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Radical Wholeness: The Embodied Present and the Ordinary Grace of Being
There are qualities we all yearn to experience in our lives—peace, simplicity, grace, connection, clarity. Yet these qualities evade us because each of them arises from an experience of wholeness, and we live in a culture that enforces divisions within each of us. In Radical Wholeness, Philip Shepherd shows the countless ways in which we are persuaded to separate from the body and live in the head. Disconnected from the body’s intelligence, we also disconnect from the wholeness of the present. This schism within us is the primary source of stress not just in our personal lives, but for the systems of the planet.
Drawing from neuroscience, anthropology, physics, the arts, myth, personal stories and his experiences helping people around the world to experience wholeness, Philip Shepherd illuminates what true wholeness means and offers practices designed to help readers soften into the intelligence of the body. Radical Wholeness is a call to action: to recover wholeness and experience a new way of being.
328 pages, Paperback
Published November 21, 2017
178 people are currently reading
777 people want to read
About the author
Philip Shepherd
5 books42 followersPhilip Shepherd is recognized as an international authority on embodiment. His unique techniques have been developed to transform our experience of self and world, and are based on the vision articulated in his celebrated book, New Self New World. The approach he takes heals the frantic, restless pace of the intelligence in the head, which tends to run on overdrive, by uniting it with the deep, present and calm intelligence of the body. This is an antidote to the prevailing view of embodiment, which involves sitting in the head and ‘listening to the body’; by contrast, Philip’s approach helps us listen to the world through the body. His personal path to understanding has been shaped by his adventures as a teenager, when he cycled alone through Europe, the Middle East, India and Japan; by his deep commitment to and studies of bodywork; by his experiences as an actor, playing lead roles on stages in London, New York, Chicago and Toronto; and by the burning desire for freedom that has illuminated his entire life. He currently spends his time divided between teaching international workshops, and working on his second book, Radical Wholeness.
His book, New Self New World: Recovering Our Senses in the Twenty-first Century, is available from online bookstores as a real book or an ebook, and we hope it can also be found at your local bookstore. Philip is available for private coaching, group classes and weekend workshops. Please contact him for more information.
Philip currently lives with his wife in a home he designed and built in a little car-free community on an island south of Toronto. He is working on his second book, and continues acting, coaching, lecturing and teaching. And he still travels by bicycle whenever he can.
His book, New Self New World: Recovering Our Senses in the Twenty-first Century, is available from online bookstores as a real book or an ebook, and we hope it can also be found at your local bookstore. Philip is available for private coaching, group classes and weekend workshops. Please contact him for more information.
Philip currently lives with his wife in a home he designed and built in a little car-free community on an island south of Toronto. He is working on his second book, and continues acting, coaching, lecturing and teaching. And he still travels by bicycle whenever he can.
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June 9, 2022
Radical Wholeness by Philip Shepherd
I was listening to this book on Audible with excellent narration. All recommendations might work with practice. It is possible to achieve and understand radical wholeness.
I was listening to this book on Audible with excellent narration. All recommendations might work with practice. It is possible to achieve and understand radical wholeness.
December 6, 2017
Fans of Philip Shepherd will love this book. Buy it and read no further. His writing and his thinking have clearly reached a level of clarity few of us will ever attain. As the title suggests, however, his model of being and the universe is radical, to say the least. That doesn’t make it wrong, of course, and I think much of his thinking is spot on. I do have to wonder, however, how many of his most ardent supporters accept and live by his model with the level of surrender advocated here.
It is, without a doubt, one of the most intriguing books I have read this year. By the time I finished I had highlighted far more passages than I would normally highlight in a dozen books. The content is raw and rich and extremely well thought out and presented.
To understand the “radical wholeness” concept you must have the context. And even though Shepherd is an articulate and efficient writer it took him almost 300 pages to lay it out. I couldn’t do it justice here and won’t try. The author deserves your effort.
To give you just the whiff of a flavor, however, he argues that Western culture has become completely head-centric in its worldview, distorting our understanding of the world in a direction that is male-dominant, segmented, obsessed with control, and far too pre-occupied with abstract reasoning and the accumulation of knowledge and data. We have, as a result, created a culture built on boundaries, analytics, the supremacy of mechanics, domination, and acquisition in which we are disconnected from our female selves, where connection is achieved, understanding is felt, and self-knowledge is realized and retained through attunement and the achievement of harmony. (Again, take my summary as a clumsy and infantile attempt to express what you must really read in its entirety to understand.)
He makes a very convincing case, which I admit I was predisposed to embrace, that “science cannot save us,” we are generally not attuned to each other or the world around us, the universe is not knowable in any entirely objective way that we currently comprehend, the self and the universe are living processes rather than things, the human conscious is not mechanical, and that there is some binding element to the universe that gives it a kind of consciousness but which we don’t currently understand and have no language to express.
Science can’t save us, in Shepherd’s view, because the knowledge it provides only reinforces the myth that “humankind is evolution’s crowning achievement and was born to rule the earth and command nature—and that the role of science is to provide us the means of fulfilling that destiny,” through knowledge that is not self-knowledge.
In the end, however, I found Shepherd’s expression of his model to be challenging, if not problematic. He maintains that there are many centers of intelligence in the body, but that the two main ones are the brain, where the analytical male resides, and the pelvic bowl, centered by the perineum, where the feeling female resides.
It is in the pelvic bowl, moreover, where awareness, through surrender, finds and experiences wholeness. “Bringing the center of your awareness to rest on the perineum carries it into the realm of your consciousness that feels wholeness.”
In the beginning, Shepherd quotes Dr. Jonas Salk. “What people think of as a moment of discovery is really the discovery of a question.” And I believe that is true. There is nothing that is dividing Western society today more than our sense of false certainty. And much of this has to do with what biologist Rupert Sheldrake describes as “the science delusion”; that reality is a giant machine that we can understand and manipulate through scientific discovery.
The world is not discrete or static, in my experience. Self, I genuinely believe, knows no boundaries and that it is our attempt to divide, control, and manipulate the self that is at the heart of our current alienation, disillusion, and rancor, documented quite fully by the daily news.
I further accept that everything is inter-connected, as the Buddhists have long maintained. I stop short of accepting, however, that “the universe is observing us,” that “The energy of the world flows through your senses, nourishing your being,” or “By flowing through your senses, the world’s energy enables you to experience its reality,” in any literal sense.
