BodyStories

Author: Andrea Olsen
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 0819579459
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Book Description
BodyStories is a book that engages the general reader as well as the serious student of anatomy. Thirty-one days of learning sessions heighten awareness about each bone and body system and provide self-guided studies. The book draws on Ms. Olsen's thirty years as a dancer and teacher of anatomy to show how our attitudes and approaches to our body affect us day to day. Amusing and insightful personal stories enliven the text and provide ways of working with the body for efficiency and for healing. BodyStories is used as a primary text in college dance departments, massage schools, and yoga training programs internationally.

Bodystories

Author: Andrea Olsen
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781584653547
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Book Description
An innovative guide to anatomy that uses techniques from yoga and dance to increase awareness of the body.

Body Stories

Author: Jill Andrews
Publisher: Demeter Press
ISBN: 177258309X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223

Book Description
Body stories capture a nuanced, interconnected, interactive, and complex telling of our understanding, perception, and experience of and through our bodies. Plenty has been published on body image but image suggests a static fixed body, unmitigated through our social interactions and varying times and spaces. This book is not a "how-to" guide for fat confidence. It's not a compendium of fat suffering. It's simply a collection of narratives about what it's like to survive in a weight-hating world. It resists the ways that marginalized bodies are being written and researched and put into other people's ideas about our existence. The stories in this book are celebratory and are painful. They look at intersections of race and queerness; they destabilize womanhood by presenting a range of possible female embodiments. They explore issues of disability and madness. The full range of possibilities that are collected here give a picture of what it means to live in a society with strong and powerful messages about size, about normalcy, about what a moral and healthy life and body look like. This book is a snapshot of its place and time, but these stories remind us that we're here to stay. The body stories will change but we will keep owning our own narratives. While story, especially written by women, is often seen as outside the academic canon, these stories, these creative offerings, are theory, are research, and are activism. They are nothing less than the blueprint for liberation. Writing about fat and about bodies outside of medicalized narratives, without ignoring the impact of race, sexuality, class, ability, gender, fashion, appearance, and beyond, is radical and rigorous. It is impossible to think about the future without wishing for liberation. Liberation can come in many forms. It can mean an awareness, the ability to confront. The stories in this book display the ways that liberation isn't a finish line or a thing we can complete—rather it is a million small actio

Black Is the Body

Author: Emily Bernard
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0451493036
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Book Description
“Blackness is an art, not a science. It is a paradox: intangible and visceral; a situation and a story. It is the thread that connects these essays, but its significance as an experience emerges randomly, unpredictably. . . . Race is the story of my life, and therefore black is the body of this book.” In these twelve deeply personal, connected essays, Bernard details the experience of growing up black in the south with a family name inherited from a white man, surviving a random stabbing at a New Haven coffee shop, marrying a white man from the North and bringing him home to her family, adopting two children from Ethiopia, and living and teaching in a primarily white New England college town. Each of these essays sets out to discover a new way of talking about race and of telling the truth as the author has lived it. "Black Is the Body is one of the most beautiful, elegant memoirs I've ever read. It's about race, it's about womanhood, it's about friendship, it's about a life of the mind, and also a life of the body. But more than anything, it's about love. I can't praise Emily Bernard enough for what she has created in these pages." --Elizabeth Gilbert WINNER OF THE CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD PRIZE FOR AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PROSE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND KIRKUS REVIEWS ONE OF MAUREEN CORRIGAN'S 10 UNPUTDOWNABLE READS OF THE YEAR

A House Is a Body

Author: Shruti Swamy
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1643750607
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 198

Book Description
Finalist for the 2021 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction “A House Is a Body will not simply be talked about as one of the greatest short story collections of the 2020s; it will change the way all stories—short and long—are told, written, and consumed. There is nothing, no emotion, no tiny morsel of memory, no touch, that this book does not take seriously. Yet, A House Is a Body might be the most fun I’ve ever had in a short story collection.” —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy Dreams collide with reality, modernity with antiquity, and myth with identity in the twelve arresting stories of A House Is a Body. Set in the United States and India, Swamy’s characters grapple with motherhood, relationships, and their bodies to reveal small but intense internal moments of beauty, pain, and power that contain the world. In “Earthly Pleasures,” a young painter living alone in San Francisco begins a secret romance with one of India’s biggest celebrities, and desire and ego are laid bare. In “A Simple Composition,” a husband’s professional crisis leads to his wife’s discovery of a dark, ecstatic joy. And in the title story, an exhausted mother watches, hypnotized by fear, as a California wildfire approaches her home. Immersive and assured, provocative and probing, these are stories written with the edge and precision of a knife blade. A House Is a Body introduces a bold and original voice in fiction, from a writer at the start of a stellar career. Don't miss Shruti Swamy's debut novel, The Archer (available September 7, 2021), which has already been longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.

