The Intelligence of Moving Bodies: A Somatic View of Life and Its Consequences

"Carl Ginsburg and Lucia Schuette-Ginsburg have crafted a singular book. It braids together several traditions of thought and practice: Science, especially neuroscience and cognitive science; anecdote and first-person narrative; and deep insights into the actual practice of the Feldenkrais Method of somatic education. Carl Ginsburg’s position [was] unique in the Feldenkrais community. Not only [was] he one of its most competent practitioners, he [was]also a scientist, a former professor of chemistry, and a writer known for his beautiful literary constructions. Grounded in many years of private practice and training others in the Feldenkrais Method, his insights have much to tell us about what we as Feldenkrais practitioners do."

—From the book review published in the Feldenkrais Journal by Dennis Leri, Feldenkrais practitioner

Comments by the authors:

What are the dynamics and parameters of this kind of learning?
Current science is now exploring such topics as brain plasticity, coordination dynamics, and developmental learning as essential to growth and function in life. We show how these approaches bring movement to the foreground. Our book is divided in three parts. In Part I, From Origin to Perception, we will explore the ground of a new thinking about life and its origins. We expand from this point to investigating intention, action, perception, and how this leads to concepts such as space and time. Many explorations are given in the text to bring the concepts into understanding. In Part II the question of learning and development is brought to the foreground, as well as the vast topic of affect and emotion. We follow with an emphasis of finding how movement is necessary for affect and how affect is necessary for thinking, learning and developing. We will touch on the question of language and the relation of affect to music and other art forms. Part III brings us to the practical aspects of this new thinking about life. We will describe individual lessons in detail as examples to show it is possible to resolve particular problems within ourselves through this new thinking/acting. Lastly we will sum up how the developing understanding of this new view of life leads to reconsidering many questions about learning, being, and acting in modern life and modern science.

"Here is a book that offers deep insight into the human psyche from the perspective of how we move.... Engagingly written and filled with insightful exercises, Ginsburg's book is an elixir for both mind and body." —Alan Fogel, Professor of Developmental Psychology, and author of the Psychophysiology of Self-Awareness"

The Intelligence of Moving Bodies is a genuinely enlightening work, a revelation to anyone who lightly passes over experience of his or her body and is thereby actually unfamiliar with the subtleties of bodily experience ... An extensive survey of recent work in psychology on feeling, perception, and motion runs in tandem with the exercises and provides a much needed corrective to objective models with how the body works'."—Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, author of The Primacy of Movementand The Corporeal Turn

"I especially enjoy the vast context, the strings linking this thinking to so many diverse, creative Beings and the combination of humanness and rigorous inquiry ... A true contribution for all of us."—Russel Delman, founder, The Embodied Life® School, Feldenkrais trainer and meditation teacher