To understand the mind and its place in Nature is one of the great intellectual challenges of our time, a challenge that is both scientific and philosophical. How does cognition influence an animal's behaviour? What are its neural underpinnings? How is the inner life of a human being constituted? What are the neural underpinnings of the conscious condition? Embodiment and the Inner Life approaches each of these questions from a scientific standpoint. But it contends that, before we can make progress on them, we have to give up the habit of thinking metaphysically, a habit that creates a fog of philosophical confusion. From this post-reflective point of view, the book argues for an intimate relationship between cognition, sensorimotor embodiment, and the integrative character of the conscious condition. Drawing on insights from psychology, neuroscience, and dynamical systems, it proposes an empirical theory of this three-way relationship whose principles, not being tied to the contingencies of biology or physics, are applicable to the whole space of possible minds in which humans and other animals are included. Embodiment and the Inner Life is one of very few books that provides a properly joined-up theory of consciousness, and will be essential reading for all psychologists, philosophers, and neuroscientists with an interest in the enduring puzzle of consciousness.

In Embodied Enlightenment, contemporary spiritual teacher Amoda Maa Jeevan dispels the outdated view of a transcendent enlightenment and instead presents a new, feminine expression of awakened consciousness for all—one that is felt and known through what our everyday lives are made of: our emotions, bodies, intimate relationships, work, and life’s purpose. This book is a direct invitation to awaken in a profound, embodied way, and to participate in a collective evolution that can create a new world. When many of us think of enlightenment, we may envision a life of seclusion and contemplation, transcending the body and worldly attachments, or the achievement of karmic perfection. But what if, rather than something reserved for the mountaintop meditator or sage, the call to awaken is meant for us all? And how can we consciously live that awakening in the midst of our complex, messy, modern lives? Speaking from her own awakened experience, Amoda Maa Jeevan offers a timeless wisdom, busting some of the common myths about enlightenment and addressing topics often excluded from more traditional spiritual conversations—from the connection between consciousness and the body to relationships to planetary health. In addition, she covers the unfamiliar territory of what happens after enlightenment, delving into awakened action, creative expression, and more. There’s an urgency today to evolve beyond humanity’s current ego-based paradigm, and along with it, a unique expression of enlightenment is emerging. With clarity, passion, and grace, Embodied Enlightenment invites you on an exploration of consciousness that embraces both the messiness of your earthly experience and the non-duality of pure awareness, offering guidance on how your daily life can bring you into alignment with a divine destiny of individual and collective awakening.

Did you know that intentional dreaming has been used to solve life's problems? Embodiment: Creative Imagination in Medicine, Art and Travel sets out Robert Bosnak's practice of embodied imagination and demonstrates how he actually works with dreams and memories in groups. The book discusses various approaches to dreams, body and imagination, and combines this with a Jungian, neurobiological, relational and cultural analysis. The author's fascination with dreams, the most absolute form of embodied imagination, has caused him to travel all over the world. From his research he concludes that while dreaming everyone everywhere experiences dreams as embodied events in time and space while the dreamer is convinced of being awake; it is after waking into our specific cultural stories about dreaming that the widely differing attitudes towards dreams arise. By taking dreaming reality, not our waking interpretation of it, as the model for imagination, this book creates a paradigm shock and produces methods which can be applied in a wide variety of cultural settings. Through detailed case studies, professionals and students will find thorough discussions of: ways to flashback into dreams and memories while in a hypnagogic state of consciousness the practice of embodied imagination and its profound physical effects psyche as a self-organizing multiplicity of selves the nature of subjectivity the body as a theatre of sense memories the limitation of reason the process of dissociation the treatment of trauma This book discusses a variety of techniques which may be applied by health professionals to their patients and clients. It will also be of particular interest to Jungian and relational psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and clinical psychologists, as well as to artists, actors, directors, writers and other individuals who wish to explore the creative imagination.

Meaning and Embodiment provides a detailed study of Hegel's anthropology to examine the place of corporeity or embodiment in human life, identity, and experience. In Hegel's view, to be human means in part to produce one's own spiritual embodiment in culture and habits. Whereas for animals nature only has meaning relative to biological drives, humans experience meaning in a way that transcends these limits, and which allows for aesthetic appreciation of beauty and sublimity, nihilistic feelings of meaninglessness, and the complex and different systems of symbolic speech and action characterizing language and culture. By elucidating the different forms of embodiment, Nicholas Mowad shows how for Hegel we are embodied in several different ways at once: as extended, subject to physical-chemical forces, living, and human. Many difficult problems in philosophy and everyday experience come down to using the right concept of embodiment. Mowad traces Hegel's account through the growth and development of the body, gender and racial difference, cycles of sleep and waking, and sensibility and mental illness.

