Joy: The Surrender to the Body and to Life

by Alexander Lowen

Overview

Surrender to your body and recover joy

Alexander Lowen, famous student of Wilhelm Reich and founder of Bioenergetics, reveals in this book how to reclaim a natural, childlike state of joy through exercises that revive the body's vitality and liberate the energy of suppressed feelings. Using examples from four decades of clinical practice, Lowen shows how painful emotional experiences—from sexual abuse and fear of dying to the anger and heartbreak all human beings experience in life—are manifested in bodily symptoms. He then instructs readers how to listen for and answer the unique signals in the body that serve as internal cries for freedom. The vibrant health that results has a wide range of holistic benefits for the total being, including enhanced sexual pleasure and heightened spirituality. Joy, the culmination of Lowen’s life work, is a wonderfully hopeful and transformational guide from one of the pioneers of body/mind therapy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140194937
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/01/1995
Series:	Compass
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.74(h) x 0.85(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Dr. Alexander Lowen is the creator of bioenergetics, which he has defined as "a therapeutic technique to help a person get back together with his body and to help him enjoy to the fullest degree possible the life of the body." Incorporating direct work on the body into the psychoanalytic process, Dr. Lowen practices psychiatry in New York and Connecticut and is the executive director of the Institute of Bioenergetic Analysis. He is married and lives in New Canaan, Connecticut, with his wife and son.

Table of Contents

JoyPreface

1. Joy
The Freedom from Guilt
Feeling the Life of the Body

2. The Surrender to the Body
The Surrender of the Narcissistic Ego
Grounding and Reality

3. Crying: The Releasing Emotion

4. The Resistance to Crying
I Won't Break Down
The Surrender of the Will: Despair

5. Anger: The Healing Emotion

6. Love: The Fulfilling Emotion
The Surrender to Love
Mature Love

7. The Betrayal of Love

8. Sexual Abuse

9. Fear: The Paralyzing Emotion

10. The Fear of Death

11. Passion, Sex, and Joy

12. Passion and the Spirit
The Surrender to God
The Dancing Spirit