Books on the Body-Mind Connection

I am really pleased to say that the next blog entry has been written by Dr Jennifer Leigh, an expertise on yoga and somatic education.  I asked Jennifer to recommend five books on a genuinely fascinating topic - and one that is of great relevance to both sport and education - the body mind connection.

When I was asked to recommend five books on mind-body connection I have to say that my brain froze.  I looked at the (shelves and shelves of) books that I own on aspects of this and was completely flummoxed.  I could recommend lots of them.  Others I wouldn’t touch with a bargepole.  My main concern though, was who I would be recommending them for.So I have decided to recommend one book from five sections of my bookshelves (bar the really freaky ones) with a little bit of an introduction as to why it may be relevant to the mind-body discourse. 

The idea of a mind-body connection is not exactly universally accepted.  The ascendancy of the mind over the body and its importance in the development of Western philosophy and later medicine, psychology and sport can be traced back to the days of Plato, the Orphic and Socrates: “the body is an endless source of trouble...only the mind can reach existence”.  For example, Descartes’ dualism was firmly anti-organic, built on earlier notions of the physical world, and described in the words of Alan Watts as, “the domain of corruption and evil”.  The division or schism between mind and body can thus be seen to have affected Western society from its earliest days, with the body being seen as inferior to the mind. 

In contrast, in yoga philosophy and practice a mind-body connection is an assumption.  The purely physical aspect of yoga, asana, has been emphasised in recent years, sometimes to the exclusion of all else, turning yoga practice into an exercise form.  Yoga could be a valuable practice for any sports person.  But which book on yoga to recommend? 

I have chosen Dynamic Yoga by Godfrey Devereux (1998).  Devereux’s approach to yoga is physical, strong and active.  His explanations of the poses are clear, and if you can get over the extremely revealing shorts he wears, the photos are helpful.  The book is comprehensive, covering the poses you would encounter in most Hatha, Ashtanga or Iyengar yoga classes.

Eastern philosophy has a different starting point and language when talking of the mind and body, illustrating “the irrelevance of Western theories to non-Western contexts”.  The traditional Eastern view of the body and mind is that they are inseparable aspects of the same human existence.  A book that explores the martial mind-body connection is Peter and Laura Ralston’s Zen-Body Being (2006).  It is a bit of a how-to manual with exercises designed to help the reader experience a greater sense of their body-being.

The importance of the body-mind (or embodied mind) as opposed to a body/mind split in the philosophy of psychotherapy can be traced back through Freud and his discovery of the power of the unconscious over the conscious and his work on the power-relationship between therapist and client.  Linda Hartley’s Somatic Psychology (2004) traces the history of psychology and its sorry relationship with the body, which has tended to either ignore it (in the context of cognitive or social psychology), or treat it as exclusively functional (in biological and neuro-psychologies). 

In a discussion of Eastern philosophies and their resemblance to Western psychotherapy, Alan Watts states that both are concerned “with bringing about changes of consciousness”.  Western psychotherapy has as a primary concern with the study of the mind or psyche as a clinical entitity, whereas “Eastern cultures have not categorized mind and matter, soul and body, in the same way”.  By increasing awareness of the body-mind and its movements, it is possible to increase awareness of that boundary of and relationship with the world (and all others in it).  Alan Fogel’s The Psychophysiology of Self-Awareness (2009) explores how the physiology of the body and psychology interact within a therapeutic situation.  He illustrates this with the use of psychology, neuro-biology and the Rosen Method, a form of somatic bodywork. 

My final book is a collection of writings on the principles and techniques of somatics in Don Hanlon Johnson’s Body, Breath and Gesture (1995).  The book forms a history of the field, including how it has fragmented into the disparate approaches and techniques that are found today.  Johnson focuses on Western somatic body awareness disciplines, many of which were developed after the turn of the last century.  Some of the practices outlined may fall into that ‘hippy’ section, however I find it to be a book that gives a very clear sense of the broadness of the somatic field and the scope of work and practice that people are engaging in to increase their sense of a mind-body connection.

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Jennifer Leigh is an accredited Somatic Movement Therapist, a Qualified School Teacher and an experienced Yoga Instructor.  Her doctoral research was a study on children’s perceptions of embodiment. She is currently working as a Research Associate at the University of Kent on a study looking at Costs and Outcomes of Skilled Support for Individuals with Complex Needs and an evaluation of ‘Imagining Autism’, a drama intervention for primary school children with autism.  She also has a killer pair of legs.

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The Arts of Storytelling and Learning

I recently came across an interview with the US radio and TV host Ira Glass.  He was talking about the art of storytelling, and his basic message was this:



hard work, grit and stick-to-it-ness are needed if you are going to create great work.

Not a radical idea, I know.  Especially in the era of 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.  But Glass introduces another element that I've never seen mentioned in the literature of expert performance, and that is TASTE.




Here is what he says:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit."

This sense of frustration will be familiar to anyone who has ever tried to learn something.  Especially something complex.




For example, in the last few years I have tried to learn a number of difficult things including golf, sketching, and Italian. Each of these activities had their own challenges.  My main difficulties with Italian were linked my my apparent inability to hear the differences between many of the sounds and 'phonemes' that made up the language.  In my head I was speaking like a character in a Fellini film, whilst to my teachers I sounded like Phil Mitchell in a pizzeria.  With sketching, I had to learn to overcome my tendency to impose my preconceived ideas rather than what I was observing.  Chairs have four legs; faces have two eyes; those are the facts, whichever way they are facing.


And don't even get me started on golf!


Yet, as expertise theory (and common sense) would predict, the more I did these activities, the better I got, more or less.  And the pace of my improvement seemed ti be strongly associated with the quality of support and feedback I received from my teachers and coachers.


Ira Glass' discussion of storytelling is relevant to those interested in learning and expertise because it hints at a principle behind both practice and feedback: taste, or (if you prefer) AESTHETICS.  In other words, movement towards competence or even expertise in these areas is only possible because the learner and the teacher have their senses of aesthetic judgement - some attempts are better than others; some actions are desirable, not just because of the outcome, but because of an intrinsic value; generally speaking, grace, and fluidity and poise are preferable to their opposites.


Aesthetics are STANDARDS.


It seems to me that taste acts as a powerful motivator for both learners and teachers.  Both are inspired by a sense of the way a skill or technique is supposed to be, and - from time to time - their senses coincide!  If we wish to get better at our chosen activity - if we want to bridge the gap between ability and ambition - we need to be clear that we need to do the work.  There are no short cuts.

It is the responsibility of teachers and coaches to make this clear to the learner from the beginning.  Nothing of value is learned easily.


Glass again:

Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

So practice and feedback are vital elements in the development of expertise.  But both of these, I suggest, assume a sense of taste or aesthetics.  Practice, if it is for any purpose, must have some ambition.  And feedback is always with reference to a standard of performance or imitation.


Knowing helps explain our frustrations as we learn AND teach, and it helps explain why practice and feedback are so important in the first place.


To finish off, he is a recording of Ira Glass himself talking about storytelling, accompanied by some beautiful typography.


I'd love to hear your thoughts on the issues raised in this entry.  Criticisms, too!

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

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