In the end, Shepherd relies heavily on etymology to make his case, but even that ultimately fails him. As he points out, English just wasn’t designed to support his worldview. This is, as a result, not a book to skim and you will have to slog through the terminology with patience and an open mind.
Because Shepherd is offering us a worldview, there is, by necessity, a political agenda. And it is decidedly progressive. And you might be inclined to conclude at times that he puts aboriginal and Eastern culture on a pedestal. I honestly believe, however, that he is not denigrating Western culture so much as he is offering an alternative perspective (although he dislikes that term).
So, should you read this book if you haven’t attended one of his workshops or read one of his prior books? Why not? It is decidedly out of the mainstream but I think it is intellectually sincere and it is certainly well researched and coherently presented.
He didn’t quite get me over the goal line, pelvic bowl-insensitive as I undoubtedly am, but I do believe the time and money I invested in the book was well spent. He certainly made me think, and that’s why I read.
It is, without a doubt, one of the most intriguing books I have read this year. By the time I finished I had highlighted far more passages than I would normally highlight in a dozen books. The content is raw and rich and extremely well thought out and presented.
To understand the “radical wholeness” concept you must have the context. And even though Shepherd is an articulate and efficient writer it took him almost 300 pages to lay it out. I couldn’t do it justice here and won’t try. The author deserves your effort.
To give you just the whiff of a flavor, however, he argues that Western culture has become completely head-centric in its worldview, distorting our understanding of the world in a direction that is male-dominant, segmented, obsessed with control, and far too pre-occupied with abstract reasoning and the accumulation of knowledge and data. We have, as a result, created a culture built on boundaries, analytics, the supremacy of mechanics, domination, and acquisition in which we are disconnected from our female selves, where connection is achieved, understanding is felt, and self-knowledge is realized and retained through attunement and the achievement of harmony. (Again, take my summary as a clumsy and infantile attempt to express what you must really read in its entirety to understand.)
He makes a very convincing case, which I admit I was predisposed to embrace, that “science cannot save us,” we are generally not attuned to each other or the world around us, the universe is not knowable in any entirely objective way that we currently comprehend, the self and the universe are living processes rather than things, the human conscious is not mechanical, and that there is some binding element to the universe that gives it a kind of consciousness but which we don’t currently understand and have no language to express.
Science can’t save us, in Shepherd’s view, because the knowledge it provides only reinforces the myth that “humankind is evolution’s crowning achievement and was born to rule the earth and command nature—and that the role of science is to provide us the means of fulfilling that destiny,” through knowledge that is not self-knowledge.
In the end, however, I found Shepherd’s expression of his model to be challenging, if not problematic. He maintains that there are many centers of intelligence in the body, but that the two main ones are the brain, where the analytical male resides, and the pelvic bowl, centered by the perineum, where the feeling female resides.
It is in the pelvic bowl, moreover, where awareness, through surrender, finds and experiences wholeness. “Bringing the center of your awareness to rest on the perineum carries it into the realm of your consciousness that feels wholeness.”
In the beginning, Shepherd quotes Dr. Jonas Salk. “What people think of as a moment of discovery is really the discovery of a question.” And I believe that is true. There is nothing that is dividing Western society today more than our sense of false certainty. And much of this has to do with what biologist Rupert Sheldrake describes as “the science delusion”; that reality is a giant machine that we can understand and manipulate through scientific discovery.
The world is not discrete or static, in my experience. Self, I genuinely believe, knows no boundaries and that it is our attempt to divide, control, and manipulate the self that is at the heart of our current alienation, disillusion, and rancor, documented quite fully by the daily news.
I further accept that everything is inter-connected, as the Buddhists have long maintained. I stop short of accepting, however, that “the universe is observing us,” that “The energy of the world flows through your senses, nourishing your being,” or “By flowing through your senses, the world’s energy enables you to experience its reality,” in any literal sense.
In the end, Shepherd relies heavily on etymology to make his case, but even that ultimately fails him. As he points out, English just wasn’t designed to support his worldview. This is, as a result, not a book to skim and you will have to slog through the terminology with patience and an open mind.
Because Shepherd is offering us a worldview, there is, by necessity, a political agenda. And it is decidedly progressive. And you might be inclined to conclude at times that he puts aboriginal and Eastern culture on a pedestal. I honestly believe, however, that he is not denigrating Western culture so much as he is offering an alternative perspective (although he dislikes that term).
So, should you read this book if you haven’t attended one of his workshops or read one of his prior books? Why not? It is decidedly out of the mainstream but I think it is intellectually sincere and it is certainly well researched and coherently presented.
He didn’t quite get me over the goal line, pelvic bowl-insensitive as I undoubtedly am, but I do believe the time and money I invested in the book was well spent. He certainly made me think, and that’s why I read.
April 5, 2018
Radical Wholeness is a gem of a read. Shepherd's skill as a story teller, researcher and embodiment teacher come together to gently guide us to a new way of looking at the world and our ways of perceiving. The book is full of examples of ways of seeing that are top-down and entrenched in a division, between mind and body and between self and others. From neckties to fences and mindfulness cues like 'watch' and 'notice', Shepherd shows us how insidious our perception of this division really is. And then he sets about demonstrating how we can dismantle our 'whole-blindness' and experience a rich, full Present. I've underlined so many beautiful and apt phrases, the book is full of ink. An inspiring read!
June 25, 2019
This is one of the best books I have ever read. I connected with this book on a deep level. After discovering “wholeness” as a core value of mine while reading Brene Brown’s “Dare to Lead,” I found this book and decided to read it. This book is so amazingly subversive to American/western culture and points toward wholeness in a way that you can’t help but feel and experience while reading. Philip Shepherd speaks directly to the head in a culture that reveres the head and needs to start there, but he quickly talks you down into your body and into the present where we all belong. This book has changed my life. I will be referring many people to this book over the next season of my life and I very well may read it again. Thank you Shepherd.
November 24, 2020
Notes:
+ Neuroscience organizes human senses into three categories: exteroception, proprioception and interoception
- Exteroception includes all the senses that inform us about the world outside the body, such as our Chosen Five
- Proprioception tells us where the body is in space
- Interoception monitors all that is going on within the body, and it’s a lot: we feel the heart, the breath, the immune system, hunger, muscle tension, sexual arousal, emotional signals from our gut (which at times we might call “gut feelings”), a full bladder, etc
+ Social isolation is bad, mmkay?
