Member Reviews
This was super informative. I loved the self-reflection questions throughout the book that made thinking about the techniques manageable and easy to understand. Adding this to my resources as a social worker!
Thank you Brazos Press and Baker Publishing Group for the advance copy. This book is an experiential guide to help readers practice embodiment, and it acts as a very approachable companion to Dr. McBride's other work. It contains simple and well-explained exercises that I'll definitely be referring back to.
"Practices for Embodied Living" by Hillary L. McBride, PhD, is a transformative guide that gracefully merges psychology, mindfulness, and self-discovery. McBride, a skilled therapist, introduces readers to practical exercises designed to foster a deeper connection between mind and body. With compassion and expertise, she navigates the complexities of the human experience, offering tools for healing and personal growth. The book's strength lies in its accessible approach to embodiment, emphasizing the importance of mindfulness in cultivating a more fulfilling life. McBride's insightful guidance makes "Practices for Embodied Living" an invaluable resource for those seeking a holistic path to well-being and self-awareness.
"Practices for Embodied Living" is a concise yet content-rich guide, offering a plethora of practical exercises and insights that make it feel much more expansive than its length suggests. The author provides an accessible and engaging resource for fostering a deeper connection between mind and body. A short read with lasting impact. Thank you to Netgalley, the author, and the publisher for allowing me to read and review.
Practices for Embodied Living is a short and accessible guide of exercises to help the reader reclaim their body and sense of self. It's a wonderful companion to The Wisdom of Your Body that can be practiced independently or in community with others. It can also be read and used on its own, and provides a simple yet essential understanding of embodiment work.
If you're familiar with Hillary L. McBride's "The Wisdom of Your Body," "Practices for Embodied Living: Experiencing the Wisdom of Your Body" allows you to take McBride's insights, knowledge, and experience and to apply it toward more embodied living.
As a disclaimer of sorts, I will acknowledge that I began my journey with "Practices for Embodied Living" only a few weeks after cancer resulted in the loss of my bladder and prostate along with resulting in placement of a urostomy. While the extensive procedures appear to have successfully removed the cancer, the accompanying results have significantly altered my physical being, significantly impacted my sexuality, and immersed me back into a healing journey for a body that was born with spina bifida and in which I've already been living as a wheelchair user, paraplegic, and double amputee.
Man, that's a lot.
Along with being a survivor of childhood and adulthood sexual violence, I've long had complex relationship with my body and, if I'm being honest, a great resistance to the idea of embodied living.
Yet, I was sitting down recently with one of my church's ministers during a home visit as I continue my recover when she rather insightfully asked "How's your relationship with your body?"
Impulsively, I blurted out "I hate it."
Over the next hour of the visit, I would return to my usual state of being (I don't hate my body, but I sure do have unresolved issues) and realize that my recent experiences had left me feeling like an "other," powerless and uncertain in my new physical being while also realizing, or at least believing, that I was destined to live a physical life more defined by violence than intimacy.
As someone who started an event called "The Tenderness Tour," this is profoundly unsettling.
Yet, after this minister left I began to realize that whatever my future holds I had work to do for myself. This brings me back to "Practices for Embodied Living." (I bet you thought I'd never get back to it).
In "The Wisdom of Your Body," Dr. McBride explored the ways that many of us inherit a broken understanding of the body and created a more compassionate approach to embodied life. "Practices for Embodied Living" allows us to take those principles learned and apply them in easy to understand but not always easy to do practical and tangible ways.
I hesitate to call this a workbook - it's certainly an experiential guide and it can be experienced alone, with a therapist, or with a group of safe individuals. Dr. McBride centers the work on prompts, activities, and opportunities for reflection that allow the practice of embodiment in a way that resists cultural myths and definitions about the "ideal" body. Instead, Dr. McBride gently nudges us toward getting in touch with the goodness of our bodies wherever our bodies are at and however they are expressed to the universe.
