Offering From The Conscious Body

The exploration of the direct experience of healing and of the divine through the witnessing of movement becoming conscious. • Uses sample sessions and descriptive theory to explain the discipline. • Based on the author's 35 years of movement work. Offering from the Conscious Body reveals both the theory and practice of a unique body-based process that is cathartic, creative, healing, and mystical--as presented by Janet Adler, the presiding voice in the field. This Western awareness practice encourages the individual to experience the evolving relationship with oneself, another, the collective, and the divine through the natural impulses of conscious movement, compassionate witnessing, and clear articulation of experience. Through the vivid examples taken from her own practice, Adler demonstrates that physical movement can invite direct experience of spiritual truths. The reader is led through the multiple layers within the discipline--moving and witnessing in dyads and then groups, in the presence of a witnessing teacher--to develop a comprehensive and experiential understanding of this innovative way of work. Designed for professionals and laypersons interested in psychology, bodywork, mystic traditions, or personal transformation, the discipline of Authentic Movement is at the cutting edge of emerging Western healing practices.

Praise for the first volume: `It is very valuable to have [this collection of articles] all together in one place...a rich repository of insights and experiences for all the somatic disciplines. It is a wonderful collection of articles.' - Somatics 1999/2000 This second volume on Authentic Movement - a new discipline aiding the creative process in choreography, writing, theatre performance, dance, graphic and expressive arts, as well as spirituality - is an engaging and dynamic collection of scholarly essays, personal stories, practical suggestions and resources. It reflects cutting edge work on creative expression, meditative discipline and psychotherapeutic endeavour. Part I comprises five chapters written by the most prominent Authentic Movement practitioners and teachers and introducing the foundations and principles of Authentic Movement. In Part II, the contributors return to the source of Authentic Movement - the psychotherapeutic setting - and provide an in-depth examination of the personal processes in the therapeutic relationship and the potential of Authentic Movement to facilitate personal growth and change. Part III traces the development of Authentic Movement as a spiritual path and as interface with other spiritual practices. Part IV provides an overview of new developments in Authentic Movement, Part V offers inspiring personal accounts and Part VI provides guidelines drawn from practice as well as tools and resources. These latter chapters sow the seeds for a new understanding and directions for the developments of Authentic Movement. This authoritative text is indispensable for practitioners of Authentic Movement, students and teachers working in the field of dance therapy, art therapists, all creative arts therapists and body psychoanalysts.

Patrizia Pallaro's second volume of essays on Authentic Movement, eight years after her first, is a tour de force. It is indeed "an extraordinary array of papers", as Pallaro puts it, and an immensely rich, moving and highly readable sweep through the landscapes of Authentic Movement, "this form of creative expression, meditative discipline and/or psychotherapeutic endeavour". You don't need to practice Authentic Movement to get a lot out of this book, but it certainly helps! I defy anyone to read the first two sections and not be curious to have their own experience.' - Sesame Institute 'Authentic Movement can be seen as a means by which analysts can become more sensitive to unconscious, especially pre-verbal aspects of themselves and their patients.' - Body Psychotherapy Journal Newsletter 'This book is a collection of articles, some of which are interviews, brought together for the first time. It is very valuable to have them all together in one place...It is a wonderful collection of articles on topics you have always wanted to read, such as the role of transference in dance therapy or Jung and dance therapy. The book also includes scripts for exercises.' - Somatics Authentic Movement, an exploration of the unconscious through movement, was largely defined by the work of Mary Starks Whitehouse, Janet Adler and Joan Chodorow. The basic concepts of Authentic Movement are expressed for the first time in one volume through interviews and conversations with these important figures, and their key papers. They emphasize the importance of movement as a means of communication, particularly unconscious or 'authentic' movement, emerging when the individual has a deep, self-sensing awareness - an attitude of 'inner listening'. Such movement can trigger powerful images, feelings and kinesthetic sensations arising from the depths of our stored childhood memories or connecting our inner selves to the transcendent. In exploring Authentic Movement these questions are asked: - How does authentic movement differ from other forms of dance and movement therapy? - How may 'authentic' movement be experienced?

This book looks at the ground-breaking work of the London based Chiron Centre for Body Psychotherapy, bringing together Chiron trainers and therapists, describing how their approach has enabled cutting-edge thinking.