“We typically think of stress as being a risk factor for disease… And it is, somewhat. But if you actually measure stress, using our best available instruments, it can’t hold a candle to social isolation. Social isolation is the best-established, most robust social or psychological risk factor for disease out there. Nothing can compete.” Social Genomics researcher Steven Cole
+ Practices
- The elevator: move your center of awareness down to your base; notice and accept any stuck points and allow them to dissipate so the descent can continue; “Resting there, you may notice that you no longer feel the body distinct from the world but are rather feeling the unity of the bodyworld”
- Trickle down: let energy melt down and through the body to the bottom of the feet; “Just as a snowflake floating through the air might land on the back of your hand and surrender its delicate structure into fluidity, allow all the specifically felt energies in your body to soften their structures and liquefy”
- The smile: begin with a smile on the lips and then let it move into the head, then down the corridor of the torso to your base, as with the elevator
Potent Quotables:
“Logos is the thought that steers all things through all things. Listening not to me, but to the Logos, it is wise to acknowledge that all things are one. Man, who is an organic continuation of the Logos, thinks he can sever that continuity and exist apart from it. How can you hide from what never goes away?” Heraclitus
The most difficult thing in the world is to question an assumption you’ve never consciously made.
If life were a machine, we’d be the ones to figure it out, for sure. But it’s not a machine, nor is it a puzzle that can be solved. Our very attachment to solving life, in fact, diminishes our experience of it and our sensitivity to it. The gifts of abstract reasoning are wondrous, but if the whole disappears from your sight, you become blind to its harmony, numb to its mystery and detached from its reality. And then your own life will feel as random as you imagine the independent bits of the world to be… When we internalize the idea that the essence of life is mechanical, it’s only a matter of time before we apply that same belief to ourselves and see our own bodies as machines. When that happens, we will naturally expect them to wear out with use. Never mind that our muscles and bones respond to stress by getting stronger; never mind that most cells in the body are younger than fifteen years old; never mind that what “wears us out” is more often the grinding attrition of self-conflict, which keeps us from wholeness and makes harmony impossible;
A tennis player is feeling, not computing. When your opponent hits a ball, you are not measuring its speed, calculating its trajectory, factoring in its drag and spin, and doing the necessary calculus to predict where it will land and how it will bounce. As John Coates makes clear, there’s not enough time for such conscious assessments. Rather, you feel how the ball was hit and you move in response to its flight. This kind of engaged intelligence doesn’t exist in computers.
If you accept that there is intuition, the model [of brain as computer] fails, because no computer in the world is capable of intuition. But it also fails if you try to explain human intuition as a form of information processing, because that explanation raises unanswerable questions about how the information might be created, delivered, received and processed.
The effect of mind on matter—turning waves into particles—cannot be explained in terms of material reductionism.
“Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” James Baldwin
In his book Identity and Violence, Amartya Sen argues that the more narrowly people "identify" themselves by race, gender, status, religion, heritage or nationality, the more prone they will be to committing violence.
The mind and the body’s energy are inseparable. As we noted earlier, when the body’s energy is at peace (after a deep, relaxing massage, for instance), the mind is at peace. When the body’s energy is unsettled, the mind is unsettled. When the body’s energy feels spacious, the mind feels spacious. Is your mind agitated?—your body’s energy is agitated. Is your body’s energy alert?—then so too is your mind. Recognizing the inseparability of your mind and your body’s energy makes a difference, because how you identify an issue determines how you approach it. If you notice that your mind is anxious and you try to reason your way out of it, offering logical assurances, those assurances will be originating in a realm that specializes in abstraction. What is abstract is not real. Your body’s intelligence will recognize the unreality of those assurances and will mistrust them. If you recognize your anxiety as energy in the body, the challenge is completely different. First, you are likely to really notice the anxiety and feel it in all its specificity. This is very different from wanting to fix it or make it go away. After all (and the body’s intelligence knows this too), there is no "away"; there is only integrated or unintegrated. Anxious energy is unintegrated energy resisting the Present.
“No amount of physical examination will ever allow us to predict exactly what an atom will do next.” Nick Herbert
In our approach to the world, we justify a certain dissociation from wholeness by appealing to an ideal erroneously attributed to Darwin: survival of the fittest. It is an ugly sentiment, based on a half-truth, and it breeds entitlement, contempt and animosity. It is also a meaningless concept because it rests on a circular argument. “Fitness” in this context has no objective definition. We can only determine what “fitness” for survival means by looking at what happens to survive. Sometimes what survives is not the biggest and strongest but the smallest. When we speak about “the survival of the fittest” as the principle of evolution, then, we are actually saying evolution is about the survival of whatever happens to survive.
Breathing is made possible by the movements of the thoracic diaphragm, which is what we refer to when we speak of “the diaphragm.” But technically the pelvic floor is also a diaphragm. It moves in sync with the thoracic diaphragm to support the breath—or at least it does if it’s not habitually clenched, which tends to happen a lot in our culture.
August 12, 2018
Life-transforming. The information in this book, if taken, and felt with an innocent receptiveness, will lead us to perceive the world (and ourselves) in a radical new way. I’ve read his previous book “New Self, New World”, and although I would encourage to read both certainly, I think starting with this one will cement the knowledge and the work more concisely, then go much more in depth with the other one as it contains more background information as to how we got to this point of thinking and living in societies conditioned to live and act in the head of the tyrant.
This book will stay near me physically and internally within me forever, and I feel grateful for reading it.
This book will stay near me physically and internally within me forever, and I feel grateful for reading it.
July 30, 2020
Review – Radical Wholeness: The Embodied Present and the Ordinary Grace of Being by Philip Shepherd, Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2017.
I was drawn to read Radical Wholeness when it was recommended by a friend while we were discussing the three brains: the head-brain, the heart-brain and the gut-brain. In my work with ecstatic trance, part of the trance induction ritual is to quiet the mind by follow one’s breath for five minutes, an experience that moves the attention to the dantian at the top of the pelvic bowl where the experiences of the gut-brain can be felt. Also in my practice of tai chi, when the yin and yang of the movements are correctly integrated the experience is felt at the dantian, a spot just a couple of inches below the umbilicus. I like to call this spot the center of harmony. These experiences of ecstatic trance and tai chi bring us to The Embodied Present of listening or experiencing that which is beyond the limiting experiences of the head/cranial-brain. In the cranial brain thoughts are abstract rather than present and real. The experiences of the head-brain are limited to what is perceived through our five senses of sight, smell, sound, taste, and touch, experiences from outside of the body.
