This book captures the essence of Charlotte Selver’s practice of Sensory Awareness like no other publication. It is an invitation to experience life firsthand again, as we did when we were children. In a culture where we have grown accustomed to accumulating knowledge from teachers and experts, it is rare to find a book that actually invites us to trust our own senses again. It is the authors’ intent to give back to the reader authority over his or her own experience and learning processes. Much of the book focuses on reviving the senses in order to open the mind and body to direct learning. The book imitates an actual Sensory Awareness class, involving the reader as a student, guiding him or her along a journey with and through the senses to a way of living that is in accordance with the natural functioning of the human organism in its environment. The range of explorations include a renewed connection to the support of the earth as a foundation for trust; the central role of gravity for our health and for finding orientation in life; a study of breathing that promotes health and vitality; and connecting and interacting with other people. A handbook to a more genuine and connected way of living, the work is also a beautifully crafted account of Sensory Awareness, showing these profound teachers at work with their students and with the reader.

Although the practice of Sensory Awareness, the rediscovery of experiencing, is nonverbal, its essence can be distilled from the tape-recorded words of its seminal teacher, Charlotte Selver, in response to her students’ actions and questions during her classes. This book is a lovingly selected and skillfully edited compilation of excerpts of more than two decades of Charlotte Selver’s profound teachings, colorful sayings, and rich insights, arranged topically. They represent the heart of her teaching. Using only her own words, the text of each experiment feels like Charlotte Selver herself speaking not only to her class but to the reader. The reader is invited to try out some of the suggested experiments.

A guided tour through the body’s innate healing powers Many of us have learned to ignore, deny, or even mistrust the wise messages our bodies give us. The result is that when trauma strikes, a time when we need every aspect of our beings to master the challenge, we may find ourselves disconnected from our greatest strengths. Suzanne Scurlock-Durana, who has spent thirty years studying the gifts of the body and teaching thousands how to reclaim them, began to recognize this strength, which she likens to a GPS, when she herself experienced a life-threatening trauma. Here she walks readers through different areas of the body, revealing the wisdom they hold and how to reconnect with that wisdom. As she shows in this warm, compassionate book, the body’s abilities are always available; we must simply reconnect with them.

In this volume in the Weil Integrative Medicine Library, the authors describe a rational and evidence-based approach to the integrative therapy of mental disorders, integrating the principles of alternative and complementary therapies into the principles and practice of conventional psychiatry and psychology. The authors will examine what works and what doesn't, and offer practical guidelines for physicians to incorporate integrative medicine into their practice and to advise patients on reasonable and effective therapies.

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.

In 1938 gymnastics instructor Carola Spitz escaped from Nazi Germany. In New York she turned into Carola Speads, revered teacher of mindfulness. She breathed with clients in her Central Park West studio until she was 97 years old. Now Christoph Ribbat combines her gripping biography with the histories of modern bodywork and breathing experiments. He illuminates the tension between self-help fads and 20th century catastrophes. Accessible and quirky, Breathing in Manhattan speaks to experts and non-experts alike: to readers of Jewish history, students of New York City, and to anyone attracted by - or skeptical of - the promises of mindfulness.

This book introduces body psychotherapy as one of the essential approaches in psychotherapy, reflecting the increasing integration of the body into clinical mental health practice. The book offers an entirely new view on body psychotherapy based upon advanced research on embodiment, memory, emotion regulation, developmental psychology and body communication and an experiential and relational understanding of psychotherapy. Accordingly, the author grounds the theory of body psychotherapy on the theoretical approach of enactivism, which regards experience as arising from meaningful living interaction with others and their environment. The book, fortified with clinical examples, shows the distinctiveness of body psychotherapy as compared with a traditional talking therapy approach. It also convincingly demonstrates that each form of psychotherapy should consider body experiences. This text will be a comprehensive foundation for psychotherapists of every orientation, scholars of the humanities and students and especially those wishing to integrate embodied experience into their understanding of their patients.

The applications and use of mindfulness-based interventions in medicine, mental health care, and education have been expanding as rapidly as the empirical evidence base that is validating and recommending them. This growth has created a powerful demand for professionals who can effectively deliver these interventions, and for the training of new professionals who can enter the fold. Ironically, while the scientific literature on mindfulness has surged, little attention has been paid to the critical who and how of mindfulness pedagogy. Teaching Mindfulness is the first in-depth treatment of the person and skills of the mindfulness teacher. It is intended as a practical guide to the landscape of teaching, to help those with a new or growing interest in mindfulness-based interventions to develop both the personal authenticity and the practical know-how that can make teaching mindfulness a highly rewarding and effective way of working with others. The detail of theory and praxis it contains can also help seasoned mindfulness practitioners and teachers to articulate and understand more clearly their own pedagogical approaches. Engagingly written and enriched with vignettes from actual classes and individual sessions, this unique volume: Places the current mindfulness-based interventions in their cultural and historical context to help clarify language use, and the integration of Eastern and Western spiritual and secular traditio ns Offers a highly relational understanding of mindfulness practice that supports moment-by-moment work with groups and individuals Provides guidance and materials for a highly experiential exploration of the reader's personal practice, embodiment, and application of mindfulness Describes in detail the four essential skill sets of the mindfulness teacher “p> Proposes a comprehensive, systematic model of the intentions of teaching mindfulness as they are revealed in the mindfulness-based interventions Includes sample scripts for a wide range of mindfulness practices, and an extensive resource section for continued personal and career development Essential for today's practitioners and teachers of mindfulness-based interventions Teaching Mindfulness: A Practical Guide for Clinicians and Educators brings this increasingly important discipline into clearer focus, opening dialogue for physicians, clinical and health psychologists, clinical social workers, marriage and family therapists, professional counselors, nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists, pastoral counselors, spiritual directors, life coaches, organizational development professionals, and teachers and professionals in higher education , in short, everyone with an interest in helping others find their way into t he benefits of the present moment.