Body Conscious is for women who are seeking to connect with, and understand, their feminine body on a deeper level. It shares the answers to the questions women have about topics that are often considered too delicate to talk about. This book is for women who are seeking something more than the western medical approach, that offers a limited scope of wellness. Rooted in an understanding that there is more to us than our our physical body, Body Conscious offers an exploration of how our emotional, energetic, and spiritual health impacts our pelvic health and our overall wellbeing. Body Conscious respects the multi-layered and dynamic nature of female wellness and offers a deep acknowledgment of the emotional pain that women can carry in their body. The pathway towards healing requires awareness and expression of this pain. Body Conscious offers you the guidance, the support, and the practices, to help you reveal your unique healing path. Taryn Gaudin is a women's pelvic floor physiotherapist and whole body connection guide. Taryn helps women connect to their wholeness through simple embodied practices so that they may experience and express their fullness in all aspects of their lives. Overcoming her own challenges with pelvic pain, she spent the last 6 years developing an alternative therapeutic approach to womens wellness combining clinical evidence-based physiotherapy with energy medicine. Reflecting a deep appreciation of the connectedness of the physical, emotional, and spiritual body, her approach has been pivotol in uncovering the core issues of the physical pelvic symptoms that her patients experience.

In recent years, a growth in dance and wellbeing scholarship has resulted in new ways of thinking that place the body, movement, and dance in a central place with renewed significance for wellbeing. The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Wellbeing examines dance and related movement practices fromthe perspectives of neuroscience and health, community and education, and psychology and sociology to contribute towards an understanding of wellbeing, offer new insights into existing practices, and create a space where sufficient exchange is enabled. The handbook's research components includequantitative, qualitative, and arts-based research, covering diverse discourses, methodologies, and perspectives that add to the development of a complete picture of the topic. Throughout the handbook's wide-ranging chapters, the objective observations, felt experiences, and artistic explorations ofpractitioners interact with and are printed alongside academic chapters to establish an egalitarian and impactful exchange of ideas.

A step-by-step guide to accessing the body deva, your body consciousness, for physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual healing • Details how to dialogue with the consciousness of your body to heal a variety of issues, from physical pains to limiting beliefs • Explains how our bodies, consciousness, and spirit are interconnected and how our physical bodies hold emotions and past traumas • Explores how to work with the body deva to heal spiritual patterns through the physical body, including techniques of ancestral healing, past life healing, and karmic resolution We are not our pain or our disease, nor are we defined by our limitations, restrictions, or the labels given to us. We are a whole body, a consciousness, and a spiritual being. As a holistic, interconnected being, our emotions, beliefs, physical pain, past traumas, and even imbalances created through spiritual issues are held within our physical form. By accessing them through the physical body with the body deva--the spiritual consciousness of our human body--we can heal the continuum of mind, body, and spirit. Understanding this is the true key to healing. In this step-by-step guide to understanding and working with the body deva, the consciousness of your body, Mary Mueller Shutan explains how our bodies hold the traumatic energies, emotions, physical issues, and restricting beliefs that cause us pain and feelings of disconnection. She details how to make contact and dialogue with your body deva to heal a variety of issues, from physical pains to ancestral and past life patterns to limiting ideas about what we can accomplish in this world. By working with the body deva, she shows how we can discover the reasons why our pain, beliefs, or imbalances developed and resolve them to heal mind, body, and spirit, every layer of our being. She explores how to work with the archetypes, labels, limiting beliefs, and myths that underlie our unique history and reasons for being. Shutan also examines how to work with the body deva to heal spiritual patterns through the physical body, including techniques of ancestral healing, past life healing, and karmic resolution. By learning to dialogue with the body deva, you can understand who you are on the deepest levels. You can learn why your pain and imbalances came to be and what lies unhealed within you. You can evolve beyond the limitations and restrictions in your body and your life and evolve into greater health, connection, joy, and consciousness.

Arching Backward is the story of an American woman who found herself suddenly and violently immersed in a mystical initiation for which she was not consciously prepared. For four years, Janet Adler's life was dominated by the transforming experience of a primal energy and the visions that were created by it. She was not seeking spiritual experience, nor was she a student of any particular mystical tradition. But the visions brought her into the realm of the sacred, transforming her body into a conduit for spiritual energy. The writings collected here record her visions and describe the way this contemporary woman dealt with the impact of this energy on her physical body, her work, and her relationships. Her story offers a guide for others on this journey and provides a powerful affirmation of women's experience of the spirit.