Most fascinating is Shepherd’s story of the sense of balance that is central in the lives of the Anlo-Ewe people of Africa, a sense of balance perceived through the sense organ of the inner-ear, the labyrinth. This sense of balance allows children as young as two years to carry pans of water on their head, allowing their arms to move freely. We do not consider this internal body sense of balance as one of our five senses, yet this sense of balance directly affects the Anlo-Ewe’s approach to living a life of balance and wholeness. Our five senses define us as being separate from the world outside of our body, the body-self that strives ineffectively for independence rather than the integration of wholeness. The Anlo-Ewe people do not have a word specifically for that which is perceived from the outer-world, but their word seselelame refers to that which is perceived through the sensations of the body, including such sensation as happiness, sorrow, and sexual arousal. This much broader definition opens them to an integrated sense of wholeness, wholeness that includes the world beyond the body.
Shepherd spends much of the book contrasting our limited intelligence centered in the cranial brain to the intelligence offered by the world of wholeness, a world in which we can listen to everything that enters through our gut or the pelvic-bowel brain from the dantain down to the perineum of the pelvic floor, attuning us to that which comes from beyond our limiting body to include the interdependency of everything that is of the Earth. In this world of wholeness we are no longer limited by the shell of our body but we are integrated in everything that is of the Earth and Universe, thus Shepherd defines this pelvic bowl brain as the worldbrain. When limiting ourselves to our cranial brain and the abstract thoughts that reside there we are self-centered and dissociated from our wholeness.
When we reside in our cranial brain we live as a tyrant in a world of consumption, a world in which we ineffectively strive for both control and independence, a world that leans on analysis and schemes for increased self gain, a world upon which the tyrant imposes his will, a contemptuous will of male consciousness dissociated from female consciousness, and a world that is suicidal in that it is bringing us to our own demise.
Shepherd recognizes that living in wholeness is inherent within us if only we would open ourselves to it as do the indigenous cultures of the world and our hunting-gathering ancestors as is evident in their ability to experience all that is of the Earth, and to experience things at a distance. He offers many examples of this listening non-locally, a word that comes to us from quantum physics. Quantum physics has moved us beyond the world of classical physics in which we have lived for about 2500 years, a world in which we have attempted to explain abstractly everything in terms of mechanics, to a world in which that which happens at a distance (non-local) can be perceived, a world in which what we experience becomes reality. Though we have lived in a 4-dimensional world, a world that includes the fourth dimension of time, dimensions beyond this world are being experienced, dimensions that provide us with the instantaneous ability to know what is happening in some distant place and time. Rupert Sheldrake proposes that this instantaneous knowledge and learning is provided through our morphic fields, fields of knowledge not different from gravitational and electromagnetic fields, but fields that surround the cells and organs of our body as well that all bodies within a species and all life upon our Earth. I have frequently written about these discoveries of quantum physics and of Sheldrake in my six books on ecstatic trance.
Shepherd provides a very refreshing way of describing that which I have described in our moving into a new era, the era of time-free transparency, the era that re-connects us to the world of our hunting-gathering ancestors in their ability to listen beyond the five senses, to listen in wholeness. The five eras of consciousness leading up to our current era of rational conscious and our present transition into the era of time-free transparency are described by Jean Gebser in his book, The Ever-Present Origin, originally written in German in the late 1940s. The origin of consciousness began with the archaic era of a dream-like consciousness that lead into the second era, the era of magical consciousness, the shamanic era of our hunting-gathering ancestors. The magical era was then followed by the mythic era, the era which led into the fourth era of rational consciousness about 2500 years ago. The evolutionary transitions between each of these eras have happened in chaos and violence with those who in fear try to hang on to the old ways.
In Chapter 7 Shepherd outlines his weekend workshops in teaching the way of living in wholeness. He offers four objectives for this workshop:
• The Breath: The whole of the body needs to be available to the breath for freedom to reclaim the sensitivity to our own being in Wholeness.
• Rest: Re-sensitizing our sense of Wholeness awakens the pelvic bowl where our awareness can come to rest at the center of grounded sensitivity or intelligence where stillness and wholeness can be felt.
• Receptivity: If we aren’t receiving even as we are giving, we can’t be present in Wholeness which requires a sense of balance.
• Integration: The integration of attuning to breath, awakening the pelvic bowl where awareness can come to rest, and living in balance of giving and receiving brings us into Wholeness of being and the all-sensitive Presence.
This sense of Wholeness and Presence opens the door to deep changes in our culture, changes in how we relate to others, in business, consumerism, service, truth, politics, education, competition and the meaning of time.
As mentioned at the beginning of this review, part of the induction ritual of ecstatic trance is to follow one’s breathing for five minutes to quiet the mind, and that the awareness in following one’s breathing moves attention to the dantian and the pelvic bowl. To briefly explain ecstatic trance and its induction, the anthropologist Felilcitas Goodman in her research of shamanic or ecstatic trance identified five needed elements to induce trance for journeying into the world beyond the self: 1) a belief that the trance experience is healthy and meaningful; 2) that it is performed in a special or sacred space defined by smudging and calling the spirits from each direction; 3) that the mind is quieted by following one’s breath; 4) that trance is induced with rapid stimulation to the nervous system with drumming or rattling; and 5) that specific body postures as used by shamans give direction to the trance experience. She searched for and found approximately 50 different body postures that she believed were used by the shaman of hunting and gathering cultures found their art work in museums and books. When experimenting with these postures in trance she found that some postures are for bringing a healing and strengthening energy into the body; some for divination to find answers to questions; and some for metamorphosis or shape shifting. Other postures are for journeying into the three worlds, some for journeying in the lower world, some for the middle world and some for the upper world. Finally there are the postures that provide initiation or death-rebirth experiences. I have become a certified instructor of ecstatic trance and am continually impressed with the power of these postures and where the ecstatic trance experience takes us, experiences that bring alive within us the sense of wholeness, listening to the body and attuning to the world beyond the body. I teach ecstatic trance in order for us to regain the power of time-free transparency as experienced by our hunting and gathering ancestors and now so beautifully described by Philip Shepherd’s Radical Wholeness.