The concept of the soul, one of the greatest 'inventions' of Greek philosophy, which crossed the whole history of the Western civilisation, was defined in its fundamental philosophical features by Plato. Developing the numerous issues naturally linked to this concept, Plato's thought does not only focus on metaphysical and religious themes, but also to all issues related to spirituality and the human psyche, including their ethical consequences. Therefore, the concept of soul opens the door to an endless process involving the analysis of a subject's interiority. It is not by chance, that this Platonic theme recurs in many texts and even represents the backbone of whole dialogues. In this collection, some of the most important contemporary Platonic scholars looked at these complex philosophical issues from innovative perspectives, especially with regard to texts that previously were either underestimated or largely ignored. This perspective gives the reader a chance to evaluate the hermeneutic power of different approaches and interpretations of Plato's texts, revaluating as well the richness of Plato's contribution to questions that have been received and developed in contemporary philosophical reflections.

As groundbreaking synthesis that promises to shift our understanding of the mind-brain connection and its relationship with our bodies. We understand the workings of the human body as a series of interdependent physiological relationships: muscle interacts with bone as the heart responds to hormones secreted by the brain, all the way down to the inner workings of every cell. To make an organism function, no one component can work alone. In light of this, why is it that the accepted understanding that the physical phenomenon of the mind is attributed only to the brain? In The Embodied Mind, internationally renowned psychiatrist Dr. Thomas R. Verny sets out to redefine our concept of the mind and consciousness. He brilliantly compiles new research that points to the mind’s ties to every part of the body. The Embodied Mind collects disparate findings in physiology, genetics, and quantum physics in order to illustrate the mounting evidence that somatic cells, not just neural cells, store memory, inform genetic coding, and adapt to environmental changes—all behaviors that contribute to the mind and consciousness. Cellular memory, Verny shows, is not just an abstraction, but a well-documented scientific fact that will shift our understanding of memory. Verny describes single-celled organisms with no brains demonstrating memory, and points to the remarkable case of a French man who, despite having a brain just a fraction of the typical size, leads a normal life with a family and a job. The Embodied Mind shows how intelligence and consciousness—traits traditionally attributed to the brain alone—also permate our entire being. Bodily cells and tissues use the same molecular mechanisms for memory as our brain, making our mind more fluid and adaptable than we could have ever imaged.

When historian Charles Weiner found pages of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman's notes, he saw it as a "record" of Feynman's work. Feynman himself, however, insisted that the notes were not a record but the work itself. In Supersizing the Mind, Andy Clark argues that our thinking doesn't happen only in our heads but that "certain forms of human cognizing include inextricable tangles of feedback, feed-forward and feed-around loops: loops that promiscuously criss-cross the boundaries of brain, body and world." The pen and paper of Feynman's thought are just such feedback loops, physical machinery that shape the flow of thought and enlarge the boundaries of mind. Drawing upon recent work in psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, robotics, human-computer systems, and beyond, Supersizing the Mind offers both a tour of the emerging cognitive landscape and a sustained argument in favor of a conception of mind that is extended rather than "brain-bound." The importance of this new perspective is profound. If our minds themselves can include aspects of our social and physical environments, then the kinds of social and physical environments we create can reconfigure our minds and our capacity for thought and reason.

Our bodies have too long been in exile. We listen or pray with our hearts and minds but ignore much of our bodies; we become 'disembodied'. This illuminating book is about honouring what our bodies have to teach us. Brimming with words of wisdom that will allow you to discover what a gift your body is, 'Embodied Prayer' invites you towards wholeness of body, mind, and soul.

A profound inside experience of the transformative potential of the Discipline of Authentic Movement • Offers insights from the author’s 50-year study of the inner witness developing toward compassionate presence, intuitive knowing, and direct experience of the divine • Illuminates how commitment to this mystical practice supports participation in evolving consciousness within groups, grounded in personal healing The Discipline of Authentic Movement, grounded in the relationship between a mover and a witness, connects us directly with the inner wisdom of the body. In the emptiness of the movement space, a mover’s inner experience--feelings, sensations, images, and thoughts--become outer, unchoreographed gestures. Seen by their inner witness in the presence of an outer witness, the mover steps into the intimate mystery of who they are becoming. Sharing vivid examples from founder of the Discipline of Authentic Movement Janet Adler’s 50-year inquiry, Intimacy in Emptiness brings her essential writings, including new and previously unpublished work, to a wider audience, guiding readers through the multiple layers of this experiential and innovative approach to embodied consciousness. Her writings illuminate the path of the developing inner witness, transforming toward compassionate presence, conscious speech, and intuitive knowing. This contemporary mystical practice, a breakthrough in the field of consciousness studies, includes personal healing as an essential base from which direct experience of the numinous can safely emerge, be witnessed, and become integrated into the fullness of the whole person. The emergence of the unique gesture and voice of each individual develops toward participation in consciously embodied groups. A new form of intelligence moves through collective bodies in service of healing in our world.