Against the background of personal, institutional and cultural trajectories, this book considers dance, opera, theatre and practice as research from a consciousness studies perspective. Highlights include a conversation with Barbara Sellers-Young on the nature of dance; an assessment of the work of International Opera Theater; a new perspective on liveness and livecasts; a reassessment, with Anita S. Hammer, of the concept of a universal language of the theatre; a discussion of two productions of new plays; the development of a new concept of theatre of the heart; a comparison of Western and Thai positions on the concept of beauty; and an examination of the role of conflict for theatre. The final chapter of the book is taken up by the author’s first novel, which launches the new genre of spiritual romance.

Since its inaugural issue in April, 2000, the journal Consciousness, Literature and the Arts has regularly published essays on the intersection of theatre and consciousness. Often these essays have seen theatre as a spiritual practice that for both the performer and her audience can bring about experiences that help heal the world, a shift in consciousness. This practice, though spiritual, is not ethereal but is rooted in doing, in actions, in breathing. That is, theatre is seen as an art form understood as part of a whole, as taking place in total Consciousness as well as expressing consciousness(es), making both breathing a source of meaning and shamanic journeying part of the creative process that brings into “being” imaginative resources for the actor that undermines traditional understandings of character/self/ego. All the pieces collected here, then, reveal a concern with consciousness and the theatre, the ways that performance can be a spiritual practice, a means a reaching higher levels of consciousness, as well as the ways the theatre may have healing effects on audiences by engaging them in wider and deeper levels of imagination, the levels where dualities disappear.

Is the mind like a theatrical performance? This comparison has often been used as a conceptual tool by neuroscientists, philosophers, and psychologists in trying to understand what constitutes the human mind, and in particular how the comings and goings and the character transformations on the stage and in the scripted text give us visible access to the hidden workings of the human mind. Performing Human Consciousness makes use of this metaphor to explore the variety of ways in which the private thoughts and feelings we all have bring into play many aspects of persistent philosophical questions over how the essentially private world of personal experiences can relate to and communicate with the common public world. To investigate this generalisation in more detail, the author brings into play her own conscious experiences by making use of an auto-inscribed play Being Me. Through this dramatic medium she seeks to show in detail how phenomenal consciousness is captured through the dramatic play text and thereby made known to others through performance of that text. Broadening out her argument further, the author then embarks on an enquiry into a selection of play texts from an historical variety of perspectives, from the early Greek and Mediaeval dramas, through to the Symbolist period and onwards to the present day, demonstrating the variety of ways in which they illustrate her argument. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of theatre & performance and scriptwriting.

We're looking at our wrists not only to check the time, but also to see how much we've moved, monitor our heart rate, and see how we're stacking up against yesterday's tallies. By 2020, the global market for fitness-focused apps and devices is expected to grow to $30 billion. The authors believe we are turning rich experience into yet another task we need to complete to meet our daily goals. They encourage you to reconnect to your instincts and the natural world, and avoid the common mistakes that most people make with wearables and tracking apps.

Magic and conjuring inhabit the boundaries and the borderlands of performance. The conjuror s act of demonstrating the apparently impossible, the uncanny, the marvellous, or the grotesque challenges the spectator's sense of reality. It brings him or her up against their own assumptions about how the world works; at its most extreme, it asks the spectator to re-evaluate his or her sense of the limits of the human. Performing Dark Arts is an exploration of the paradox of the conjuror, the actor who pretends to be a magician. It aims to illuminate the history of conjuring by examining it in the context of performance studies, and to throw light on aspects of performance studies by testing them against the art of conjuring. The book examines not only the performances of individual magicians from Dedi to David Blaine, but also the broader cultural contexts in which their performances were received, and the meanings which they have attracted.

Contemporary culture increasingly suffers from problems of attention, over-stimulation, and stress, and a variety of personal and social discontents generated by deceptive body images. This book argues that improved body consciousness can relieve these problems and enhance one's knowledge, performance, and pleasure. The body is our basic medium of perception and action, but focused attention to its feelings and movements has long been criticised as a damaging distraction that also ethically corrupts through self-absorption. In Body Consciousness, Richard Shusterman refutes such charges by engaging the most influential twentieth-century somatic philosophers and incorporating insights from both Western and Asian disciplines of body-mind awareness. Rather than rehashing intractable ontological debates on the mind-body relation, Shusterman reorients study of this crucial nexus towards a more fruitful, pragmatic direction that reinforces important but neglected connections between philosophy of mind, ethics, politics, and the pervasive aesthetic dimensions of everyday life.

