Customer Reviews

Dreambody: The Body's Role In Revealing the Self

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One gets the impression that while Mindell is a master at working with the dreambody, he is not quite as good at writing about it. I could well conceive that this is because the dreambody defies a certain degree of rational, verbal understanding.

Mindell's writing style is fluid, refreshingly down to earth and modest, clear and usually quite accessible. The fault I find with the book is in its focus and formatting. He sometimes seems to shy away from his primary topics, and we find ourselves reading some tangential fairy tales and a slightly muddled, repetitive explanation of the dreambody in the context of physics.

Nevertheless, the ideas that Mindell offers us here are powerful, transformative, ancient, beautiful, and accessible. His description of the dreambody is not absolutely full and clear, (p 164: "...the dreambody is composed of all the different degrees of awareness. It has both physiological and dream aspects which are easily differentiated from one another, and it possesses an inner dichotomy which I have variously described...as temporal and nontemporal..." etc.) However I think that many people will read about his concept and say to themselves, "Ah yes, I know what he's talking about!" And fill in the blanks with their own experience. It is an invaluable concept.

His final chapter "Working with the Dreambody," however, is altogether fantastic. You do not need to be chronically ill to find his methods of magnifying a feeling or illness, in order to find out its message, extremely useful. His method may sound obscure in this review, but here Mindell is at ease in his writing, and in reading this chapter I think the method becomes quite clear.

Immediately after finishing this book I read "The Shaman's Body" also by Mindell. There he writes with greater confidence and thoroughness, but the books really are quite different, so one cannot replace the other.

Overall, I am tremendously impressed, and grateful to Mindell for sharing the insights he's been given with all of us.

This is the first book I've read by Mindell and maybe I need to become more familiar with his world - his writing is rather obscure - a bit like the description of alchemy - explaining the obscure by the more obscure. Perhaps it is because I'm African that many of the explanations do not strike a chord or produce an "aha" experience, but more often a "huh?". HOwever, I'm just beginning on this journey with Mindell and perhaps as I work more and more with his very interesting practical section on working with the dreambody I will begin to understand. Definately a book worth reading - it will bring a new dimension to your relationship with your body, emotions & lifepath

Please see the new edition of Dreambody, available through Deep Democracy Exchange:
Print Dreambody: The Body's Role in Healing the Self
and
Kindle versions Dreambody: The Body's Role in Healing the Self (Deep Democracy Classics Series)