Fogel - Restorative Embodiment and Resilience

This book slowed me down, woke me up, and brought me home. As I read, I was over and over again returned to a restorative statea deep breath here, a relaxation thereuntil a newfound sense of rest began to permeate my life. This is the handbook for transmuting fear, grief, and anger into peace, quiet acceptance, love, and open-hearted connection. Ultimately, its a book about letting all of your feelings come alive in the most restorative and enriching ways imaginable. A gem.

Amanda Blake, Master Somatic Coach, founder of Embright, and author of Your Body Is Your Brain

Deeply informative and a pleasure to read, this book awakens our embodied states of being in everyday life. The author offers skills to transform challenging feelings, dysregulating life habits, and relationships. Slow down, savor these pages, and stay tuned for wonderful case examples and exercises that provide a pathway to deep well-being.

Tina Stromsted, PhD, LMFT, Jungian psychoanalyst, dance/movement therapist, somatics educator, and director of Souls Body Center

Fogel confirms the existence of what he calls restorative embodied self-awareness: a deeply relaxing state of being fully present to felt experience that releases the vital capacity humans have to heal our thoughts, emotions, and physical selves. In the process, Fogel explains how feelings such as awe in nature, transcendence, and spiritual connection transform our sense of ourselves and our being in the world. A useful, informative, clear, and compelling treasure of a book!

Kimerer L. LaMothe, PhD, author of Why We Dance

This is an honest book. It brings us back to feeling fully alive in the account of restorative embodied self-awareness (as opposed to dysregulated or modulated embodied self-awareness) that leads us to the present moment of experiencing thoughts, felt sensations, and emotions arising from within our bodies. Excellently selected literature and useful restorative tools make the book a rich source of enlightenment and usability. A must-read for anyone who wants to make the most out of the embodied experience.

Sabine C. Koch, PhD, director of the Research Institute of Creative Arts Therapies and professor of dance movement therapy at SRH University, Heidelberg, Germany

Why do we attribute healing to mysterious forces such as placebos without recognizing the role of the embodied self? How is it that in most people the precursors of gut distress lie outside their day-to-day awareness? Fogel speaks to such issues. His book is a definite read for anyone wishing to explore the different attributes of embodied awareness.

Donald Bakal, PhD, professor emeritus at the University of Calgary and author of Minding the Body

Whilst there is still a tendency for many living in the modern world to approach life as though mind and body are separate, as Alan rightly states, this is simply wrongwe do not have a body, we are a body. To truly embody this offers the possibility to transform our conscious experience of ourselves and of the wider world and all our relationships within it. The journey is long, and there is no one path or formula that works for all. At this time of unprecedented change and turmoil on our beautiful Earth, there has never been a more crucial moment to commit to reclaiming our wholeness.

Louise Livingstone, PhD, director of Heart Sense Research Institute, cofounder of the Centre for Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred, and author of How Can the Thought of the Heart Offer Effective Ways of Engaging with Conflict?

Alan Fogel successfully interweaves neurobiological knowledge with research evidence and clinical expertise. A framework is developed to find peace and restoration in the courageous encounter with those aspects of human experience that might, at first, seem unbearable to face. A must-read for beginners and experienced practitioners in embodied experiencing alike.

Manon M. Bartsch, MA, SRH University, Heidelberg, Germany

Restorative Embodiment and Resilience presents a framework for understanding the interplay of emotional attunement and self-awareness and the critical role of embodied presence for enhancing regulation, embodiment, and health. This book is not about one particular therapeutic approach; rather, it highlights the types of daily interactions with people and nature that can draw us into restorative embodied experience, and the types of therapeutic approaches that can support our capacity to live more deeply in connection with ourselves.

Cynthia Price, PhD, MA, LMT, research professor at the University of Washington School of Nursing and director of Center for Mindful Body Awareness

Restorative Embodiment and Resilience offers fresh insights to anyone seeking to navigate a course to emotional well-being. Displaying compassion, a breadth of interdisciplinary research, and a wisdom born of personal experience, Fogel identifies and illuminates three states of embodied self-awareness. Fogel also offers the reader the tools needed to access a newly described state of restoration, one in which the work of metabolizing our lifes experience can take place. This book is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to find greater ease within their own being and with the world around them.

Philip Shepherd, author of Radical Wholeness

Alan Fogel has written a work of extraordinary synthesis and profound depth. His model of restorative embodied self-awareness bridges mindfulness, cutting-edge brain science, and deep clinical understanding to create a unique bringing together of so much that is excitingly new in science, alongside ancient wisdom and clinical thinkingall with body awareness at its heart. This book will be a boon for readers interested in gaining an understanding of how embodied awareness can facilitate processes of psychic healing and growth.

Graham Music, PhD, consultant psychotherapist at Tavistock Clinic, London, and author of Nurturing Children

With hours of sitting and staring into computer and phone screens, or getting immersed in virtual reality, the need for embodied presence becomes ever more urgent. And how this embodied presenceand probably any attempt at maintaining resilience in times of uncertainty and traumaneeds to be anchored in our felt sense is solidly presented in this book. Committing to the process of embodiment and the cultivation of presencebe it as a student, client, patient, practitioner, or curious readeris the real thing.

Wolf E. Mehling, MD, professor at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine

Alans excellent book expresses a deep understanding of embodiment, and I recommend it highly. A profound and also practical work that coaches, therapists, and movement teachers will get a lot from. Take a breath, and dive in!

Mark Walsh, author of Embodiment and founder of The Embodiment Conference

Copyright 2021 by Alan Fogel. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Published by
North Atlantic Books
Berkeley, California

Illustrations by Guy Ruggiero, Pristine Graphics
Cover art gettyimages.com/Benjavisa