This book explores the body’s physical limits and the ways in which the confines of the body are delineated, transgressed, or controlled in literary and philosophical texts. Drawing on classics, philosophy, religious studies, medieval studies, and critical theory and examining material ranging from Homer to Game of Thrones, this volume facilitates an interdisciplinary investigation into how the boundaries of the body define the human form in language. This volume’s essays suggest that the body’s meaning is perhaps never more evident than in the violation of its wholeness. The boundaries of the body are areas of transition between states and are therefore vulnerable. As individuals find themselves isolated from their world and one another, their bodies regularly allow for physical interactions, incur transgressions and violations, and undergo profound transformations. Thus sympathy, sexuality, disease, and violence are among the main themes of the volume, which, ultimately, reexamines the place of the body in our understanding of what it means to be human.

This is a memoir. In it, Cynthia vulnerably reveals her search for reasons as to why she left her family. For a time, Waring lives homeless, broken, and unable to deal with her life. Almost by accident, she becomes a Massage Therapist, and through her client's appreciation of her, her self-esteem blossoms. After giving over 30,000 massages, she is given insight into how people carry trauma and how it affects the body. We read and are moved as we follow Cynthia's journey from homelessness to receiving a standing ovation for her play and sells 20,000 copies of her book. As Ron Liggett describes her journey, "Waring peals away the layers of a wounded heart to reveal a resilient and tenacious soul on a long but rewarding healing mission."

A philosophical inquiry into politics, embodiment and religion takes us straight to some of contemporary culture’s most notorious issues: suicide bombing, the veiled and the exposed body, and present-day biopolitics. Interpretations of the body have always been contested, both in the history of philosophy and in the history of religions. On the one hand, the body has been perceived as a prison, binding the soul to transience, darkness, and confusion. Yet on the other hand, it has itself been controlled and disciplined by reason and will, law and culture. The ten contributors to The Body Unbound suggest that inquiries into the nature of human embodiment must take into account both context and history in order to scrutinize them and to uncover resources for unbinding a body which has been doubly bound.

"Just as an open hand is hidden within a fist, our true nature, with its innate capacities for happiness, love, and wisdom, is hidden within our pain and numbness. Just as we can open a fist to reveal a hand, our unbound, unconstructed being can emerge from our pain and breathe again." —Dr. Judith Blackstone, Trauma and the Unbound Body Heal trauma. Reclaim your body. Live with wholeness. These are the gifts of utilizing the power of fundamental consciousness—a subtle field of awareness that lies within each of us. In Trauma and the Unbound Body, Dr. Judith Blackstone explores how we can resolve the mental, physical, and emotional struggles of trauma through the power of fundamental consciousness. Dr. Blackstone weaves her 30-plus years of psychotherapy practice to present a simple yet revolutionary approach to healing trauma. She writes, "All of the constrictions in our fascia (the connective tissue surrounding muscles and organs) are moments of our past that we have stopped in their tracks and held in that way, unconsciously. They are frozen moments of our past." Trauma and the Unbound Body explains how and why the body constricts in response to trauma, causing physical and emotional pain. Dr. Blackstone guides us through step-by-step processes to unwind those constrictions by attuning to fundamental consciousness, setting the body free of trauma once and for all by uncovering an unbreakable, unified ground of being. In Trauma and the Unbound Body, Dr. Blackstone discusses: ? The five main purposes for bodily constriction—and how to release them to return to wholeness ? How to inhabit the body as fundamental consciousness to liberate trauma-based constrictions ? The Realization Process—a meditative practice for embodied spiritual awakening ? Discovering the unified ground of being within the body that enables lasting change

