, our phenomenal asses. Our weary hands. Forever, black women have shouldered the weight of the same world that denies their power and sway. The inimitable jessica Care moore—who has spent her life singing the most forceful notes of our soundtrack—is calling an end to that now. If We Want Our Bodies Back empowers you, it was meant to. If this book frightens you, it should.” — Patricia Smith, poet, playwright, author of Incendiary Art “jessica Care moore is my hero. Powerful, beautiful, excellent and unapologetically Black. She is who I want to be when I grow up. Her writing allows us to be seen for who we truly are.” — Talib Kweli, rapper, entrepreneur, and activist "There are many times that jessica Care moore's work has made me spend hours figuring out how much of her work would be socially acceptable to steal. I really wish she had put this out while I was writing my last album." — Boots Riley, director, emcee, Sorry to Bother You “Imbued with heartache, anger, celebration, and rejuvenation, the poems in We Want Our Bodies Back reflect the sui generis funktified flyness that jessica Care moore has exemplified as an independent artist, activist, publisher, and curator for nearly a quarter-century. Perhaps the premier resistance writer in America today, moore furnishes luminous poetic signposts for our treacherous journey through the gloomy landscapes of 21st century America.” — Tony Bolden, author of Afro-Blue: Improvisations in African American Poetry and Culture “We Want Our Bodies Back is a soaring resistance/upright bass/instrument of war. Here are poems that seek out my pain. A soldier allowed their childhood, a people returned to their Detroit. In a time of cobalt-imperialism, someone is still writing songs about God. Yes, revolution is exhausting, but we make countries; you and I.” — Tongo Eisen Martin, author, Heaven is All Goodbyes

A somatic counselor offers tools for developing a deeper, more awakened relationship with your body through sensation, breath, and movement As a foundation for a contemplative life, the body can both literally and metaphorically help us wake up. Breathing, sensing, and moving—the ways we know our body—carry tremendous contemplative potential, and yet, we so often move through our days unaware of or in conflict with our physical selves. In Bodyfulness, renowned somatic counselor Christine Caldwell offers a practical guide for living an embodied contemplative life, embracing whatever body we are in. Each chapter offers insights and practices that help us recover our lost physical wisdom—to integrate our bodies with mindfulness, to deal with emotions, and to develop attuned relationships. Bodyfulness inspires us to reclaim a body-centered contemplative life and challenges us to harness our potential to effect social and personal transformation in this body now.

Originally published by Viking Penguin, 2014.

A timely anthology that explores power, privilege, and oppression and their relationship to marginalized bodies Asserting that the body is the main site of oppression in Western society, the contributors to this pioneering volume explore the complex issue of embodiment and how it relates to social inclusion and marginalization. In a culture where bodies of people who are brown, black, female, transgender, disabled, fat, or queer are often shamed, sexualized, ignored, and oppressed, what does it mean to live in a marginalized body? Through theory, personal narrative, and artistic expression, this anthology explores how power, privilege, oppression, and attempted disembodiment play out on the bodies of disparaged individuals and what happens when the body’s expression is stereotyped and stunted. Bringing together a range of voices, this book offers strategies and practices for embodiment and activism and considers what it means to be an embodied ally to anyone experiencing bodily oppression.

For readers of adrienne maree brown, Staci K. Haines, and Robin Wall Kimmerer A body-based healing model that interrogates what we’ve been wrongly taught about hierarchies of nature and the body—and pushes back against the white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism embedded in modern embodiment practices. Pushing back against a consumerist, pleasure-centric somatics industry that privileges product over process, Abigail Rose Clarke reminds us that truly meaningful embodiment practice nurtures our relationships among self, nature, and community. Combining the rigor of the scientific method with the poetry and lyricism of movement and somatic studies, Clarke’s somatic learning system—The Embodied Life Method—centers the body as a guide through today’s most seemingly intractable social and environmental challenges, reclaiming the body as a source of liberatory comfort in times of great uncertainty and yet, possibility. With tools and practices to help us better understand and dismantle the many ways our bodies are weaponized to serve domination systems, topics covered include: Harnessing the vitality of curiosity and experimentation Using nature as a guide to possibility Embracing the necessity of difference Exposing the lie of universal isolation Dismantling the fallacy of hierarchy Uncovering the truth of endless capacity Awe as a driving force for transformation With methods honed over decades of inquiry, teaching, and practice, Returning Home to Our Bodies provides a lucid, body-based model of healing and restoration—one that imagines a world beyond systems of domination, marginalization, and isolation to nurture embodied, whole-community liberation.