Returning Home to Our Bodies

Reimagining the Relationship Between Our Bodies and the World

Abigail Rose Clarke, North Atlantic Books (JAN 9) Softcover $19.95 (288pp) 978-1-62317-938-0, HEALTH & FITNESS

Abigail Rose Clarke’s body, mind, and spirit guidebook is about navigating perilous times with wisdom, comfort, and grace.

Writing through a chaotic time, Clarke argues that it is possible to experience the world in a whole new way. Her book draws on science, poetry, movement, and inner calm to guide its audience back to wonder. It encourages awe over the miracle of life and methods of healing that are rooted in attentiveness to the wisdom of the body. Issuing a call to reevaluate all that has been taught about human relationships with the world and other beings, these pages envision what an individual can do to turn situations around through the practice of somatics.

For Clarke, “somatics” refers to “a meditative movement practice focused on the body,” engaging concepts of patriarchy, hierarchy, capitalism, and supremacies of all kinds to argue that denying the sovereignty and worth of individual human beings is a mistake, creating a rift between humans and nature and severing family and community bonds. In place of such errors, it demonstrates how soft, attentive, comfortable practices can be powerful enough to break cultural trances, liberate bodies and souls, and return isolated individuals to living communities.

Returning Home to Our Bodies reveals a vision for a world beyond systems of domination and oppression, suggesting that somatic practice is a potent way to make that vision a reality. It is a book not just to read but to experience. Its contemplative narrative rambles through expressions of awe, prompting the imagination and guiding the practitioner to a visceral, transformative experience of the intimate relationship between the human body and the elements and processes in nature.