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Paperback Body and Earth: An Experiential Guide Book

ISBN: 0819579467

ISBN13: 9780819579461

Body and Earth: An Experiential Guide

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Format: Paperback

Condition: New

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Book Overview

"Body is our first environment," writes Andrea Olsen. "It is the medium through which we know the earth." In a remarkable integration of environmental science, biology, meditation, and creative expression, Olsen, a dancer who teaches in the environmental studies program at Middlebury College, offers a guide to a holistic understanding of person and place. Part workbook, part exploration, Body and Earth considers the question of how we can best, most responsibly inhabit both our bodies and our planet. Olsen displays an easy command of fields as diverse as geology, biochemistry, ecology, and anatomy as she explores the ways in which our bodies are derived from and connected to the natural world. But Body and Earth is not just a lesson, it is also an investigation. Arranged as a 31-day program, the book offers not only a wealth of scientific information, but also exercises for both exploring the body and connecting with place; illustrations and works of art that illuminate each chapter's themes; and Olsen's own meditations and reflections, connecting the topics to her personal history and experience. Olsen insists that neither body nor landscape are separate from our fundamental selves, but in a culture which views the body as a mechanism to be trained and the landscape as a resource to be exploited, we need to learn to see again their fundamental wholeness and interconnection. Through hard data, reflection, exercises, and inspiration, Body and Earth offers a guide to responsible stewardship of both our planet and our persons.

Customer Reviews

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Body and Earth

Andrea Olsen's book wakes up your conscious being and brings back your connectedness to earth. It makes you grateful for gravity and the nature that surrounds you and you might begin to be in awe of yourself and others. As Bebe Miller already said, this book will be with you for a long time. Body and Earth touches all your senses with its beautiful art work and its suggested exercises are easy and joyful to complete if you wish to do so. Here are just some of the "exercises" the book suggests: Water - notice how just by sipping some nice clear water it transitions from an external to an internal state. Movement - imagine creating a short dance for every day of the week and how this might wake up your senses and might relate to your sense of space. Food - write your own story of digestion as food moves through you to nurture you. Oh, and your place. Choose a small area outside and investigate it: where is water, what insects live on it, how is life like from the perspective of an insect, what plants are on this chosen place of yours and how do they smell and even taste? The book truly invites you to investigate yourself and all that surrounds you. This book is so much fun and so enjoyable that you learn a lot along the way without even noticing. It's a great gift for anyone.This is also a wonderful book for body workers and their students. As a Yoga teacher I have had the opportunity to work with Andrea and I know that her suggestions really work because you have a chance to experience yourself what she teaches. It brings anatomical teachings back to life. To paraphrase Andrea, this book will make you feel and as you feel you are becoming a caretaker of body, a caretaker of earth. I think we have already caused too much pain to both, so this book might encourage us to heal and act.
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