Returning Home to Our Bodies: Reimagining the Relationship Between Our Bodies and the World--Practices for connecting somatics, nature, and social change

by Abigail Rose Clarke

Overview

For readers of adrienne maree brown, Staci K. Haines, and Robin Wall Kimmerer

A body-based healing model that interrogates what we’ve been wrongly taught about hierarchies of nature and the body—and pushes back against the white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism embedded in modern embodiment practices.

Pushing back against a consumerist, pleasure-centric somatics industry that privileges product over process, Abigail Rose Clarke reminds us that truly meaningful embodiment practice nurtures our relationships among self, nature, and community.

Combining the rigor of the scientific method with the poetry and lyricism of movement and somatic studies, Clarke’s somatic learning system—The Embodied Life Method—centers the body as a guide through today’s most seemingly intractable social and environmental challenges, reclaiming the body as a source of liberatory comfort in times of great uncertainty and yet, possibility. 

With tools and practices to help us better understand and dismantle the many ways our bodies are weaponized to serve domination systems, topics covered include:

• Harnessing the vitality of curiosity and experimentation
• Using nature as a guide to possibility
• Embracing the necessity of difference
• Exposing the lie of universal isolation
• Dismantling the fallacy of hierarchy
• Uncovering the truth of endless capacity
• Awe as a driving force for transformation

With methods honed over decades of inquiry, teaching, and practice, Returning Home to Our Bodies provides a lucid, body-based model of healing and restoration—one that imagines a world beyond systems of domination, marginalization, and isolation to nurture embodied, whole-community liberation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781623179380
Publisher:	North Atlantic Books
Publication date:	01/09/2024
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.60(d)

Editorial Reviews

"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."
—Kristine Morris, Foreword Reviews

“In this book, Abigail Rose Clarke has synthesized some of the most important processes of our time and woven them into a single process. In a unique and radically new way, this book gives us simple and manageable ways to grasp what it means—and feels like—to be human.”
—Patty Townsend, developer of Embodyoga

“Returning Home to Our Bodies is tenderly expressed and full of precious insights that remind even the most self-aware reader that being present in oneself is real, deliberate work.”
—Soleil Ho, cultural critic for the San Francisco Chronicle

“Abigail uses poetic, down-to-earth language to illuminate the magic of our bodies: the processes, rhythms, and science of being human that are, in fact, quite fantastical. With keen insight rooted in both spirituality and scholarship, this book describes how nature’s wisdom can inform our activism and support a radical reimagining of our bodies in relationship with the world.”
—Mira Weil, DTM, MPH, doctor of Tibetan medicine and sexual health educator

“There is such a poetry to the way Abigail Rose Clarke coaxes a new understanding of our bodies into being in this book. You will find yourself marveling at what the body is made of, what it can do, and what it can reveal to us, if we are truly attentive to it. This book is both a guide and a companion in a quietly radical quest for changing how we experience ourselves and, from that, the world.”
—Tina Antolini, audio journalist, The New York Times

“Abigail’s book reminds us to look to our soft, gliding, attentive, and queer animal nature. So that we might practice presence. So that we might practice awe. So that we might heal, not as an end goal, but as an activity of our true nature. Thank you, Abigail. This book is a gift, and a celebration.”
—Autumn Brown, cohost of How to Survive the End of the World

“Somatic educator and embodied poet Abigail Rose Clarke invites you to come home to the present moment and to your body, and to join her as she gently explores the meaningful metaphors she finds in the sciences of ecology, biology, neuroscience, anatomy, and physiology. Clarke encourages us to live into these metaphors to question the cultural assumptions that lead to so much inequity, pain, horror, and suffering. She guides readers into gentle, meditative practices that can open us to embodied experiences of grounded calm, and sometimes even joy and love—and the awe of being alive.”
—Barbara A. Brehm, health coach and professor of health sciences at Smith College

“In Returning Home to Our Bodies, Abigail bravely integrates, not alternates, between spirituality and science in this breathtaking work. Abigail blurs the lines between science and magic in a way that values both data and the divine. This incredible work of integration has made the study of somatics feel so whole and so close to my heart and mind in a way that no other work ever has. To quote Abigail, ‘there really is no distance between us and this wisdom,’ and now there’s no distance between you and returning home.”
—Colin Bedell, astrologer, author, and creator of Queer Cosmos

“I am thrilled to endorse Abigail Rose Clarke’s remarkable book that explores the mysterious and rich area of somatics. This book has left a powerful mark on me and my relation to the universe.

What truly sets Clarke’s book apart is her creativeness in connecting somatics to scientific concepts, igniting the reader’s imagination and opening doors to new possibilities. As a scientist, I appreciate her adeptness at bridging seemingly disparate worlds, weaving a tapestry where scientific understanding harmonizes with somatic wisdom. One powerful example was how she guided a meditation using the anatomy of the connection between the heart, breath, and pericardium in a way that my heart can optimally relax. Many of the meditations of the senses she eloquently shares in this book really resonated with me also.

As a scientist specializing in quantum physics and pioneer of a somatic movement modality utilizing therapeutic tremoring called Shaking Medicine, I am keenly aware of the difficulty in balancing scientific and spiritual principles. Clarke does this so poetically while maintaining scientific accuracy. Her book educated and inspired me on the interconnectedness of my being as a whole within my environment.

Abigail Rose Clarke’s book is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to explore somatics. Whether you are new to somatics or well versed in the field, her words will inspire and guide you on a transformative journey of self-discovery. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone seeking to expand their consciousness, deepen in connection, and embark on a profound somatic exploration.”
—Dr. Keith Motes, quantum physicist and founder of the Shaking Medicine Foundation

“If you find yourself picking up a book called Returning Home, it is perhaps because you might be feeling lost or unmoored. In a world of self-help books and media, Abigail Rose Clarke throws weary travelers a solid buoy to hold onto in a vast ocean of commodified wellness tactics. In doing so, she invites us to be held by the incredible healing and love that already exists all around us. By witnessing the miracle of our body, the breath in our lungs, the ongoing life cycle of all things, Abigail beautifully compiles a list of ancient healing practices we have known, and perhaps lost, but can come back to. When you feel like you can’t turn anywhere else, you can return to your body, you can return to the world around you, and you can return home.”
—Uzma Chowdhury, writer, teacher, and sociologist

From the Publisher