Just wanted to come back and leave a note of appreciation. I read the whole thing. I studied embodiment in the lineage of Moshe Feldenkrais. I have never found any place where Feldenkrais ever commented on Wilhelm Reich, but I know that from my training, I was biased against "energy work" and I was given to understood that Feldenkrais generally polemicized against it.
Reading Neidhoeffer I got a view of how "energy work" could make "perfect sense" - more phenomenologically than rationally!
And...for my money, this approach and the way of Feldenkrais aren't in contradiction, but use different vocabularies with different emphases and potentially are looking at different parts of the broad continuum that we vaguely refer to with the word "embodiment."
btw, in my last post, "Overlapping bodies & minds", I briefly made reference to "streaming" and "armoring" . . . I'm hardly sophisticated with those terms, but they have opened a new area of active embodied inquiry for me. Anyways, all that is thanks to reading this also.
Just downloaded the Da Free John stuff . . . maybe a further stretch for me, but looks like there is fascinating food for thought in there.
I think notes like this should receive equal prominence with notes where people would list all the philosophers they’ve read. Then I think we’d be closer to knowing how to collectively deal with all the chaos.
Just wanted to come back and leave a note of appreciation. I read the whole thing. I studied embodiment in the lineage of Moshe Feldenkrais. I have never found any place where Feldenkrais ever commented on Wilhelm Reich, but I know that from my training, I was biased against "energy work" and I was given to understood that Feldenkrais generally polemicized against it.
Reading Neidhoeffer I got a view of how "energy work" could make "perfect sense" - more phenomenologically than rationally!
And...for my money, this approach and the way of Feldenkrais aren't in contradiction, but use different vocabularies with different emphases and potentially are looking at different parts of the broad continuum that we vaguely refer to with the word "embodiment."
btw, in my last post, "Overlapping bodies & minds", I briefly made reference to "streaming" and "armoring" . . . I'm hardly sophisticated with those terms, but they have opened a new area of active embodied inquiry for me. Anyways, all that is thanks to reading this also.
Just downloaded the Da Free John stuff . . . maybe a further stretch for me, but looks like there is fascinating food for thought in there.
I appear to be a big fan of "70's Esalen Somatics"
I had ChatGPT Compile a list of all the sources that might be associated with such a phrase.
19 names came up.
Have seriously engaged somatically with 15, seriously engaged in study about 3, familiar with 1. Like 'em all.
Makes a good starter set for somatic exploration.
Wilhelm Reich
Alexander Lowen (Bioenergetics)
Ida Rolf (Rolfing)
Moshe Feldenkrais
Charlotte Selver (Sensory Awareness)
F. Matthias Alexander (Alexander Technique)
Fritz Perls (Gestalt Therapy)
Elsa Gindler
Milton Trager (Trager Approach)
Emilie Conrad (Continuum Movement)
Thomas Hanna (Hanna Somatics)
Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen (Body-Mind Centering)
Joseph Pilates
John C. Lilly (interoceptive states, isolation tank)
Gabrielle Roth (5Rhythms)
Jean Houston & Robert Masters (Human Potential Movement)
Carl Rogers (Person-Centered Somatic Dialogue)
Aikido (via George Leonard)
Zen & Tibetan Movement practices (Suzuki, Trungpa, etc.)
(Of course, I also appreciate other somatic traditions, such as those of
Erik Franklin
Rudolf Laban
and, my "personal secrets", Julie Henderson and John Rolland)
Ah, saw your note before I saw it here!
I think notes like this should receive equal prominence with notes where people would list all the philosophers they’ve read. Then I think we’d be closer to knowing how to collectively deal with all the chaos.