The ultimate guide to owning your power--and mastering how to use it. How can so many women feel "good and mad" yet still reluctant to speak up in a meeting or difficult conversation? Why do women often feel like they're too much--and, at the same time, not enough? What causes us, at the most critical moments in our lives, to freeze? Kasia Urbaniak teaches power to women--and her answers to these questions may surprise you. Based on insights from her experiences as a dominatrix, her training to become a Taoist nun, and the countless women she has taught to expand their influence, this book offers precise, practical instruction in how to stand in your power, find your voice, and use it well. Learn how to: Embrace your desires as the pathway to your destiny. Ask for--and get--what you need in your life, work, and in the bedroom. Skillfully navigate hearing "no" and any resistance, even your own. Flip power dynamics when someone crosses your boundaries and puts you on the spot. Create new and expanded roles for the people in your life with precise, targeted asks. Whether you're getting crystal clear on exactly what you want, or turning the tables on a man who has shut you up and shut you down, Urbaniak's methods teach women to stand for themselves in every interaction. Part manual, part manifesto, part behind the scenes look, Unbound is a how-to guide to the impossible, the outrageous, the unimaginable--a field guide to living your wildest, best, and most satisfying life.

Medicine Unbound

A critical evaluation of Philip Roth—the first of its kind—that takes on the man, the myth, and the work Philip Roth is one of the most renowned writers of our time. From his debut, Goodbye, Columbus, which won the National Book Award in 1960, and the explosion of Portnoy's Complaint in 1969 to his haunting reimagining of Anne Frank's story in The Ghost Writer ten years later and the series of masterworks starting in the mid-eighties—The Counterlife, Patrimony, Operation Shylock, Sabbath's Theater, American Pastoral, The HumanStain—Roth has produced some of the great American literature of the modern era. And yet there has been no major critical work about him until now. Here, at last, is the story of Roth's creative life. Roth Unbound is not a biography—though it contains a wealth of previously undisclosed biographical details and unpublished material—but something ultimately more rewarding: the exploration of a great writer through his art. Claudia Roth Pierpont, a staff writer for The New Yorker, has known Roth for nearly a decade. Her carefully researched and gracefully written account is filled with remarks from Roth himself, drawn from their ongoing conversations. Here are insights and anecdotes that will change the way many readers perceive this most controversial and galvanizing writer: a young and unhappily married Roth struggling to write; a wildly successful Roth, after the uproar over Portnoy, working to help writers from Eastern Europe and to get their books known in the West; Roth responding to the early, Jewish—and the later, feminist—attacks on his work. Here are Roth's family, his inspirations, his critics, the full range of his fiction, and his friendships with such figures as Saul Bellow and John Updike. Here is Roth at work and at play. Roth Unbound is a major achievement—a highly readable story that helps us make sense of one of the most vital literary careers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

What does it mean to move beyond the boundaries of what we believe? The apostle Paul led the Galatians through a massive cultural shift in which they had to radically expand their ideas of who God is, who they were, and God's mission for the church. He was able to lead them through this time of great change because of his encounter with the risen Christ on the Damascus road, an experience in which his view of God was completely upended. Today Christianity is undergoing a cultural shift just as challenging as the situation confronting Paul and the Galatians. As many churches decline, congregations and pastors feel uncertain and anxious about how to continue their mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ. Elaine Heath extends an invitation to broaden our view of God by moving beyond the walls of buildings and programs to become a more diverse church than we have ever imagined. While deeply honoring tradition, she calls the church to boldly follow the Holy Spirit's leadership into the future. Ideal for a 6- to 9-week small-group study.

With step-by-step directions, lessons, projects, cooperative learning activities and more, here are reproducible cut-and-paste patterns for assembling and understanding the systems and organs of the human body.

Tom has decided he doesn't want to live. Adam wishes he had a choice. Tom's lost his job and now he's been labelled 'spermless'. He doesn't exactly feel like a modern man, although his double life helps. Yet when his secret identity threatens to unravel, he starts to lose the plot and comes perilously close to the edge. All the while Adam has his own duplicity, albeit for very different reasons, reasons which will blow the family's future out of the water. If they can't be honest with themselves, and everyone else, then things are going to get a whole lot more complicated.