Customer Reviews

The Body of Life: Creating New Pathways for Sensory Awareness and Fluid Movement

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This is a clear, easy-to-read introduction to the body-mind theory behind Hanna's "Somatics" system, and how the system works in practice. The anecdotes he tells are engaging, and I especially liked his insistence that the process is a collaboration: the practitioner isn't a "healer" so much as a teacher, and healing takes place because the sufferer re-learns how to use the forgotten parts of his/her body. I also found his explanation of the "soma" concept very enlightening: too many thinkers (even those of the "New Age" persuasion) promote the view that we are spirits trapped in bodies and that we should hence adopt a "mind over matter" philosophy. Hanna, by contrast, insists that the two are interdependent and that what happens to one affects the other -- in both directions. He points out that this idea is reflected in Zen Buddhism, yoga, and other Eastern philosophies. (Western thinkers have tended to misunderstand it, possibly because of the mind-vs-body dichotomy in Christian thought, but Hanna clarifies the matter nicely.) I also found his explanation of the Feldenkrais system and its relationship to other methods of bodywork (such as Alexander) very useful. Although some of the research he cites is a little outdated now, nothing he says is (to my knowledge) contradicted by recent studies. Despite its age, this is still a very useful book for anyone interested in the mind-body relationship.

A friend turned me on to Feldenkrais and somatics a while ago, after I'd discovered the basic understandings on my own through trial and error and self-development. Immediately, I began buying books on the subject, filling out the missing pieces that I hadn't yet found on my own. Nearly all of the books I've read on the subject have been difficult to understand, though they were certainly accurate and useful. Hanna's "The Body of Life" is the first book on somatics I've found that is very easily readable, and it accomplishes this without turning the "meat" to "fluff," as many other "pop" books do.