What Are You Afraid Of? A Body/Mind Guide to Courageous Living - Hardcover

Plonka, Lavinia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1585422851 ISBN 13: 9781585422852

Publisher: Tarcher, 2004

Synopsis

Utilizes a combination of step-by-step exercises, informative advice, and engaging lessons to help readers identify and understand the sources of their fears and work with their bodies to overcome them. 10,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author:

As a former artist-in-residence at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, Lavinia Plonka created several landmark projects teaching literacy and self-esteem to at-risk children. Plonka maintains a successful practice teaching the Feldenkrais Method, and conducts workshops around the country that explore issues such as fear, creativity, mythology, and body language.

Review:

According to the author, a seasoned workshop leader in movement therapies, "fear is often the process of taking a past negative experience and posing it as a potential future negative experience." Children who are raised by overprotective parents, for example, can turn into adults who are so frightened that they will not even drive a car. Their fearful disposition, Plonka says, may be expressed by rigid posture or shallow breathing. She offers a series of physical and mental exercises designed to uncover the layers of anxiety that mask the cause of current fears, such as fear of starvation, illness or death. For example, she recommends dealing with fear of injury by doing breathing exercises, "discovering your options" through body movement and writing down new ways to handle fearful emotions. Many of Plonka's strategies for living bravely are drawn from the work of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, a pioneer in the field of how the nervous system is impacted by "movement, repetition and rest in a safe environment." While the author doesn't delve deeply into the psychology of fear, her sensible and clearly explained program should help provide relief for many beset by debilitating anxiety. 
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Tarcher
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1585422851
• ISBN 13: 9781585422852
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192