With my 50 years of practice using hypnosis and now ecstatic trance, I have learned to bring my center of awareness to my dantian, though in the final chapter Shepherd takes this awareness to an even deeper level, down to the perineum of the pelvic floor, an awareness that can take us beyond the awareness of our presence in relationships to a nonpersonal and intimate awareness of the world beyond. Practicing the exercise that Shepherd suggests of breathing from the diaphragm while engaging the responsiveness of the movement of the diaphragm of our pelvic floor brings our awareness to our center, to our perineum, an exercise that brings us to a deeper relationship with our wholeness. I am eager to see what effect this has on my ecstatic trance experiences. Shepherd finds that when his awareness rises above the dantian that it takes him away from wholeness and towards the head, divorcing itself from his being.
This different way of being is not a new technique or skill to be learned but a revolution in consciousness. We are in the process of attuning ourselves to this intelligence beyond our cranial brain, to an intelligence into which we were born. The entire planet, our Great Earth Mother, is crying out for it. I believe and have hope that we have reached a critical mass in our evolutionary journey to this wholeness and presence, and that turning back to living in the abstract world of our cranial brain, a life that has separated us from wholeness and could be leading to our demise, is no longer possible. Philip Shepherd’s Radical Wholeness is a very clear doorway to this revolutionary consciousness in bringing us to the wholeness and presence we so dearly need for our survival in this new world of time-free transparency.
I was drawn to read Radical Wholeness when it was recommended by a friend while we were discussing the three brains: the head-brain, the heart-brain and the gut-brain. In my work with ecstatic trance, part of the trance induction ritual is to quiet the mind by follow one’s breath for five minutes, an experience that moves the attention to the dantian at the top of the pelvic bowl where the experiences of the gut-brain can be felt. Also in my practice of tai chi, when the yin and yang of the movements are correctly integrated the experience is felt at the dantian, a spot just a couple of inches below the umbilicus. I like to call this spot the center of harmony. These experiences of ecstatic trance and tai chi bring us to The Embodied Present of listening or experiencing that which is beyond the limiting experiences of the head/cranial-brain. In the cranial brain thoughts are abstract rather than present and real. The experiences of the head-brain are limited to what is perceived through our five senses of sight, smell, sound, taste, and touch, experiences from outside of the body.
Most fascinating is Shepherd’s story of the sense of balance that is central in the lives of the Anlo-Ewe people of Africa, a sense of balance perceived through the sense organ of the inner-ear, the labyrinth. This sense of balance allows children as young as two years to carry pans of water on their head, allowing their arms to move freely. We do not consider this internal body sense of balance as one of our five senses, yet this sense of balance directly affects the Anlo-Ewe’s approach to living a life of balance and wholeness. Our five senses define us as being separate from the world outside of our body, the body-self that strives ineffectively for independence rather than the integration of wholeness. The Anlo-Ewe people do not have a word specifically for that which is perceived from the outer-world, but their word seselelame refers to that which is perceived through the sensations of the body, including such sensation as happiness, sorrow, and sexual arousal. This much broader definition opens them to an integrated sense of wholeness, wholeness that includes the world beyond the body.
Shepherd spends much of the book contrasting our limited intelligence centered in the cranial brain to the intelligence offered by the world of wholeness, a world in which we can listen to everything that enters through our gut or the pelvic-bowel brain from the dantain down to the perineum of the pelvic floor, attuning us to that which comes from beyond our limiting body to include the interdependency of everything that is of the Earth. In this world of wholeness we are no longer limited by the shell of our body but we are integrated in everything that is of the Earth and Universe, thus Shepherd defines this pelvic bowl brain as the worldbrain. When limiting ourselves to our cranial brain and the abstract thoughts that reside there we are self-centered and dissociated from our wholeness.
When we reside in our cranial brain we live as a tyrant in a world of consumption, a world in which we ineffectively strive for both control and independence, a world that leans on analysis and schemes for increased self gain, a world upon which the tyrant imposes his will, a contemptuous will of male consciousness dissociated from female consciousness, and a world that is suicidal in that it is bringing us to our own demise.
Shepherd recognizes that living in wholeness is inherent within us if only we would open ourselves to it as do the indigenous cultures of the world and our hunting-gathering ancestors as is evident in their ability to experience all that is of the Earth, and to experience things at a distance. He offers many examples of this listening non-locally, a word that comes to us from quantum physics. Quantum physics has moved us beyond the world of classical physics in which we have lived for about 2500 years, a world in which we have attempted to explain abstractly everything in terms of mechanics, to a world in which that which happens at a distance (non-local) can be perceived, a world in which what we experience becomes reality. Though we have lived in a 4-dimensional world, a world that includes the fourth dimension of time, dimensions beyond this world are being experienced, dimensions that provide us with the instantaneous ability to know what is happening in some distant place and time. Rupert Sheldrake proposes that this instantaneous knowledge and learning is provided through our morphic fields, fields of knowledge not different from gravitational and electromagnetic fields, but fields that surround the cells and organs of our body as well that all bodies within a species and all life upon our Earth. I have frequently written about these discoveries of quantum physics and of Sheldrake in my six books on ecstatic trance.
Shepherd provides a very refreshing way of describing that which I have described in our moving into a new era, the era of time-free transparency, the era that re-connects us to the world of our hunting-gathering ancestors in their ability to listen beyond the five senses, to listen in wholeness. The five eras of consciousness leading up to our current era of rational conscious and our present transition into the era of time-free transparency are described by Jean Gebser in his book, The Ever-Present Origin, originally written in German in the late 1940s. The origin of consciousness began with the archaic era of a dream-like consciousness that lead into the second era, the era of magical consciousness, the shamanic era of our hunting-gathering ancestors. The magical era was then followed by the mythic era, the era which led into the fourth era of rational consciousness about 2500 years ago. The evolutionary transitions between each of these eras have happened in chaos and violence with those who in fear try to hang on to the old ways.
In Chapter 7 Shepherd outlines his weekend workshops in teaching the way of living in wholeness. He offers four objectives for this workshop:
• The Breath: The whole of the body needs to be available to the breath for freedom to reclaim the sensitivity to our own being in Wholeness.
• Rest: Re-sensitizing our sense of Wholeness awakens the pelvic bowl where our awareness can come to rest at the center of grounded sensitivity or intelligence where stillness and wholeness can be felt.
• Receptivity: If we aren’t receiving even as we are giving, we can’t be present in Wholeness which requires a sense of balance.
• Integration: The integration of attuning to breath, awakening the pelvic bowl where awareness can come to rest, and living in balance of giving and receiving brings us into Wholeness of being and the all-sensitive Presence.
