What happens to teaching when you consider the whole body (and not just "brains on sticks")?

There is growing scientific evidence that how we experience our bodies can powerfully influence whether we get sick, how we get sick, and how we manage illness. Somatic awareness--the ability to perceive, interpret, and act on the basis of internal bodily sensations--is at the cutting edge of the mind-body interface. Such awareness is a key factor in many forms of self-regulatory therapy, including relaxation and biofeedback. Grounded in the existing research, this book identifies the somatic experiences associated with health and well-being and describes how awareness of these states can be a powerful clinical tool. Integrating empirical data, case examples, and pointers for practice, Bakal uses a psychobiological framework to build a much-needed bridge between traditional and alternative health care approaches. The book first enumerates the physiological, cognitive, and emotional variables that underlie internal bodily experience, presenting research that closely links specific subjective states to improved health and healing. Somatization symptoms are then shown to result from an insufficient awareness of inner physical states: Many individuals only "notice" the body when their reactions reach symptomatic or illness levels. Bakal describes the clinical applications of these findings for such anxiety- and pain-related disorders as migraine, unexplained dizziness and shortness of breath, benign chest pain, and asthma. Thought-provoking findings on placebos and self-regulation are discussed, and the book suggests ways that somatic awareness may enable patients to actively harness the placebo effect and achieve significant symptom control. Broadening the scope of the discussion to include immune system illnesses, Bakal shows how reducing bodily tension, fatigue, and stress through somatic awareness may play a significant role in the clinical management of arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and cancer. The book's final chapter looks at therapeutic touch, biofeedback, and breathing retraining. A brief overview of each modality is provided, and general principles are delineated for how patients can be guided to develop and use conscious awareness of somatic states to promote their physical well-being. Synthesizing scientific data from many different areas of research, the book makes the dimensions of somatic awareness understandable to clinicians in a range of settings. Its clear, accessible style will enhance its appeal to a broad audience of health psychologists, behavioral medicine specialists, and other mental health and medical professionals interested in holistic health care approaches.

A mulitcultural anthology of fiction and non-fiction literary narratives which addresses the psychological and political aspects of a woman's body in today's culture. An important and much-needed book for women who seek to understand their bodies and find independent, imaginative ways to cope with aging, beauty expectations beauty expectations, and ethnic comparisons.

Minding the Body: The Body in Psychoanalysis and Beyond outlines the value of a psychoanalytic approach to understanding the body and its vicissitudes and for addressing these in the context of psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. The chapters cover a broad but esoteric range of subjects that are not often discussed within psychoanalysis such as the function of breast augmentation surgery, the psychic origins of hair, the use made of the analyst’s toilet, transsexuality and the connection between dermatological conditions and necrophilic fantasies. The book also reaches ‘beyond the couch’ to consider the nature of reality television makeover show. The book is based on the Alessandra Lemma’s extensive clinical experience as a psychoanalyst and psychologist working in a range of public and private health care settings with patients for whom the body is the primary presenting problem or who have made unconscious use of the body to communicate their psychic pain. Minding the Body draws on detailed clinical examples that vividly illustrate how the author approaches these clinical presentations in the consulting room and, as such, provides insights to the practicing clinician that will support their attempts at formulating patients’ difficulties psychoanalytically and for how to helps such patients. It will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychologists, psychiatrists, mental health workers, academics and literary readers interested in the body, sexuality and gender.

Foundations of Embodied Learning advances learning, instruction, and the design of educational technologies by rethinking the learner as an integrated system of mind, body, and environment. Body-based processes—direct physical, social, and environmental interactions—are constantly mediating intellectual performance, sensory stimulation, communication abilities, and other conditions of learning. This book’s coherent, evidence-based framework articulates principles of grounded and embodied learning for design and its implications for curriculum, classroom instruction, and student formative and summative assessment for scholars and graduate students of educational psychology, instructional design and technology, cognitive science, the learning sciences, and beyond.

The authors have intergrated their considerable knowledge of medicine, metaphysics, spirituality, and alternative forms of healing into a beautiful book that reveals how we can use the amazing power of the mind to heal the physical and emotional ailments that afflict us. This is truly a transformational work!

The guided path to more focused and compassionate caregiving!