The bestselling book, now with a new preface by the authors At once a bold defense and reimagining of capitalism and a blueprint for a new system for doing business, Conscious Capitalism is for anyone hoping to build a more cooperative, humane, and positive future. Whole Foods Market cofounder John Mackey and professor and Conscious Capitalism, Inc. cofounder Raj Sisodia argue that both business and capitalism are inherently good, and they use some of today’s best-known and most successful companies to illustrate their point. From Southwest Airlines, UPS, and Tata to Costco, Panera, Google, the Container Store, and Amazon, today’s organizations are creating value for all stakeholders—including customers, employees, suppliers, investors, society, and the environment. Read this book and you’ll better understand how four specific tenets—higher purpose, stakeholder integration, conscious leadership, and conscious culture and management—can help build strong businesses, move capitalism closer to its highest potential, and foster a more positive environment for all of us.

“The father of cognitive neuroscience” illuminates the past, present, and future of the mind-brain problem How do neurons turn into minds? How does physical “stuff”—atoms, molecules, chemicals, and cells—create the vivid and various worlds inside our heads? The problem of consciousness has gnawed at us for millennia. In the last century there have been massive breakthroughs that have rewritten the science of the brain, and yet the puzzles faced by the ancient Greeks are still present. In The Consciousness Instinct, the neuroscience pioneer Michael S. Gazzaniga puts the latest research in conversation with the history of human thinking about the mind, giving a big-picture view of what science has revealed about consciousness. The idea of the brain as a machine, first proposed centuries ago, has led to assumptions about the relationship between mind and brain that dog scientists and philosophers to this day. Gazzaniga asserts that this model has it backward—brains make machines, but they cannot be reduced to one. New research suggests the brain is actually a confederation of independent modules working together. Understanding how consciousness could emanate from such an organization will help define the future of brain science and artificial intelligence, and close the gap between brain and mind. Captivating and accessible, with insights drawn from a lifetime at the forefront of the field, The Consciousness Instinct sets the course for the neuroscience of tomorrow.

WINNER OF THE 2014 BRAIN PRIZE From the acclaimed author of Reading in the Brain and How We Learn, a breathtaking look at the new science that can track consciousness deep in the brain How does our brain generate a conscious thought? And why does so much of our knowledge remain unconscious? Thanks to clever psychological and brain-imaging experiments, scientists are closer to cracking this mystery than ever before. In this lively book, Stanislas Dehaene describes the pioneering work his lab and the labs of other cognitive neuroscientists worldwide have accomplished in defining, testing, and explaining the brain events behind a conscious state. We can now pin down the neurons that fire when a person reports becoming aware of a piece of information and understand the crucial role unconscious computations play in how we make decisions. The emerging theory enables a test of consciousness in animals, babies, and those with severe brain injuries. A joyous exploration of the mind and its thrilling complexities, Consciousness and the Brain will excite anyone interested in cutting-edge science and technology and the vast philosophical, personal, and ethical implications of finally quantifying consciousness.

Awakening the Performing Body is an exemplary work of practice-based research presented in a pedagogical format. This text is clearly laid out for any acting teacher who wishes to pursue a more spiritual approach to acting and participate in the goal of reclaiming the sacred in theatre ¿ or indeed for any acting teacher who seeks a more body centered and imaginative approach to character and actor-audience connections. This book is a crucial contribution to acting pedagogy. Per K. Brask, University of Winnipeg, Canada Here at last, is a deep, probing and totally fascinating inquiry into the palpable yet unseen forces at work and at play in the theatre. McCutcheon, flaming torch in hand, has entered the mysterious dark cavern where one knows there's a magic exchange. AWAKENING is an awakening - to link mind, body and spirit ¿ to holistically mine acting education where the WHOLE person is engaged, so that magic we long for and crave, becomes something you can actually set out to entice into the light ¿ not something one hopes might appear if we are lucky. An extraordinary work. Dean Carey, Artistic Director/Founder, Actors Centre Australia Australian director and scholar Jade Rosina McCutcheon, co-convenor of the International Federation of Theatre Research working group Performance and Consciousness, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance, UC Davis. Her research revolves around actor training, the relationship between the actor and the audience and consciousness studies.