The wisdom of your body Finding healing, wholeness, and connection through embodied living

Hillary L. McBride

Book - 2021

"A clinical psychologist and award-winning researcher explores the ways many of us inherit a broken and unhealthy understanding of the body and offers a more compassionate, healthy, and holistic perspective on embodied life"--

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Subjects
Published
Grand Rapids, Michigan : Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group [2021]
Language
English
Main Author
Hillary L. McBride (author)
Physical Description
viii, 278 pages ; 22 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN
9781587435522
9781587435539
  • An Invitation to Begin
  • 1. Fully Alive: Exploring and Understanding Embodiment
  • 2. How We Become Disembodied: Lies about Our Bodies and Finding Our Way Home
  • 3. The Body Overwhelmed: Healing the Body from Stress and Trauma
  • 4. Appearance and Image: How We See Our Body from the Outside
  • 5. Feeling Feelings: Getting to Know the Emotional Body
  • 6. You Are Not Broken: A New Perspective on Pain
  • 7. The Body and Oppression: When Bodies Are Political
  • 8. Pleasure and Enjoyment: The Sensual and Sexual Body
  • 9. Holy Flesh: Reconciling the Spirit-Body Divide
  • 10. Living as a Body: Embodiment Practices to Return to Ourselves
  • Epilogue: A Letter to My Body
  • Notes
  • With Gratitude
  • About the Author
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Psychologist McBride (Mothers, Daughters, and Body Image) encourages readers to escape from damaged or harmful societal messages about their bodies in this insightful guide to being "embodied" in this "mysterious journey we each take from birth to death." Weaving in research and anecdotes from her professional life, such as her experiences with an eating disorder and a life-threatening car accident, she draws on the work of fellow psychologist Niva Piran to describe a sense of "disconnection from our body." She explores the phenomenon as it pertains to stress and trauma; appearance and image; feelings or emotions; pain, illness, and injury; sensuality and sexually; and spirituality, and in the context of the impacts of colonization, racism, sexism, and patriarchy, which she argues take their toll by making the implication that "you are less valuable in this society because of your body." The advice to become "embodied" can be felt as either "liberation or ache" depending on the reader's personal history, but the goal is a state of being completely present and connected to one's self and others, with thought and physical exercises suggested to get there. McBride's tone is gentle and instructive, displaying her amazement at how the body is made and of what it is capable. The result is an intelligent consideration on what and how to be "in" oneself in the world. Agent: Angela Scheff, Ferebee Literary Agency. (Oct.)

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