As someone who has long believed in Imago Dei - simplified essentially meaning that we are all made in the image of God, I found time and again throughout "Practices for Embodied Living" that Dr. McBride was guiding us toward realizing the sacredness of this body we live in however it changes over the course of our lives.
While there were, admittedly, times I longed for more disability friendly language and found that some of these experiences would require adapting based upon disability, I equally found them profound in challenging my own internalized ableism and current state of being.
Dr. McBride includes topics like disembodiment, stress/trauma, sexuality, body image, pain/illness, oppression, and others. With each topic, Dr. McBride includes various experiences to help us restore or establish a healthy mind-body connection and to build a better relationship, a loving and tender relationship, with our bodies.
Having taken my journey with "Practices for Embodied Living" via an electronic ARC (Advanced Review Copy), I'll also acknowledge that my hope is the final electronic version will include some design changes, however, this is undeniably a book I intend to obtain in print form as I believe that will enhance my journey with these practices.
While "Practices for Embodied Living" can very likely be a stand-alone experience, for a full appreciation I recommend beginning with "The Wisdom of Your Body" if at all possible.
I found this book to be a wonderful resource for connection the mind and body. Full of so much helpful information. I found it easy to read, and finished the book with a better sense of myself.
Dr. Hillary McBride's “Practices for Embodied Living” is a practical guide to exploring the wisdom held within our bodies. With her expertise in psychology, McBride offers the reader a multitude of gentle practices to explore mind-body connections. While much of the language feels unfamiliar to me, I appreciate the author’s holistic approach to the complexities of embodied living. Thank you NetGalley and Baker Academic & Brazos Press for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
As someone who has been doing a lot of work in therapy the last few years to connect to my body, and as someone who is in the beginning stages of schooling to become a therapist, this book hit home. I'm definitely going to go back to some of the practices and try them over and over, and I'm already thinking about incorporating them into the care I offer to others in the future.
I found the book insightful, but easy to read, and that the questions McBride posed throughout were challenging to consider. Because I'm still working towards being comfortable with embodiment, I felt stretched in a good way by the practices McBride offers and can't wait to sit with them more fully in the future.
Practices for Embodied Living: Experiencing the Wisdom of Your Body by Hillary L. McBride PhD is an important book. I’m so glad this author wrote it! I love this author’s previous work and was excited to see what this new book would add. This new book adds so much. Here, you’ll find practical strategies for experiencing embodiment. This is a book to revisit again and again. I highly recommend it. I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher with no obligations. These opinions are entirely my own.
"Practices for Embodied Living" serves as a comprehensive manual on embodiment, offering a diverse array of exercises, explanations, and practices concerning various aspects of embodiement, including emotions, sexuality, and personal power. This book caters to a wide audience, providing something beneficial for everyone. It can be used in conjunction with "The Wisdom of Your Body" by the same author or as a standalone guide. Each chapter engages readers through reflection questions and a range of physical practices. I anticipate returning to this book regularly, integrating these activities into both my personal life.
Hillary McBride has been one of my favorite psychologists and inspirations for a while, which is why I was even more excited to see her release another book. "Practices for Embodied Living" is meant to accompany her previous work "The Wisdom of Your Body" but can also be read seperately if one only seeks more practical approaches to embodiment. Nevertheless, I would really recommend to dive into both.
The pre-release copy I got to access via NetGalley featured a shorter version of the full book, so I can only speak to that and have not seen this work in its entirety. However, it is evident how much careful thought, exploration, practice, research and experience Dr. McBride has put into this delicate piece. Her approach is extremely refreshing and aims to counter the traditional mind-body devide that has been taught for a long time in both conventional and psychological thought. I believe that to be very relevant for our society and can only recommend books like this to accompany one's journey to wholeness. Hillary shows a lot of comfort, care and knowledge in her words which I always appreciate - she never fails to make you feel held and seen.
For this work specifically, I really enjoyed the practical approach its taking. Doing one exercise per day/week/month or whatever pace works for each reader can be extremely helpful and easily digestable. Beautiful! I will definitely purchase the full version in January.
