Synopses & Reviews
Remember a time when you were bursting with energy, curiosity, and creativity? When your body felt strong and flexible, free of any aches and pains?
With the Anat Baniel Method, you can feel that way again and experience renewed, intensified vitality-greater health, flexibility, strength, sensuality, clarity of mind, and enthusiasm-now and throughout your life, no matter what your age or physical condition.
Your level of vitality is directly connected to your brain. When your brain thrives, growing and making new connections, you are invigorated, infused with a new sense of aliveness and possibility, capable of infinitely new ways of moving, thinking, and feeling. Combining cutting-edge neuroscience, the work of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, and her own method based on more than thirty years of experience working with thousands of people around the world, Anat Baniel has defined the Nine Essentials your brain needs to flourish. In this breakthrough book, she offers specific, practical advice for incorporating those Essentials into everything you do to achieve immediate and powerful benefits.
In Move Into Life, youll:
•Learn the Nine Essentials your brain requires to thrive, including movement with attention, subtlety, and variation
•Experience simple, safe physical and mental exercises that satisfy those needs and thus awaken your vitality
•Discover why and how these methods work
• Find easy ways of incorporating the Essentials into your daily life so every activity-from washing the dishes to working at your desk, from interacting with your loved ones to your golf game-brings you renewed vitality
Endorsed by leading physicians, scientists, and transformational teachers, the Anat Baniel Method will help you enjoy renewed energy and stamina. Youll be lighter on your feet. Your memory will be better. Thinking and problem solving will become easier. If you are active in a sport, yoga, or work out at the gym, you will notice yourself performing better and with greater ease and fewer injuries. Most important, you will experience yourself moving more fully into your life.
Review
andquot;An engrossing history of fitness in the United States. . . . A must-read for fitness buffs and beefy enough to whet the appetite of even the most inert couch potato.andquot;andmdash;Kirkus Reviews
Review
"In Making the American Body, Jonathan Black masterfully explores the many twists and evolutions of the fitness industry, from barbells to exercise machines to today's health clubs."and#8212;Jeff Friend, Foreword Reviews
Review
andquot;An interesting history of physical fitness in America.andquot;andmdash;Karen Sutherland, Library Journal
Review
andquot;The antecedents of the American fitness industry are varied and fascinating, and journalist Blackand#160;. . .and#160;does a superb job of chronicling them.andquot;andmdash;Publishers Weekly
Review
and#8220;
Making the American Body is a fascinating and informative sprint through the history of body worship from the classical Greeks to the present-day fanatics of fitness.and#8221;and#8212;Pat Jordan, author of
A False SpringReview
and#8220;Jonathan Black vividly renders the trends and politics of the fitness movement through the decades, and many of the outsized personalities who have defined it. This is a fascinating and comprehensive look at what has become one of Americaand#8217;s defining obsessions.and#8221;and#8212;Charles Gaines, author and director of
Pumping IronReview
"As a book for a popular audience, it will be of interest to diverse readers."and#8212;J. L. Croissant, CHOICE
Synopsis
If you thought the fitness craze was about being healthy, think again. Although Charles Atlas, Jack LaLanne, Jim Fixx, Jane Fonda, Richard Simmons, and Jillian Michaels might well point the way to a better body, they have done so only if their brands brought in profits. In the first book to tell the full story of the American obsession with fitness and how we got to where we are today, Jonathan Black gives us a backstage look at an industry and the people that have left an indelible mark on the American body and the consciousness it houses.
and#160;Spanning the nationand#8217;s fitness obsession from Atlas to Arnold, from Spinning to Zumba, and featuring an outrageous cast of characters bent on whipping us into shape while simultaneously shaping the way we view our bodies, Black tells the story of an outsized but little-examined aspect of our culture. With insights drawn from more than fifty interviews and attention to key developments in bodybuilding, aerobics, equipment, health clubs, running, sports medicine, group exercise, Pilates, and yoga, Making the American Body reveals how a focus on fitness has shaped not only our physiques but also, and more profoundly, American ideas of what and#8220;fitnessand#8221; is.
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About the Author
ANAT BANIEL is the director of the Anat Baniel Method Center in San Rafael, California. A clinical psychologist and dancer, she worked closely with Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais for more than fifteen years and has helped thousands of people-from five days old to ninety years of age; from high-performance athletes, businesspeople, scientists, and musicians to people worn down by daily stress or aches and pains and those seeking greater joy in their lives-move beyond limitations and achieve greater energy, strength, and success.
Visit the author at www.AnatBanielMethod.com.