This sense of Wholeness and Presence opens the door to deep changes in our culture, changes in how we relate to others, in business, consumerism, service, truth, politics, education, competition and the meaning of time.
As mentioned at the beginning of this review, part of the induction ritual of ecstatic trance is to follow one’s breathing for five minutes to quiet the mind, and that the awareness in following one’s breathing moves attention to the dantian and the pelvic bowl. To briefly explain ecstatic trance and its induction, the anthropologist Felilcitas Goodman in her research of shamanic or ecstatic trance identified five needed elements to induce trance for journeying into the world beyond the self: 1) a belief that the trance experience is healthy and meaningful; 2) that it is performed in a special or sacred space defined by smudging and calling the spirits from each direction; 3) that the mind is quieted by following one’s breath; 4) that trance is induced with rapid stimulation to the nervous system with drumming or rattling; and 5) that specific body postures as used by shamans give direction to the trance experience. She searched for and found approximately 50 different body postures that she believed were used by the shaman of hunting and gathering cultures found their art work in museums and books. When experimenting with these postures in trance she found that some postures are for bringing a healing and strengthening energy into the body; some for divination to find answers to questions; and some for metamorphosis or shape shifting. Other postures are for journeying into the three worlds, some for journeying in the lower world, some for the middle world and some for the upper world. Finally there are the postures that provide initiation or death-rebirth experiences. I have become a certified instructor of ecstatic trance and am continually impressed with the power of these postures and where the ecstatic trance experience takes us, experiences that bring alive within us the sense of wholeness, listening to the body and attuning to the world beyond the body. I teach ecstatic trance in order for us to regain the power of time-free transparency as experienced by our hunting and gathering ancestors and now so beautifully described by Philip Shepherd’s Radical Wholeness.
With my 50 years of practice using hypnosis and now ecstatic trance, I have learned to bring my center of awareness to my dantian, though in the final chapter Shepherd takes this awareness to an even deeper level, down to the perineum of the pelvic floor, an awareness that can take us beyond the awareness of our presence in relationships to a nonpersonal and intimate awareness of the world beyond. Practicing the exercise that Shepherd suggests of breathing from the diaphragm while engaging the responsiveness of the movement of the diaphragm of our pelvic floor brings our awareness to our center, to our perineum, an exercise that brings us to a deeper relationship with our wholeness. I am eager to see what effect this has on my ecstatic trance experiences. Shepherd finds that when his awareness rises above the dantian that it takes him away from wholeness and towards the head, divorcing itself from his being.
This different way of being is not a new technique or skill to be learned but a revolution in consciousness. We are in the process of attuning ourselves to this intelligence beyond our cranial brain, to an intelligence into which we were born. The entire planet, our Great Earth Mother, is crying out for it. I believe and have hope that we have reached a critical mass in our evolutionary journey to this wholeness and presence, and that turning back to living in the abstract world of our cranial brain, a life that has separated us from wholeness and could be leading to our demise, is no longer possible. Philip Shepherd’s Radical Wholeness is a very clear doorway to this revolutionary consciousness in bringing us to the wholeness and presence we so dearly need for our survival in this new world of time-free transparency.
September 28, 2022
I'm not entirely sure why this has such good reviews. The concept I am in wholehearted agreement with. Yes, thinking with our analytical function influenced by societal structure produces ever narrower hegemonic viewpoints. But this book uses ALOT of words to make this point.
Also some long winded rambles about a specific named author who has antithetical views to this, felt more of a personal diatribe against the individual author, rather than a helpful exploration of their opposing school of thought.
Plus a very binary perspective of male and female qualities which may have been well intentioned or may just have been a very low self awareness or understanding of how gendered (or not) humanity is and how this applies to biology, philosophy and societal (Western) thinking. This book just became too blinkered for me and life's too short to read poorly constructed ideas. And I really did try to persist, because the premise I feel, has a lot to offer. Shame it was executed in such a hegemonic way.
Also some long winded rambles about a specific named author who has antithetical views to this, felt more of a personal diatribe against the individual author, rather than a helpful exploration of their opposing school of thought.
Plus a very binary perspective of male and female qualities which may have been well intentioned or may just have been a very low self awareness or understanding of how gendered (or not) humanity is and how this applies to biology, philosophy and societal (Western) thinking. This book just became too blinkered for me and life's too short to read poorly constructed ideas. And I really did try to persist, because the premise I feel, has a lot to offer. Shame it was executed in such a hegemonic way.
March 28, 2021
There's a lot that's worthwhile in this book, but the author comes across as too arrogant and self-involved to be a good vehicle for the message.
And while I'm not familiar enough with most of the indigenous cultures he references to know whether he portrays them accurately or respectfully, I've spent a lot of time doing work related to the concept of "two-spirit", and I know for certain his use and interpretation would not be much appreciated by the people I've work with. That doesn't bode well for the rest of the content.
And while I'm not familiar enough with most of the indigenous cultures he references to know whether he portrays them accurately or respectfully, I've spent a lot of time doing work related to the concept of "two-spirit", and I know for certain his use and interpretation would not be much appreciated by the people I've work with. That doesn't bode well for the rest of the content.
April 19, 2021
My main takeaway is that desensitizing with the surrounding environment via stoic techniques and meditation is not an optimal way to engage with the world. Then again, it's not easy to say what is. In particular, in the info ecosystem where algorithms manipulate our thoughts and reactions, "acting in line with your feelings" can mean frequent and unproductive outrage. So one must be careful.
Some ideas were difficult to wrap my mind (!) around. Also because it's a masterfully, even poetically written work, probably worth a reread.
Some ideas were difficult to wrap my mind (!) around. Also because it's a masterfully, even poetically written work, probably worth a reread.
April 21, 2025
Hade jag kommit längre på min andliga resa och gjort mer av det introspektiva arbetet som denna bok egentligen ”kräver”, så hade den säkert fått 5/5. Jag är inte där än så denna bok tog mycket tid att beta av, med svår engelska, begrepp jag aldrig hört om och övningar som behöver repeteras för att verkligen kännas.
Absolut något jag får läsa om med tiden för att verkligen ”fatta”, men kanske inte en sådan bok jag behövde helt för att slappna av med emellan skolan.
Absolut något jag får läsa om med tiden för att verkligen ”fatta”, men kanske inte en sådan bok jag behövde helt för att slappna av med emellan skolan.
July 11, 2024
I believe that you meet books when you need them and this one is definitely one of those. It is one that will stay with me for life.
