Customer Reviews

Curiosity Recaptured: Exploring Ways We Think & Move

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The Alexander Technique is well-known for improving posture, breathing and bringing about a general release and freedom of movement. Ordinary introductory books to the Technique explain the general principles, but generalities often leave out the individual. The Alexander Technique teaches a better use (muscular use, for example) of the self. The Technique is applied by the self, the individual, and no other modern book better brings out the variety of application possible than Curiosity Recaptured ­ Exploring Ways We Think and Move. This beautifully produced book contains 14 essays which have been written by experienced teachers of the Technique. Some of the subjects are dance, acting, playing the flute, childbirth, cycling, overcoming the fear of falling while walking, and meeting the unexpected. Many well-known teachers have contributed, including Edward Avak, Deborah Caplan, Walter Carrington, Mary Holland, Ron Murdock and Alex Murray. The beauty of the essays consists in showing not only how the Technique is applied by the individual, for the individual, but also how the Technique has helped people to observe and learn, discover and rediscover interests, skills, capacities and, above all, one¹s self (one¹s true nature in popular jargon). As Robertson Davies writes in the foreword: It [The Technique] is an enlargement of whatever life may be yours. As the Technique unlocks tension patterns, it brings out our sense of wonder and our delight in wondering. This particular characteristic of the Technique may be well-known among its practitioners but is not known generally, and it has certainly not been written about so extensively until now. Curiosity Recaptured allows you to share the authors¹ experiences of joy in learning and in being curious. Be curious about this book. It deserves your curiosity.Jean M. O. Fischer

Curiosity Recaptured is a practical introduction to the Alexander Technique, an educational method that uncovers the ways specific tension patterns cause chronic pain and interfere with our balance and breathing. These tension patterns also affect what are thought of as our "mental" faculties: our ability to make a decision and then follow through on it, our level of confidence in learning something new, and our overall awareness of our surroundings. When we learn to stop these tension patterns, the resulting change can be dramatic. The essays chronicle this process of self-discovery in subjects ranging from dance, acting, and the pleasures of playing a flute to childbirth, cycling, and overcoming the fear of falling while walking. No matter what the activity, these essays demonstrate our ability to change ingrained patterns of movement and thought. A greater sense of freedom and curiosity in the world awaits the reader! Curiosity Recaptured is fascinating, insightful, challenging reading!

These personal stories are so interesting and varied that the book almost reads as a short story anthology. Everyone's story is different and the changes and experiences quite unique in every chapter. This Alexander Technique book is unlike others I've read which describe and explain the Technique. The reader learns through others' personal histories what one might encounter in the course of learning more about oneself.

Curiosity Recaptured: Exploring Ways We Think and Move brings the world of the Alexander Technique to life. For anyone interested in becoming more conscious of ways they move and think, the essays in this book, on subjects ranging from dance to chair design, back pain to walking, will help them look at their daily life in a new way. All the essays were written by teachers of the Alexander Technique, and there is a wonderful introductory essay by novelist Robertson Davies, written just a few months before he died.