Getting Our Bodies Back [Paperback]

Christine Caldwell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2, 1996

A habitual movement as common as nail-biting or toe-tapping can be the key to pulling out addictive behavior by its roots. These unconscious movement "tags" indicate the places where our bodies have become split off from our psyches. When brought to consciousness and confronted they will often tell us very plainly where our psychological suffering originated, showing us where to begin reconnecting body and soul. Christine Caldwell, a pioneer in the field of somatic psychology, has created an original model for working with body wisdom called the Moving Cycle. She describes how this form of therapy has worked effectively in her own practice, and she provides practical techniques to show how we can learn to listen to what our bodies are telling us, confront addictive habits, and learn to celebrate our inherent wisdom and elegance.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Christine Caldwell, Ph.D., is a somatic therapist in private practice in Boulder, Colorado. She is the founder of the Somatic Psychology Department at the Naropa Institute and the director of the Moving Center, also in Boulder.

Product Details

• Paperback: 178 pages
• Publisher: Shambhala; 1st edition (April 2, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570621497
• ISBN-13: 978-1570621499
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.6 x 8.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #110,962 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A little gem..., July 16, 2000

By 

Marie-Pier Charron - See all my reviews

This review is from: Getting Our Bodies Back (Paperback)

I don't know if it's simply because I read it at the right moment in my life, but this book had and is still having a profound effect on me. A magical effect on me. Reading it feels like being home and every discovery it leads me to is so intense that I cannot read more than a few pages at a time.

An alternative title for this book could be "Recovering our Aliveness". Recovering our desire to expand our chest and welcome every single oxygen molecules that keep us alive. Recovering our ability to feel. Happiness isn't in the content of our life, but in the very process of being alive. Why are we so afraid of it ? Why do we distract ourselves with addictive thoughts and body movements? Christine Caldwell guides you in your search for an answer, and offers concrete tools to finally walk hand-in-hand with your life force.

I send her my gratefulness.

24 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Promising but short on delivery., October 12, 2000

By 

Samuel Chell (Kenosha,, WI United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Getting Our Bodies Back (Paperback)

R. D. Laing's recognition of a "schizoid personality," or a disembodied self, in his seminal work "The Divided Self," promised a new approach to the integration of body and mind in the whole and healthy human being. Caldwell builds on this idea, using the body as a starting point for diagnosing addictions and suggesting treatments. But the book soon becomes predictable. The addictions are frequently the result of an abusive parent (isn't this theme getting a bit threadworn by now?) and the treatments are more commonsensical than insightful (meditation, exercise, re-prioritizing life's demands). Moreover, the material echoes much similar popular wisdom on the subject. Readers of John Bradshaw, Sam Keene, Deepak Chopra are likely to find this book somewhat repetitious and familiar. And though user-friendly, the writing style rarely attains the sustained rhetorical power of the former works.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful view on how we deal with emotions and our bodies, May 29, 2007

By 

Mary B. Lautner "Mary Lautner" (Palo Alto, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Getting Our Bodies Back (Paperback)

This is worth studying deeply. The author frames issues of addiction in a way that speaks to those of us who are don't appear to have deep addictions but who are always feeling something isn't right. She deconstructs the drives we have and helps put in perspective the ways we create addictions to cope with stress in our lives. Only she digs deeper, and helps me understand how profound this coping mechanism is and why we do it.