Few would doubt that this is a time of transition in our understanding of human sexuality. The confusion about sexual morals and mores is the more obvious evidence of this. But there is something else. For too long the bulk of Christian reflection about sexuality has asked an essentially one-directional question: what does Christian faith have to say about our lives as sexual beings?

This 2006 book explores how people's subjective, felt experiences of their bodies in action provide part of the fundamental grounding for human cognition and language. Cognition is what occurs when the body engages the physical and cultural world and must be studied in terms of the dynamical interactions between people and the environment. Human language and thought emerge from recurring patterns of embodied activity that constrain ongoing intelligent behavior. We must not assume cognition to be purely internal, symbolic, computational, and disembodied, but seek out the gross and detailed ways that language and thought are inextricably shaped by embodied action. Embodiment and Cognitive Science describes the abundance of empirical evidence from many disciplines, including work on perception, concepts, imagery and reasoning, language and communication, cognitive development, and emotions and consciousness, that support the idea that the mind is embodied.

Did you know that intentional dreaming has been used to solve life's problems? Embodiment: Creative Imagination in Medicine, Art and Travel sets out Robert Bosnak's practice of embodied imagination and demonstrates how he actually works with dreams and memories in groups. The book discusses various approaches to dreams, body and imagination, and combines this with a Jungian, neurobiological, relational and cultural analysis. The author's fascination with dreams, the most absolute form of embodied imagination, has caused him to travel all over the world. From his research he concludes that while dreaming everyone everywhere experiences dreams as embodied events in time and space while the dreamer is convinced of being awake; it is after waking into our specific cultural stories about dreaming that the widely differing attitudes towards dreams arise. By taking dreaming reality, not our waking interpretation of it, as the model for imagination, this book creates a paradigm shock and produces methods which can be applied in a wide variety of cultural settings. Through detailed case studies, professionals and students will find thorough discussions of: ways to flashback into dreams and memories while in a hypnagogic state of consciousness the practice of embodied imagination and its profound physical effects psyche as a self-organizing multiplicity of selves the nature of subjectivity the body as a theatre of sense memories the limitation of reason the process of dissociation the treatment of trauma This book discusses a variety of techniques which may be applied by health professionals to their patients and clients. It will also be of particular interest to Jungian and relational psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and clinical psychologists, as well as to artists, actors, directors, writers and other individuals who wish to explore the creative imagination.

In recent years we have seen a number of dramatic discoveries within the biological and related sciences. Traditional arguments such as "nature versus nurture" are rapidly disappearing because of the realization that just as we are affecting our environments, so too do these altered environments restructure our cognitive abilities and outlooks. If the biological and technological breakthroughs are promising benefits such as extended life expectancies, these same discoveries also have the potential to improve in significant ways the quality of our built environments. This poses a compelling challenge to conventional architectural theory... This is the first book to consider these new scientific and humanistic models in architectural terms. Constructed as a series of five essays around the themes of beauty, culture, emotion, the experience of architecture, and artistic play, this book draws upon a broad range of discussions taking place in philosophy, psychology, biology, neuroscience, and anthropology, and in doing so questions what implications these discussions hold for architectural design. Drawing upon a wealth of research, Mallgrave argues that we should turn our focus away from the objectification of architecture (treating design as the creation of objects) and redirect it back to those for whom we design: the people inhabiting our built environments.

In Agency and Embodiment, Carrie Noland examines the ways in which culture is both embodied and challenged through the corporeal performance of gestures. Arguing against the constructivist metaphor of bodily inscription dominant since Foucault, Noland maintains that kinesthetic experience, produced by acts of embodied gesturing, places pressure on the conditioning a body receives, encouraging variations in cultural practice that cannot otherwise be explained. Drawing on work in disciplines as diverse as dance and movement theory, phenomenology, cognitive science, and literary criticism, Noland argues that kinesthesia—feeling the body move—encourages experiment, modification, and, at times, rejection of the routine. Noland privileges corporeal performance and the sensory experience it affords in order to find a way beyond constructivist theory’s inability to produce a convincing account of agency. She observes that despite the impact of social conditioning, human beings continue to invent surprising new ways of altering the inscribed behaviors they are called on to perform. Through lucid close readings of Marcel Mauss, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Bill Viola, André Leroi-Gourhan, Henri Michaux, Judith Butler, Frantz Fanon, Jacques Derrida, and contemporary digital artist Camille Utterback, Noland illustrates her provocative thesis, addressing issues of concern to scholars in critical theory, performance studies, anthropology, and visual studies.

For five decades, negative body image has been a major focus of study due to its association with psychological and social morbidity, including eating disorders. However, more recently the body image construct has broadened to include positive ways of living in the body, enabling greater understanding of embodied well-being, as well as protective factors and interventions to guide the prevention and treatment of eating disorders. Handbook of Positive Body Image and Embodiment is the first comprehensive, research-based resource to address the breadth of innovative theoretical concepts and related practices concerning positive ways of living in the body, including positive body image and embodiment. Presenting 37 chapters by world-renowned experts in body image and eating behaviors, this state-of-the-art collection delineates constructs of positive body image and embodiment, as well as social environments (such as families, peers, schools, media, and the Internet) and therapeutic processes that can enhance them. Constructs examined include positive embodiment, body appreciation, body functionality, body image flexibility, broad conceptualization of beauty, intuitive eating, and attuned sexuality. Also discussed are protective factors, such as environments that promote body acceptance, personal safety, diversity, and activism, and a resistant stance towards objectification, media images, and restrictive feminine ideals. The handbook also explores how therapeutic interventions (including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Cognitive Dissonance, and many more) and public health and policy initiatives can inform scholarly, clinical, and prevention-based work in the field of eating disorders.

Nathaniel Stern's 'Interactive Art and Embodiment' defies the world of interactive art and new media from the perspective of the body and identity. It presents the ongoing and emergent processes of embodiment in art and includes immersive descriptions of interactive artworks.