Body and Awareness - Paperback

by Sandra Reeve (Editor)

20 contemporary approaches to the study and experience of embodied awareness Our growing understanding of embodied awareness is one of the most extraordinary areas of contemporary research and practice. On one side (the left brain, as it were), neuroscience constantly sheds new light on subjects like embodied cognition, the distributed brain (brain-in-the-gut), left and right brain hemispheres (McGilchrist et al.) and the processing of sensory and emotional data. On the other side (the right hemisphere, as it were) our study and awareness of the experience of being in our bodies, moving, feeling pain, dreaming, meditating, becoming ill and healing, is becoming increasingly nuanced. Academic research is approaching the experience of consciousness and awareness 'from the inside' and making remarkable discoveries. The field of embodied awareness is transdisciplinary and multi-faceted: it has no academic subject listing, but is of central importance to those seeking to understand art, dance, the psychology of health, trauma, learning & development, the psycho-ecology of extinction and climate change, proprioception and interoception, ecological awareness, meditation, and the need for societal transformation in an age of multiple convergent crises. Here 20 practitioners bring a wide range of perspectives to bear on the subject.

Author Biography

Sandra Reeve is a movement artist, director, teacher, and dance movement psychotherapist living in West Dorset, where her international 'Move into Life' programme of courses and events is based. She is known for her work on movement dynamics, ecological lenses, and ecological movement. She completed a PhD in Performance Practice at the University of Exeter in 2009 where she remains an Honorary Fellow. Her thesis was on 'The Ecological Body.' She writes for Routledge, Intellect, and others, is co-editor of Embodied Lives and Body & Performance, and author of Nine Ways of Seeing a Body.