May 9, 2020
It was a lot more philosophical than story based (which was what I was expecting based on the reviews), but overall a deep and thoughtful journey. The practical bits are at the end, but looking back I needed the whole book to really get the practical pieces.
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September 19, 2021After reading Radical Wholeness and hearing Philip Shepard speak to a class studying the enneagram, I FEEL that he is eloquently delineating the work required to seek the next level of existence. His practice called The Elevator (as described in the book) must be experienced to begin understanding.
July 2, 2025
too often, people leap to the proclamation that “we’re all one” — a phrase that, while potentially true, can become dangerously misleading when offered without grounding or guidance. especially when spoken by someone we look to as a teacher or spiritual authority, such statements can do more harm than good. in my own life, trying to mentally force this idea into my being led to inner turmoil — pushing myself to be forgiving, kind, and generous in ways that felt disconnected and performative, rather than embodied or true.
philip shepherd, in radical wholeness, shows a profound understanding of this dilemma. his work carries a deep, unspoken recognition of how such truths can become disorienting or even harmful without integration, context, or support. this book doesn’t hold your hand, nor does it offer easy answers. instead, it creates an entirely new landscape — a world of its own — complete with fresh vocabulary and perspectives that invite you to navigate embodiment in ways untouched by recycled knowledge dressed up as wisdom.
philip has created something holistic in the truest sense: a world that completes itself from the inside out. his ability to distill generations of spiritual insight into something tangible, contemporary, and grounded in the body — not just the mind — is nothing short of genius.
philip shepherd, in radical wholeness, shows a profound understanding of this dilemma. his work carries a deep, unspoken recognition of how such truths can become disorienting or even harmful without integration, context, or support. this book doesn’t hold your hand, nor does it offer easy answers. instead, it creates an entirely new landscape — a world of its own — complete with fresh vocabulary and perspectives that invite you to navigate embodiment in ways untouched by recycled knowledge dressed up as wisdom.
philip has created something holistic in the truest sense: a world that completes itself from the inside out. his ability to distill generations of spiritual insight into something tangible, contemporary, and grounded in the body — not just the mind — is nothing short of genius.
March 7, 2022
In a world where we venerate the primacy of the head, acknowledge only the 5 “official” senses and limit ourselves to the the few dimensions we know, this book challenges the reader to think very differently.
It suggests that if we want to achieve wholeness then we need to move away from these limitations.
We need to move away from just using the intelligence of the head and listen also to the intelligence of the heart, gut and whole. body.
We need to use all our senses, the usual 5, and all the others that we instinctively know but don’t label like intuition, balance, perspective, beauty, grace, vitality…
And we need to look differently at the energy of the world. If we consider the body as a shell and barrier then we will never open ourselves up to all the energies of the world. We will never consider the ever changing flow of energy from one state to another and how we are part of the that energy and not separate to it and how our attempts to remain separate have lead to the current state of the world where we treat the world as a place to exploit and use rather that part of something we should venerate and treasure.
It’s a thought provoking book. At time a little preachy but worth a read and consideration of its wisdom and learning.
It suggests that if we want to achieve wholeness then we need to move away from these limitations.
We need to move away from just using the intelligence of the head and listen also to the intelligence of the heart, gut and whole. body.
We need to use all our senses, the usual 5, and all the others that we instinctively know but don’t label like intuition, balance, perspective, beauty, grace, vitality…
And we need to look differently at the energy of the world. If we consider the body as a shell and barrier then we will never open ourselves up to all the energies of the world. We will never consider the ever changing flow of energy from one state to another and how we are part of the that energy and not separate to it and how our attempts to remain separate have lead to the current state of the world where we treat the world as a place to exploit and use rather that part of something we should venerate and treasure.
It’s a thought provoking book. At time a little preachy but worth a read and consideration of its wisdom and learning.
February 21, 2020
“What is being asked of us is not a little thing. It is not just a new technique or a certain skill we need to learn. It is not an add-on or an adjustment to our way of being: it is a different way of being. It is a revolution in consciousness—more profound in its implications, perhaps, than the one initiated when Copernicus displaced the earth from its position at the center of the heavens; for we are not just accommodating a new piece of knowledge that overturns an old belief system and thereby changes us. The change that is needed is one we have to initiate within ourselves voluntarily: to self-achieve a submission to wholeness that will transform how we live in the world. It will displace the head from its position at the center of our thinking, and attune us to the very intelligence out of which and into which we were born. This journey into wholeness is a revolution that the entire planet is crying out for—and it can only begin with individuals like you making a personal choice.”
5/5
5/5
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 28, 2022
As a young adult the books and videos of the Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti made a profound influence on my life and thinking. Forty years later I still trace many of values and thoughts to Krishnamurti's teachings. I never thought I'd encounter a thinker who could affect me anywhere near the same level. Now that I've read the Philip Shepherd's third book, Radical Wholeness, I'm delighted to be as deeply moved, as inspired, and as challenged as I was in my youth. Whether the effect lasts for 40 years (hopefully Shepherd's second book, Deep Fitness, will help me live healthily past 100!) remains to be seen. But Radical Wholeness is, perhaps, the most deeply insightful book I've ever read.
If I were to summarize the book in the briefest possible way, I'd say 'Humanity is stuck in their heads. We need to move our consciousness into their lower body regions, especially their perineum, to regain the body's intelligence.' Don't take my word for it though. Read the book with an open mind to begin the journey to reclaim your body.
If I were to summarize the book in the briefest possible way, I'd say 'Humanity is stuck in their heads. We need to move our consciousness into their lower body regions, especially their perineum, to regain the body's intelligence.' Don't take my word for it though. Read the book with an open mind to begin the journey to reclaim your body.
June 12, 2022
I feel like anyone that jumps on board for this book is already going to be perceptionally aligned with the author, but for wider consumption, the book is a bit judgy of the status quo, which always raises a flag for me regarding spiritual books. It's really to say "you're not happy now, the status quo is why, you need to change X..." The book addresses that kind of thinking, however, and invites people to imagine a sort of perception that includes less dogma and more embodied integration to the world.
It's an interesting read, but I felt there was too much content focused on persuasion and not enough focused on exercises. While there are exercises given, they seem a bit abstract. Likely one has to have some education in meditation to grasp them, fully.
All said, I enjoyed it. There are some interesting issues addressed psychologically and scientifically, it just feels like it could have been better organized and offered more in terms of what to do if one accepts the underlying thesis of the work.
