Full Body Presence: Learning to Listen to Your Body's Wisdom - Softcover

Scurlock-Durana, Suzanne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1577318609 ISBN 13: 9781577318606

Verlag: New World Library, Nataraj, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

Many teachers stress the importance of living in the present moment. Few give the actual practices to make it attainable. This book teaches you how to return to the incredible navigational system of the body and more fully inhabit each moment.

For over twenty-five years, Suzanne Scurlock-Durana has masterfully taught her step-by-step practice of present moment awareness through her own combination of bodywork and CranioSacral therapy. The practices of Full Body Presence help you find a deeper awareness in the moment, even in the midst of chaos, family and work demands, or the pressure to perform. This deeper awareness also brings a fuller sense of trust and confidence in yourself and in the world. Full Body Presence is filled with concrete, life-friendly explorations and instruction clearly presented in both the book and the free accompanying downloadable audio files.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Suzanne Scurlock-Durana, CMT, CST-D, has taught internationally about conscious awareness and its relationship to the healing process. Her Healing from the Core curriculum combines CranioSacral therapy and other bodywork modalities for a complete body-centered approach to feeling the joy of the present moment. She teaches and speaks throughout the world and lives in Reston, Virginia.

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Full Body Presence

Learning to Listen to Your Body's Wisdom

By Suzanne Scurlock-Durana, David Andor

New World Library

Copyright © 2010 Suzanne Scurlock-Durana
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57731-860-6

Contents

Foreword by John Upledger, DO, OMM, 
Full Body Presence Terminology, 
Introduction, 
CHAPTER 1. Out of Touch, 
CHAPTER 2. How I Learned to Trust My Body's Signals, 
CHAPTER 3. The Five Principles of Full Body Presence, 
PRINCIPLE 1: TRUST the Existence of Nurturing Life Energy, 
PRINCIPLE 2: FEEL the Presence of Life Energy in Your Body, 
PRINCIPLE 3: INTEGRATE Life Energy Throughout Your Entire System, 
PRINCIPLE 4: EXPAND Your Perceptual Lens, 
PRINCIPLE 5: CHOOSE Nourishing Resources Moment to Moment, 
CHAPTER 4. The Three Explorations: The Secrets of This Practice, 
CHAPTER 5. Exploration 1. Opening Awareness: Where Am I in This Moment?, 
CHAPTER 6. Exploration 2. Grounding and Filling: Nourishing and Replenishing the Container of Your Being, 
CHAPTER 7. Exploration 3. Healing the Internal Resistance to Life, 
CHAPTER 8. Using the Explorations and the Five Principles for Integration and Renewal, 
CHAPTER 9. Guidelines for Living and Working with Others: The Gift of Your Presence, 
CHAPTER 10. Healing for Today: A World at Peace, 
Acknowledgments, 
Appendix: Transcriptions of Audio Explorations, 
EXPLORATION 1, 
EXPLORATION 2, 
EXPLORATION 3, 
Resources, 
Index, 
About the Author, 

CHAPTER 1

Out of Touch

Our bodies are the containers for our spirits. They are incredible navigational systems that inform us constantly, from our gut instincts to our heart's deepest yearnings. But take a quick look around you, and you won't see much acknowledgment of this truth. We are taught to ignore our gut instincts and to be polite instead. We are taught to ignore physical hunger and to strive to be stick thin if we are women. We are rewarded for overworking, often at the expense of our health — raising our stress levels even more. We are taught to live in our heads and to ignore the body's wisdom.

As we lose touch with our bodies, our healthy resilience suffers. The expression "Speed kills" refers to more than highway statistics. The speed of modern technology, combined with the sheer volume of information thrown at us on any given day, is enough to make us feel as though we cannot slow down and breathe if we want to keep up. The complexity in our lives can be overwhelming.

The good news is that, although changing slowly, the present state of body awareness in the United States is beginning to improve, as seen in the increasing numbers of people going for bodywork and attending yoga or movement classes. Along with this growing recognition of the value of the mind-body connection, there is a growing awareness of the problems alienation from our body creates. Such awareness gives us that much more incentive to learn to be fully present in our bodies and our lives. This is particularly so if we hope to be able to help others in a way that is more rewarding and less stressful.

Stress in the Healthcare and the Caregiving Worlds

Teaching in the healthcare world, I see the effects of Disrupted Body Presence exhibited in the exhaustion and stress-related illnesses of my students. The effect of burnout on bodyworkers, caregivers, and other healthcare professionals is well known. This burnout in turn creates serious consequences for the individual, the family, and society.

A burned-out healthcare provider with diminished therapeutic presence can miss important cues and signals, increasing the risk that mistakes will be made. This is further aggravated by the mountains of paperwork now required with medical treatment, which leave little or no time for the nurturing parts of the job. Staff cuts leave those still employed to do the work of two people, but without the healthy resources these workers need.

More important, very few healthcare providers and caregivers are taught how to stop, tune in, and take care of themselves so that they can more effectively take care of others without burning out. In fact, the default stance for many working in health care is to give without any thought of themselves. Their satisfaction and self-worth are measured by the results of their efforts on behalf of others. Self-care is often seen as selfish or self-centered. Another risk for caregivers and healthcare providers is that they can easily absorb a patient's tension and fear, unless they know how to hold healthy boundaries.

Some healthcare modalities teach practitioners to distance themselves from a patient or a client. This can work to a degree, but it also effectively numbs a healthcare provider's ability to participate in the positive, life-giving aspects of the work. The care provided is then limited, and compassion is missing. Such an approach creates a mechanical healthcare system rather than a conduit for deep caring and healing that benefits all involved. Burnout is then not far behind. The need for restorative steps is clear.

Mind-Body-Spirit Connection

In recent years a great deal has been discovered about the intimate interplay between mind, emotions, and body. We have clear evidence of how emotions are intimately connected to physical distress and illness. Yet for all the exciting new therapeutic approaches for working directly with the body to restore health and awareness, the value of Full Body Presence is still not well recognized.

The aspect of sensory awareness in Full Body Presence — the grounded connection with our body and the world around us — can play a major role in healing physical symptoms and illnesses. It can assuage and ultimately transform fear, doubt, and alienation into a sense of trust and confidence in oneself and life as a whole. Developing sensory awareness is also a powerful means of personal transformation. The strong therapeutic presence that emerges is of vital importance for both the caregiver and the one receiving care.

Full Body Presence also leads us to a more solid connection with our innate spirit and energy. And this connection can become the ever-present background against which we live our lives — instead of the serendipitous minutes of connection and ecstasy we may otherwise experience occasionally.

In many spiritual traditions, heaven is synonymous with being fully connected to the Divine, to our spiritual source. Yet this visceral sense of connection — which is or should be a given — slips away from us as we are socialized to fit in to our hierarchical and compartmentalized culture.

Unfortunately, elements of our educational system, cultural practices, and even religious doctrines speak in terms of dominating the world and our environment and of controlling our bodily functions and thoughts — as if we were somehow separate from the rest of creation. Our emphasis on speed, instant gratification, outward appearances, staying competitive, and retaining power without regard to the long-term outcome leaves us little time for feeling and meeting our deeper physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.

In this milieu, our deeper felt needs are relegated to a lesser status. With regard to large or small issues, the wisdom of the body and its signals are suspect and not to be trusted in our culture. We typically give our thoughts more weight than our nonlinear inner knowing. We put our trust in outside experts to figure out what to do in our lives, rather than...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: New World Library, Nataraj
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1577318609
• ISBN 13: 9781577318606
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 216
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland