The system of "seven states of consciousness" articulated by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi forms the basis of this unusual critique of modern literature. In seven chapters, "Invitation to the Dance," "Absurdity," "Transcendence," "Enlightenment," "Celebration," "Unity," and "The Enlightened Artist," Douglas Mackey here examines fourteen well-known writers and their equally well-known works.
This book is based on talks by Ram Dass at the Menninger Foundation in 1970 and at the Spring Grove Hospital in Maryland in 1972. The text grew out of the interaction between Ram Dass and the spiritual seekers in attendance at these talks. The result of this unique exchange is a useful guide for understanding the nature of consciousness--useful both to other spiritual seekers and to formally trained psychologists. It is also a celebration of the Dance of Life--which, in the words of Ram Dass, is the "only dance there is."
Training in somatic techniques--holistic body-centered movement that promotes awareness and well-being--provides an effective means of improving dance students' efficiency and ease of movement. However, dance educators do not always have the resources to incorporate this knowledge into their classes. This volume explains the importance of somatics, introduces fundamental somatic principles that are central to the dance technique class, and offers tips on incorporating these principles into a dance curriculum. The authors demystify somatic thinking by explaining the processes in terms of current scientific research. By presenting both a philosophical approach to teaching as well as practical instruction tools, this work provides a valuable guide to somatics for dance teachers of any style or level. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.
In Mindful Movement, exercise physiologist, somatic therapist, and advocate Martha Eddy uses original interviews, case studies, and practice-led research to define the origins of a new holistic field--somatic movement education and therapy--and its impact on fitness, ecology, politics, and performance. The book reveals the role dance has played in informing and inspiring the historical and cultural narrative of somatic arts. Providing an overview of the antecedents and recent advances in somatic study and with contributions by diverse experts, Eddy highlights the role of Asian movement, the European physical culture movement and its relationship to the performing arts, and female perspectives in developing somatic movement, somatic dance, social somatics, somatic fitness, somatic dance and spirituality, and ecosomatics.
In a globalised society, dance is gaining in importance as a means of conveying body knowledge: It is perceived as an art form in itself, is fostered and cultivated within the bounds of cultural and educational policy, and is increasingly becoming the subject of research. Dance is in motion all over the world, and with it the knowledge that it holds. But what does body knowledge in motion constitute, how is it produced, how can it be researched and conveyed? Renowned choreographers, dancers, theorists and pedagogues describe the unique potential of dance as an archive and medium as well as its significance at the interface between art and science. Contributors are, among others, Gabriele Brandstetter, Dieter Heitkamp, Royston Maldoom and Meg Stuart.
The popularity of yoga and Zen meditation has heightened awareness of somatic practices. Individuals develop the conscious embodiment central to somatics work via movement and dance, or through touch from a skilled teacher or therapist often called a somatic bodyworker. Methods of touch and movement foster generative processes of consciousness in order to create a fluid interconnection between sensation, thought, movement, and expression. In Moving Consciously , Sondra Fraleigh gathers essays that probe ideas surrounding embodied knowledge and the conscious embodiment of movement and dance. Using a variety of perspectives on movement and dance somatics, Fraleigh and other contributors draw on scholarship and personal practice to participate in a multifaceted investigation of a thriving worldwide phenomenon. Their goal: to present the mental and physical health benefits of experiencing one's inner world through sensory awareness and movement integration. A stimulating addition to a burgeoning field, Moving Consciously incorporates concepts from East and West into a timely look at life-changing, intertwined practices that involve dance, movement, performance studies, and education. Contributors: Richard Biehl, Robert Bingham, Hillel Braude, Alison East, Sondra Fraleigh, Kelly Ferris Lester, Karin Rugman, Catherine Schaeffer, Jeanne Schul, and Ruth Way.
The exploration of the direct experience of healing and of the divine through the witnessing of movement becoming conscious. • Uses sample sessions and descriptive theory to explain the discipline. • Based on the author's 35 years of movement work. Offering from the Conscious Body reveals both the theory and practice of a unique body-based process that is cathartic, creative, healing, and mystical--as presented by Janet Adler, the presiding voice in the field. This Western awareness practice encourages the individual to experience the evolving relationship with oneself, another, the collective, and the divine through the natural impulses of conscious movement, compassionate witnessing, and clear articulation of experience. Through the vivid examples taken from her own practice, Adler demonstrates that physical movement can invite direct experience of spiritual truths. The reader is led through the multiple layers within the discipline--moving and witnessing in dyads and then groups, in the presence of a witnessing teacher--to develop a comprehensive and experiential understanding of this innovative way of work. Designed for professionals and laypersons interested in psychology, bodywork, mystic traditions, or personal transformation, the discipline of Authentic Movement is at the cutting edge of emerging Western healing practices.
Within intellectual paradigms that privilege mind over matter, dance has long appeared as a marginal, derivative, or primitive art. Drawing support from theorists and artists who embrace matter as dynamic and agential, this book offers a visionary definition of dance that illuminates its constitutive work in the ongoing evolution of human persons. Why We Dance introduces a philosophy of bodily becoming that posits bodily movement as the source and telos of human life. Within this philosophy, dance appears as an activity that humans evolved to do as the enabling condition of their best bodily becoming. Weaving theoretical reflection with accounts of lived experience, this book positions dance as a catalyst in the development of human consciousness, compassion, ritual proclivity, and ecological adaptability. Aligning with trends in new materialism, affect theory, and feminist philosophy, as well as advances in dance and religious studies, this work reveals the vital role dance can play in reversing the trajectory of ecological self-destruction along which human civilization is racing.
Ode Consciousness examines a preeminent literary form in its three-thousand-year history, navigating between philosophy and literature, offering cross-cultural perspectives on a poetic logic informed by polar intensities of sensuous cognition. Making a double incision on the corpus, Robert Eisenhauer interprets works by Henry Vaughan and the modernist Frank O'Hara, foregrounding the text, but also the text(-ile) message, and the dialogical weave of enunciation. The ancient Chinese ode, translated by Karlgren and estranged by Pound, anchors sentience in the flora and fauna of physical nature, and the I Jing or Book of Changes offers insights on poetry, psychoanalysis, and aleatoriness per se. The rise of the ode in the West is contemporary with that of a philosophical discourse concerning clarity and obscurity of thought. While Milton widens the esoteric scope, Lovelace concretizes ode consciousness through the image of a frozen grasshopper («green ice»), whose non-longevity is contrasted with the human capacity for survival through friendship. Translating the «Polish Horace» (Sarbiewski), Coleridge prepares the ground for the lyricism of Keats and Shelley, raising the neural stakes through passages of lingering, delay, and intoxication. A negative capability inclusive of desire as well as nihilation inhabits Jalal al-Din Rumi and the Arabic qasida. Affliction, a key concept for the Baroque, is discussed in the context of film noir, while Hegel's privileging in the Aesthetics of Schiller's «Song of the Bell» is seen as part of a larger attempt to censure the radical re-Pindarization and revolutionary retexting of the ode, most notably in Klopstock and Hölderlin. The author analyzes the role played by impersonality in Yeats's attempt to recrystallize Keatsian and Confucian sensibility through «annotated seeing» and the opening of windows of clairvoyant perception. Eisenhauer also suggests parallels between O'Hara's autumnal glimpses of New York City at the height of modernism and Keatsian sensibility. Ode Consciousness concludes by examining the return of the repressed in the graphic novels of Osamu Tezuka, thereby enriching our understanding of the ode's perennial relevance.
