Body Aware: Rediscover Your Mind-Body Connection, Stop Feeling Stuck, and Improve Your Mental Health with Simple Movement Practices

An at-home mindful movement practice--cultivate resilience, dispel emotional blockages, and live your best life with the power of movement.

When we talk about movement, most of us think “exercise.” But the way we move our bodies--how we walk, roll, dance, stretch, connect, and take up space--is about so much more than physical fitness. Our movements impact our mental and emotional health...and when we change the way we move, we can change the way we live.

Licensed clinical professional counselor and board-certified dance and movement therapist Erica Hornthal--aka “The Therapist Who Moves You”--takes readers on a step-by-step journey, showing how a mindful movement practice can:

• Help ease symptoms of depression

• Build a greater sense of connection and intimacy with loved ones

• Slow down thoughts to lessen anxiety and panic

• Impact how--and what--we feel

Readers will learn to identify where they physically hold their emotions; understand and interpret their body’s unique language; explore bodily sensations; identify emotional blockages; and upgrade harmful thought cycles to patterns that instead foster resilience, emotional regulation, and productivity. With a chapter on disability and movement diversity, Hornthal’s guide begins to move dance therapy to a more inclusive, non-prescriptive space, helping each of us discover the kind of movement that works best for us.

Broken into three sections, “How You Move,” “How Movement is a Catalyst for Change,” and “Transforming Your Life Through Movement,” Body Aware is a revelatory transformational practice and an easy-to-use introduction to the mind-body power of intentional movement.

ERICA HORNTHAL is a licensed clinical professional counselor, board-certified dance/movement therapist, and the CEO and founder of Chicago Dance Therapy. Since graduating with her MA in Dance/Movement Therapy and Counseling from Columbia College Chicago, Erica has worked with thousands of patients aged 3-107. Known as “The Therapist Who Moves You,” Hornthal is changing the way people see movement with regard to mental health.