It's an interesting read, but I felt there was too much content focused on persuasion and not enough focused on exercises. While there are exercises given, they seem a bit abstract. Likely one has to have some education in meditation to grasp them, fully.
All said, I enjoyed it. There are some interesting issues addressed psychologically and scientifically, it just feels like it could have been better organized and offered more in terms of what to do if one accepts the underlying thesis of the work.
June 15, 2022
"Radical Wholeness" is a call for people to reclaim their balance. For so much time, the influence of certain ideas have allowed for us to lead with our brain and head. Notably important, our brain and mind are absolutely necessary. This said, we neglect other kinds of reason and parts of our body that also present and perhaps even lead us to better ways of knowing and being. The brain is just one part of an entire body that is all interconnected to create a whole.
Philip Sheperd gives correlated "real world" examples that align our decisions to where we have arrived as a colonized Eurocentric society. He then presents societal solutions (from cultures outside this Eurocentric gaze) that lead beyond our current pitfalls and troubles.
In particular, the discussions of gentleness and the pelvic bowl were really enlightening as I move toward more embodied ways of being. A timely read as I finish up an eight-week Feldenkrais course.
Philip Sheperd gives correlated "real world" examples that align our decisions to where we have arrived as a colonized Eurocentric society. He then presents societal solutions (from cultures outside this Eurocentric gaze) that lead beyond our current pitfalls and troubles.
In particular, the discussions of gentleness and the pelvic bowl were really enlightening as I move toward more embodied ways of being. A timely read as I finish up an eight-week Feldenkrais course.
March 13, 2023
I read half properly and then skimmed the rest (reading properly the bits that were of particular interest).
The first chapter or two is really quite good - challenging in the right way, asking some good questions and promoting an open-hearted, mind-body-connected, receptive state. When he talks about the Present with awe and sonder, I believe he's really describing a God-created, spoken world.
But then you start looking at some of the specific examples, e.g. the heart transplant crime and the explanation of the particle/wave duality and in those specifics, they're really poorly evidenced/explained. And you start to get the sense that quite a lot more of it (that you might be less familiar with) is a bit sloppy/exaggerated.
I do think Shepherd's on to something and there are some very good points relating to getting out of your head and into your body (including exercises at the end).
The first chapter or two is really quite good - challenging in the right way, asking some good questions and promoting an open-hearted, mind-body-connected, receptive state. When he talks about the Present with awe and sonder, I believe he's really describing a God-created, spoken world.
But then you start looking at some of the specific examples, e.g. the heart transplant crime and the explanation of the particle/wave duality and in those specifics, they're really poorly evidenced/explained. And you start to get the sense that quite a lot more of it (that you might be less familiar with) is a bit sloppy/exaggerated.
I do think Shepherd's on to something and there are some very good points relating to getting out of your head and into your body (including exercises at the end).
December 15, 2019
Shepherd describes a top-heavy society, based on values that celebrate individuality, analysis, and control. He proposes a revolution towards gentleness and depth — away from the head and towards more intuitive ways of knowing. It’s a very thought provoking book.
However, his prophetic and political message went a bit far for my taste. The book was awash with sweeping and only moderately supported conclusions about Society, Humanity, and Being. Generalizations about masculinity and femininity were especially egregious on this point.
Would overall recommend, but I do think his self-assured tone undermined his thesis.
However, his prophetic and political message went a bit far for my taste. The book was awash with sweeping and only moderately supported conclusions about Society, Humanity, and Being. Generalizations about masculinity and femininity were especially egregious on this point.
Would overall recommend, but I do think his self-assured tone undermined his thesis.
December 6, 2021
Ways we've unconsciously been raised to value the brain/head far more than the body/senses.
Ways in which we can return our consciousness to the body so we can be more alert and awake to the moment.
The subject was fascinating, and examples of other cultures that value/inhabit different parts of the body was particularly interesting... I just find the advice easy to understand but trickier to put into practice.
Ways in which we can return our consciousness to the body so we can be more alert and awake to the moment.
The subject was fascinating, and examples of other cultures that value/inhabit different parts of the body was particularly interesting... I just find the advice easy to understand but trickier to put into practice.
March 5, 2022
Beyond words! I love this book so much. I will be reading it again and again…. I believe that Philip has a message for all of us that goes against all standard educational systems. But it is exactly aligned with what I have always known since childhood. Feel the world I have been born into, feel and listen to the body I have been given. Trust that my body knows.
Thank You Philip for this wonderful book🙏🏼
Thank You Philip for this wonderful book🙏🏼
December 19, 2022
I found the book very thought provoking and will at some point re-read it. There is a need to more fully embrace a more embodied existence but the book did not help me move in that direction beyond opening my eyes to my limited perspective. I found the writing ponderous. The author seems a bit to pleased with himself and fails to distill the content or make it consumable. I am reminded of the saying "I would have written 5 pages, but I didn't have time, so you are getting 50 pages".
February 21, 2022
4.5 stars
This book deals with not-yet popular but crucial and mind-blowing concept. Powerful insight on how to help alleviate individual and social problems, although some parts I feel they are too repetitive. In the later parts to the book, the author reasonably and admiringly apply the concept with our current problems. Worth a read.
This book deals with not-yet popular but crucial and mind-blowing concept. Powerful insight on how to help alleviate individual and social problems, although some parts I feel they are too repetitive. In the later parts to the book, the author reasonably and admiringly apply the concept with our current problems. Worth a read.
January 4, 2024
By and large, I dig the overall premise of this book. The author makes some good points and is generally easy to listen to. That said, as someone with a degree in anthropology, I question the depth of his understanding of several of the cultural examples he gave. The last part of the book talks a lot about his beliefs around the importance of the perineum, so be ready for that.
October 16, 2024
One of the hardest but most rewarding books I've read. Full of new insights and knowledge that you can absorb. Not an easy read, it's like reading through a study book, but also full of personal notes that make it relatable. Recommend if you're up for looking into new (or old) ways of being part of the beautiful world we're living in.
January 4, 2022
I loved this book (I listened to audio version read by the author and enjoyed it very much). There were a lot of ideas (some yes, radical) that were new to me. The meditation on language as a sense is something I keep thinking about.
September 2, 2023
I feel sorry for people who have not read this or have no idea about the messaging this book conveys. Do yourself a favour and read this. Go on, I know you can feel it in your pelvic bowl.
There are too many pelvic bowl mentions in this book.
There are too many pelvic bowl mentions in this book.
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