Liz Koch - Stalking Wild Psoas

Liz Koch is an artist of the somatic metaphor who is in it for a long and deep dive within. These essays track her journey through the illusions and delusions of the mechanical construct of the body into a holistic vision of the body to come. She stalks wild psoas where the perception of the body as lived comes into coherence with the body as anatomy. Kochs approach is resolutely holistic, philosophical, and deliciously interoceptive.

Tom Myers, author of Anatomy Trains

Liz Koch opens the reader to a brilliant phenomenological panorama of the human body as a shaping, a process, a Gestaltungas the expression of our soul, intelligence, and consciousness. This is the way to overcome anatomy, biomechanics, and machine thinking. Stalking Wild Psoas is a book about integrity and wholeness that offers the reader a balm for the modern analytic, anatomical, atomizing, distracting mind.

Jaap van der Wal, MD, PhD, embryologist, anatomist, and (recovering) morphologist

Tracking an emerging tradition that reemphasizes entanglement in a new materialist terrain, and resituating bodies as the polyvocal agency of a surprisingly intelligent and animated world (instead of as separable units set against a mute backdrop), Liz Koch weaves a story of healing, of surprise, and of hope.

Bayo Akomolafe, author of These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to my Daughter on Humanitys Search for Home

This book inspires us to sensually, and with open interest, experience the bio-intelligence of our living being. Through her articulate and passionate voice, Liz Koch weaves together art, science, inquiry, exploration, deep care, and listening with the ways she is learning from within her own body, and with the bodies of her students and clients. What emerges is a textured narrative tapestry telling the story of our biological origins, biological intelligence, and our possibilities for the future if we participate by stalking the wild psoas.

Mary Abrams, MA, RSME, somatic educator and founder of Moving Body Resources

Liz Koch captures the fundamental wholeness and innate intelligence of the body through her elegant prose in Stalking Wild Psoas. Her words convey a visual-sensorial experience, taking the reader on a journey of appreciation and discovery of the multi-dimensional fabric of being-in-body. Kochs writing clearly delineates the essential differences between a biomechanical approach to understanding our physical nature and a holistic approach, touching the mystery and beauty of all that a body possesses.

Carol A Agneessens, MS, biodynamic cranialsacral and Rolf educator and author of The Fabric of Wholeness: Biological Intelligence and Relational Gravity

Liz Koch is a crucial voice for our timea true core intelligence explorer. She has dedicated her life to sparking a desperately needed shift of awareness in our medical and movement models from a static, biomechanical approach to a fluid, biointelligent one.

Wendy LeBlanc-Arbuckle, creator of 3Core Connections

This wonderful book goes far beyond a simply anatomical and physiological view of the psoas to portray a deep understanding of the body arising from Liz Kochs many years of working with clients, colleagues, and herself.

John Wilks, author of Using the Bowen Technique to Address Complex and Common Conditions

In Stalking Wild Psoas, Liz Koch brings forth the wealth of knowledge that she has developed by teaching and studying with somatic greats like Emilie Conrad Daoud. I recommend this book for all who wish to develop more understanding and connection with their bodies.

Donnalea Van Vleet Goelz, PhD, chair of the Emilie Conrad Daoud Research Initiative

Beautifully written, as if the life force itself helped organize it, this book brings a sense of relief, possibility, and hope, from the physical to the spiritual. You can feel your body resonate with the truth of it. The deep visceral knowledge of the author comes through on every page, helping us tune in to things we instinctively always knew but were cut off from. Loving and helpful, this amazing book opens new vistas of healing and the understanding of our own nature.

Susan B. Eirich, PhD, founder of Earthfire Institute

Liz Kochs work with the psoas is brilliant. She supplies inroads to our depths and the way to mine the knowledge there so it is available for survival and expression. If you care about your core, or that of others, read this book.

Martha Eddy, CMA, RSMT, EdD, author of Mindful Movement: The Evolution of the Somatic Arts and Conscious Action

Copyright 2019 by Liz Koch. 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

Cover art gettyimages.com/Katjabakurova

Cover design by Rob Johnson

Interior design by Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Printed in the United States of America

Stalking Wild Psoas: Embodying Your Core Intelligence is sponsored and published by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences (dba North Atlantic Books), an educational nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives, nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing, and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.

North Atlantic Books publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com or call 800-733-3000.

MEDICAL DISCLAIMER: The following information is intended for general information purposes only. Individuals should always see their health care provider before administering any suggestions made in this book. Any application of the material set forth in the following pages is at the readers discretion and is his or her sole responsibility.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Koch, Liz, 1949- author.

Title: Stalking wild psoas : embodying your core intelligence / Liz Koch.

Description: Berkeley, California : North Atlantic Books, [2019]

Identifiers: LCCN 2018044995 (print) | LCCN 2018048334 (ebook) | ISBN 9781623173166 (e-book) | ISBN 9781623173159 (paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Mind and body therapies. | Awareness. | Mindfulness (Psychology) | BISAC: HEALTH & FITNESS / Alternative Therapies. | HEALTH & FITNESS / Healing. | HEALTH & FITNESS / Exercise.

Classification: LCC RC489.M53 (ebook) | LCC RC489.M53 K63 2019 (print) | DDC 616.89/1dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018044995

Dedicated to brilliant slime mold

and to my daughter Lily

whose intelligence and shape-shifting abilities

defy classification and boggle my mind

I wish to thank all the participants in my psoas workshops who I have had the privilege to meet,

the amazing international community of psoas-savvy educators and therapists for whom this paradigm shift has already taken hold,

and

my clients who entrusted me with their core truth.

The following essays, and the stories entangled within, are intended to remember our profound existence on earth and the core task at hand: to awaken.