Through the author's detailed and caring guidance, you'll discover how to achieve vitality and a sense of new aliveness that you may have not experienced since your childhood. Anat reveals not only how to overcome present aches, pains, and limitations but how to attain greater flexibility, energy, strength, mental clarity, and creativity-no matter what your age or present physical condition! In the words of bestselling author Larry Dossey, M.D., "This book puts living back into life. It is the distilled wisdom of a great guide."
Scientific Foundation of This Work
In recent years brain research has challenged conventional wisdom that said our brains cease to develop and grow beyond our early twenties. Instead, cutting edge science has proved that "our brains are capable of continuing to develop, grow, and make new connections throughout our lives." This capacity for regeneration is known as "neuroplasticity." Why is this new discovery so important in Anat Baniel's work? It is because your level of vitality is directly connected to your brain. When your brain thrives, growing and making new connections, you become capable of infinitely new ways of moving, thinking, and feeling. We move with greater comfort and ease. We think more clearly, broadly, and creatively. We carry out new solutions, small or large, more smoothly and effectively. And just as in childhood, when our lives spill over with new discoveries, we become infused with a sense of aliveness.
The Anat Baniel Method provides us with the tools for taking full advantage of "neuroplasticity"- our brain's ability for changing itself to heal body and mind. Here are exercises drawn from the author's more than 30 years of remarkable outcomes with adults as well as children. Through the self-help instructions for the Anat Baniel Method and NeuroMovement, presented in this book, you'll reap the benefits of neuroplasticity and integrate them into everything you do.
Read about the scientific discoveries that provide the cornerstones of the Anat Baniel Method and the powers for renewed vitality that these principles bring to your life
Discover the "Nine Essentials" that your brain requires to thrive, including "Movement with Attention, Subtlety," and "Variation"
Experience simple, safe, physical and mental exercises that satisfy the Nine Essentials and thus awaken your vitality
Read real life stories of healing and change that illustrate how these methods work
Learn about easy, highly intuitive ways of incorporating NeuroMovement into your daily life so that every activity-from washing the dishes to working at your desk, from interacting with your loved ones to improving your golf game-brings you renewed vitality, pleasure, and personal satisfaction.
Endorsed by leading physicians, scientists, clients, and transformational teachers, the Anat Baniel Method really works.
Editorial Reviews
"Baniel's compassionate and empowering approach will leave readers, particularly those with problems defying traditional treatment...eager to forge positive communication pathways between the body and the mind.
Publishers Weekly
"(Anat) understands that for any meaningful change to happen in the way we think, move, and use our body, the change has to happen in the brain."
Jill Bolte Taylor, bestselling author of "My Stroke of Insight"
"Anat Baniel shows why our mainstream approach is often wrong and at times damaging. The approach here, far wiser, far more subtle, truly holistic, far more ingenious, far more in accord with how our brain development occurs, shows ways to access brain plasticity that yields far greater results."
Norman Doidge, MD, bestselling author of "The Brain's Way of Healing" "
Anat Baniel has established an international reputation for her work with children with special needs. A clinical psychologist, she has refined her method for more than thirty years, and now runs the Anat Baniel Method facility in Marin County, California. Visit her website where you can download free chapters.
HIGHLIGHTS: 1. Don’t try to close the deal too soon. Don’t make crossing the finish line your primary goal.
2. Children delight in their experience of their newfound abilities.
3. Keep daydreaming until you come up with something you like and that will likely enhance you and those around you.
4. Being in the process of fulfilling our dream heightens our vitality.
5. It is not in WHAT the profession or activity is that our vitality lies, but in the HOW we go about doing it.
6. Process of continued exploration.
7. Vitality lives in the process itself. - Vitality is being intimately connected with the moment. - Choose to resume learning through classes, reading, own exploration, and experimentation. - Vitality comes about by bringing attention to our movements.
8. Improvement and refinement through increased complexity.
9. Brain constantly seeks to evolve, the way it was designed. - We have the capacity to regenerate and improve ourselves by choosing to continue to evolve. Introduce small changes.
10. Many top colleges are now observing that while today’s freshmen are test-wise and academically accomplished, they lack the ability to think for themselves or explore outside the box.
I was at first attracted to the book because I believed it was about a method called Feldenkrains.
I think the book is faithful to the principles of Feldenkrains but I think the author takes it to a different level which is actually quite accessible to the average reader.
There are few physical exercises in the book. The ones there are I was not so interested in. What did interest me are her nine principles of vitality which not only refer to physical "movement" but also mental and emotional movement which I feel are just as critical.
Principles of slowness, subtlety, and variation really got me thinking and making small changes to everyday activities. I found this of great benefit and I mean to keep these principles in mind.
The cover makes it look like it is some exercise book and it definitely is not.
Reading it, I became less interested in Feldenkrains in itself and more interested in seeing how her principles can improve life in general.
It was disappointing to see that the book really does not stand alone, but only serves as in introduction to a very expensive training in Ana Baniel's techniques. The 9 essentials our brains need to thrive in life's vitality: Movement with attention. Turn on the light switch. Subtlety- reduce the force to increase sensitivity. Variations and greater possibilities with feelings, thoughts and actions. Slow. Enthusiasm. Holding goals loosely. Imaging and dreaming. Awareness- knowing and knowing that you know.
Protégée of Moishe Feldenkrais, the Israeli engineer and Judo expert who developed the renowned "Feldenkrais Method," Anat Baniel built her own "Anat Baniel Method" (ABM) on this foundation and three decades of helping thousands of people, from the tiniest babies to elders, move more easily and find freedom from pain. I have tried the ABM: gadzooks, it works! This book is a fine introduction to the method, and all-around inspiring. P.S. Her video beats a cup of coffee.
I've tried to read this book for 3 days and each time I pick it up, it's a struggle to flip a few pages. The info inside is likely great and I've dog-eared the few lists of things to do, but it's written incredibly dry and repetitively. I swear I've read the same sentence on different pages, as if someone read the original book and insisted it be longer.
I wish there were a short version. A "get to the point say it like it is" style would be nice.
The first half of this book is rich in practical exercises and is solid. The second half left me feeling flat as it held many anecdotal stories that never seemed to thread together. The book had some fantastic footnotes and a lot of the text of the footnotes would be well included in the body of the text.
Good ideas, but ultimately boring. Unlike with other method books I've read, taking a class of Anat Baniel's or a class in Feldenkrais seems necessary to really be able to take in what is being presented here.
Very informative on how the brain and movement are connected. Gives insight into how we can heal the body through movement, while make new connections in the brain.