The Metaphoric Body
The Metaphoric Body

The Metaphoric Body

Guide to Expressive Therapy through Images and Archetypes

JESSICA KINGSLEY PUBLISHERSISBN: 9781853021527
Price:
$95.99
Stock:
Restocking Soon

By Leah Bartal, Nira Neeman
Imprint: JESSICA KINGSLEY PUBLISHERS
Release Date:
Format: PAPERBACK
Pages: 240

 More payment options

Description

''The Metaphoric Body'' is a conductive guidebook and resource offering suggestions, ideas, exercises and a way of working towards the therapeutic process. The authors show how the exploration of the body through archetypal symbols transforms and facilitates change in people's lives. As international pioneers with 35 years' experience in the fields of movement, dance, dance therapy, drama and art, the authors emphasize a holistic approach which goes beyond the purely cognitive and verbal. Based on increasing understanding and awareness of the body through movement improvization and exercises, the workshops incorporate exercises using improvized drama, mask work, visual arts and written work. Later workshops go on to extend the movement into interaction with objects, the environment and other people, and draw on images and symbols from the Old Testament, Greek mythology and the Taoist five elements. The book is intended for social workers, counsellors, pastoral counsellors and expressive arts therapists, as well as teachers and anyone with an active interest in dance and theatre.

Introduction to the metaphoric body; stepping stones; creative process; the way we work and how to use the book. Part 1 Resources of the physical body I - the body from anatomy to metaphor: skeleton - bone, muscle, skin; hands - communication, touch stories; back - sensitivity, awareness, expressiveness; pelvis - centre of power ''Tantien''; feet - grounding, animals; breathing and sound; ''rigid and soft''; personal responses. Part 2 Resources of the physical body II - the body in relation to objects and as social communicator: use of objects - Rosemary (developing free association), plants and trees as metaphors, masks (masked images of the soul), individuals in a museum environment; the body as social communicator - circles (a favourite game), boundaries (individual space and limit), density and open space, polarities and opposites (movement and stillness), hands as messengers, the mother, childhood landscape, personal responses; Taoist elements - origin of the five elements, phase one (preparing the ground; allegorical journey), phase two (imaging in symbols and archetypes - touching the emotional and spiritual levels), personal reflections (the five elements in the creative process), wood, earth, metal/air, fire, water, the 5 in 1. Part 3 Resources of the mythological body: ''serious play''; stories from Biblical sources - the scapegoat (Abraham and Isaac), Lea and Rachel (mothers of the tribes), Rebekah (the Jewish mother), Deborah (judge, prophetess, poet), Ezekiel's dream (dry bones); stories from Greek sources - Aphrodite (Goddess of spontaneous love and beauty and the tasks of psyche - the creative process), Oedipus (the classical tragedy - understanding one's own fate), the marriage of Dionysus and Ariadne (the labyrinthian process, abandonment, and the soul marriage.

You may also like

Recently viewed