Bodyfulness: Somatic Practices for Presence, Empowerment, and Waking Up in This Life

Description

As a foundation for a contemplative life, the body can both literally and metaphorically help us wake up. 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.

Christine Caldwell, PhD, founded the Somatic Counseling program in the Graduate School of Counseling and Psychology at Naropa University, where she was a core faculty member for more than thirty years. A practicing psychotherapist with a long-standing practice and an advanced student of Thich Nhat Hanh, Christine runs professional trainings in somatics in both the US and internationally. Her books include Getting Our Bodies Back and Oppression and the Body.

"This beautifully organized and superbly informative book is a road map for an intimate and deep exploration of what it truly means to be a 'bodyful' being." -Ann Weiser Cornell, PhD, author of The Power of Focusing "Bodyfulness is at once a hands-on manual suitable for beginners, a rich resource for somatically-oriented trainers and counselors, and a heartfelt call for humanity to wake up to the untapped resources our bodies hold for living more fulfilling, wise, and ethical lives. I fell in love with this book . . . you may well fall in love with it too."-from the foreword by David I. Rome, author of Your Body Knows the Answer "Bodyfulness offers a vivid opportunity to learn more about being yourself in relationships with social contexts, in the process of change, and finally to live with bodyfulness. Christine Caldwell shares with us her East-West multidisciplinary knowledge, integrating research, clinical expertise, a sociocultural critical awareness, and a rich practice of body/movement knowledge."-Hilda Wengrower, PhD, DMT, coeditor of The Art and Science of Dance/Movement Therapy "In her quest, Caldwell, a longtime somatic counselor, builds the theoretical and anatomical foundations for explaining the body's role as a natural vehicle for contemplation. She then guides us through somatic practices of breathing, sensing, and moving, so that "we can feel and express directly, creating a powerful and direct locating of ourselves"-a wordy, yet deceptively simple way into the present moment."-Mindful "Caldwell introduces the importance of somatic awareness and movement as a companion to sitting practice, using the body to help literally and metaphorically awaken us."-Spirituality & Health