Body and Earth

Author: Andrea Olsen
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 0819579475
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
"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.

The Embodied Teen

Author: Susan Bauer
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
ISBN: 162317189X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Book Description
The first book to offer a somatic movement education curriculum adapted to the unique needs of adolescents Susan Bauer presents a groundbreaking curriculum for teaching teens how to integrate body and mind, enhance kinesthetic intelligence, and develop the inner resilience they need to thrive, now and into adulthood. Designed for educators, therapists, counselors, and movement practitioners, The Embodied Teen presents a pioneering introductory, student-centered program in somatic movement education. Using the student's own body as the lab through which to learn self-care, injury prevention, body awareness, and emotional resilience, Bauer teaches basic embodiment practices that establish the foundation for further skill development in sports, dance, and leisure activities. Students learn the basics of anatomy and physiology, and unlearn self-defeating habits that impact body image and self-esteem. By examining their cultural perceptions, they discover their body prejudices, helping them to both respect diversity and gain compassion for themselves and others. Concise and accessible, the lessons presented in this book will empower teens as they navigate the volatile physical and emotional challenges they face during this vibrant, powerful stage of life.

The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Wellbeing

Author: Vicky Karkou
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199949301
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 1009

Book Description
In recent years, a growth in dance and wellbeing scholarship has resulted in new ways of thinking that place the body, movement, and dance in a central place with renewed significance for wellbeing. The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Wellbeing examines dance and related movement practices from the perspectives of neuroscience and health, community and education, and psychology and sociology to contribute towards an understanding of wellbeing, offer new insights into existing practices, and create a space where sufficient exchange is enabled. The handbook's research components include quantitative, qualitative, and arts-based research, covering diverse discourses, methodologies, and perspectives that add to the development of a complete picture of the topic. Throughout the handbook's wide-ranging chapters, the objective observations, felt experiences, and artistic explorations of practitioners interact with and are printed alongside academic chapters to establish an egalitarian and impactful exchange of ideas.

Variations on the Body

Author: María Ospina
Publisher: Coffee House Press
ISBN: 1566896142
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 91

Book Description
A constellation of short stories illustrate the intersecting lives of women on various peripheries of society in and around Bogotá, Colombia. In six subtly connected stories, Variations on the Body explores the obsessions, desires, and idiosyncrasies of women and girls from different strata of Colombian society. A former FARC guerilla fighter adjusts to urban life and faces the new violence of an editor co-opting her experiences. A woman adrift in the city she left as a child looks for someone to care for, even if it has to be by force, while another documents a flea infestation with a catalog of the marks on her flesh. A little girl copes with her anxiety about the adult world by exacting revenge on her nanny, who she thinks belongs to her. Combining humor, heartbreak, and unexpected violence, Ospina constructs a keen reflection on the body as a simultaneous vehicle of connection and alienation in vibrant, gleaming prose.

The Place of Dance

Author: Andrea Olsen
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 0819574066
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
The Place of Dance is written for the general reader as well as for dancers. It reminds us that dancing is our nature, available to all as well as refined for the stage. Andrea Olsen is an internationally known choreographer and educator who combines the science of body with creative practice. This workbook integrates experiential anatomy with the process of moving and dancing, with a particular focus on the creative journey involved in choreographing, improvising, and performing for the stage. Each of the chapters, or "days," introduces a particular theme and features a dance photograph, information on the topic, movement and writing investigations, personal anecdotes, and studio notes from professional artists and educators for further insight. The third in a trilogy of works about the body, including Bodystories: A Guide to Experiential Anatomy and Body and Earth: An Experiential Guide, The Place of Dance will help each reader understand his/her dancing body through somatic work, create a dance, and have a full journal clarifying aesthetic views on his or her practice. It is well suited for anyone interested in engaging embodied intelligence and living more consciously. Publication of this book is funded by the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.