Bioenergetics

Bioenergetics is the revolutionary new therapy that uses the language of the body to heal the problems of the mind. This exciting body-mind approach to personality has a liberating and positive effect on emotional, physical, and psychic distress. Dr. Alexander Lowen, founder and prime mover of this fast-growing therapy, writes that increased joy and pleasure are possible in every day life through an understanding of how your body functions energetically: how it determines what you feel, think, and do. Dr. Lowen points out that lack of energy is the result of chronic muscular tensions, a condition caused by the suppression of feelings. These tensions can be dissolved through the direct body work in bioenergetic exercise, which restores the potential for living a rich, full life. Dr. Lowen analyzes common physical ailments like headaches and lower back pain and shows how they too can be overcome by releasing the muscular tenstion that create them. Generously illustrated with line drawings of bioenergetic exercises, this book is sure to bring freedom, confidence, and pleasure to thousands of men and women.

"In this highly interesting and valuable attempt to restore the body to the mind, Dr. Alexander Lowen sets out in a practically useful way the principles of his new form of psychotherapy. Bioenergetics is destined to become widely influential."
—Ashley Montagu

BioenergeticsI. From Reich to Bioenergetics
Reichian Therapy, 1940-1945
Work as a Reichian Therapist, 1945-1953
The Development of Bioenergetics

II. The Energy Concept
Charge, Discharge, Flow and Movement
You Are Your Body
Mind, Spirit, and Soul
The Life of the Body: The Bioenergetic Exercise

III. The Language of the Body
The Heart of Life: The Heart of the Matter
Interacting with Life
Body Signs and Expressions

IV. Bioenergetic Therapy
A Voyage in Self-Discovery
The Core of Therapy
Anxiety

V. Pleasure: A Primary Orientation
The Pleasure Principle
The Ego and the Body
A Characterology
The Hierarchy of Character Types and a Bill of Rights

VI. Reality: A Secondary Orientation
Reality and Illusion
Hang-Ups
Grounding

VII. Falling Anxiety
The Fear of Height
An Exercise in Falling
The Causes of Falling Anxiety
Falling in Love

VIII. Stress and Sex
Gravity: A General View of Stress
Lower-Back Pain
The Sexual Release

IX. Self-Expression and Survival
Self-Expression and Spontaneity
Sound and Personality
The Eyes Are the Mirrors of the Soul
Headaches

X. Consciousness: Unity and Duality
Expanding Consciousness
Words and the Heightening of Consciousness
Principles and Character

Index

Dr. Alexander Lowen is the creator of bioenergetics, which he has defined as "a therapeutic technique to help a person get back together with his body and to help him enjoy to the fullest degree possible the life of the body." Incorporating direct work on the body into the psychoanalytic process, Dr. Lowen practices psychiatry in New York and Connecticut and is the executive director of the Institute of Bioenergetic Analysis. He is married and lives in New Canaan, Connecticut, with his wife and son.