When we blame desire for our dissatisfaction, we cut ourselves off from the best guidance we have for finding health and well being. There is wisdom in desire, though we have learned to ignore it. Trained to think and feel and act as if we were minds living in and over bodies, we tend to perceive our desires as unruly forces that we must control - or be controlled by. But our desires are us. They are what we are creating in the moment. When we learn to find and move with the wisdom they contain, we become who we can be, and unfold what we have to give. What a Body Knows illustrates how, in relation to three life-enabling desires - our desires for nourishment, physical intimacy and spiritual fulfillment. Food. Sex. Spirit.
LaMothe, a philosopher, dancer, and scholar of religion, lives with her life-partner and their four children on a farm in rural New York. After seven years teaching at Brown and then Harvard Universities, where she completed two books, many articles, and performed two original solo dance concerts, LaMothe moved to the country to co-found Vital Arts-a center for creating life-affirming responses to the challenges of our time. An award-winning author, she has received fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Center for the Study of World Religions, both at Harvard. Her previous books are: Nietzsche's Dancers (Palgrave MacMillan) and Between Dancing and Writing (Fordham University Press). www.vitalartsmedia.com
Title: What a Body Knows: Finding Wisdom in Desire
Author: Kimerer L. Lamothe
ISBN: 9781846941887
Binding:
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Publication Date: 2009-04-24
Number of Pages: 340
Weight: 0.4220 kg
I simply cannot praise the book enough! The prose is positively brilliant. It is full of sparkling gems of insight and astonishing, concise yet profound formulations. The nature passages remind me of Annie Dillard. It is truly a remarkable achievement! Miranda Shaw, Ph.D., Professor of Religion, University of Richmond, Author of Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism and Buddhist Goddesses of IndiaA It has been a holistic pleasure to read this book, to live with this book. The book beckons its reader to live the text, to respond to reading the pages with all forms of movement: new life, change, growth and new, more evolved bodily consciousness. This text should have quite an impact on those lucky enough to read it. Bravo.A Courtney Bickel Lamberth, Ph.D., Special Assistant to the Dean, Harvard CollegeA LaMothe mixes descriptions of living as a mother, dancer, and writer at beautiful Hebron Hollow farm with reflections on all the desires that move her. It is such an affirming book, generous and welcoming of desire as a source of guidance for life!A Kathleen Roberts Skerrett, Ph.D., Associate Dean, Grinnell College