This workbook connects with "The Wisdom of Your Body" by the same author. As Hillary McBride explains in the introduction, although she designed this as a practical supplement to her previous book, it also works as a standalone, especially for people who found her other book too academic and dense to process. She shares much of the same core information in simpler, more basic terms here, and this workbook covers all of the same themes. McBride wants to help people love and experience their bodies, instead of experiencing body shame or feeling disconnected from their physical selves, and she shares insights and teaching content throughout the book, explaining some of the issues that prevent people from engaging more fully with their bodies.
Each chapter involves multiple reflection questions and physical practices that people can explore. The practices are many and varied, with some things that sound more woo-woo, and others that are very straightforward and less weird. People who would anticipate balking at some of the activity ideas can still give this a chance, since there's a wide range of things to chose from that will be more suited to their personality and self-expression. Overall, there's a lot of helpful ideas here for how people can reconnect with their physical selves if they feel disengaged.
Although the information throughout this book is good, I don't like the illustration style. I find the giant, disproportionate bodies and tiny heads unnerving, and I feel like the illustrations miss the point. Sure, we need to connect with our bodies and not think that we're just minds walking around, but dramatically minimizing the head doesn't seem wise or healing to me. Also, I didn't care for the wild changes in font size in parts of the book. I found that distracting, but since I read a digital advance review copy, this might change before the book goes to print.
I also have some philosophical disagreements with the author, such as her insistence that there is never anything wrong with your body, just with a society that shames it or doesn't accommodate it. That's valid at some levels, but my body does have problems, and they're not all society's fault! I can love myself, love my body, and care for my body in the midst of my chronic pain and other health struggles while also accepting that my body has problems that other bodies don't.
For sure, it's a complicated issue, and I hold the good old FDA responsible for having approved all kinds of neurotoxins in food that made my life a torment for years until my family figured out what was wrong. Society has a role in my health problems, even when other people are unaffected. Still, I wish that the author made space for acknowledging individual frailties and physical problems, instead of putting the blame on society for any pain or issue you experience. This is also important for people who are experiencing pain due to reckless and dysfunctional choices they've made in the past. Inviting them to blame society does not bring emotional healing.
Also, even though one of the chapters addresses the spirit and body divide, the author wrote this in a very mainstream, secular way. It's like any random book I might pick up at the library, and that's not what I expected while reviewing a book from a Christian publisher. The author invites people to engage with whatever sense of divinity they experience outside of or within them, and although I'm sure she wants to help as many people as possible by making her work accessible to a pluralistic society, I found the lack of distinct Christian content disappointing.
"Practices for Embodied Living" shares teaching and insight from the author, and gives a range of different reflection prompt and activity ideas for people to explore at their comfort level. This book will appeal to people who are trying to reconnect with their physical selves after trauma or just the everyday disconnect of Western society, and the author covers a variety of different topics and issues that many people will find helpful. I enjoyed aspects of this, but some of the author's value judgments and preachy statements about society clashed with my different beliefs and perspectives. Also, Christian audiences need to know that this book does not provide a Christian viewpoint on embodiment, and is written in vague spiritual language for people of any belief or any practice.
Dr. Hillary L. McBride has done it again. This book is the perfect next step for anyone looking for practical ways of living and feeling embodied. I devoured this book in one sitting and can NOT wait to go through slower to write out my answers to the questions in this book.
This is a thought-provoking collection of reflections and exercises to strengthen the mind-body connection and help build a healthier sense of self.
Such a beautiful little book, packed so full of help. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read it early.
I was able to read a short preview of this book and was very intrigued! The concept of embodiment is somewhat new to me and I’m looking forward to understanding it more deeply.
"Practices for Embodied Living" by Hillary L. McBride is a groundbreaking companion to her acclaimed work, "The Wisdom of Your Body." In this insightful follow-up, McBride seamlessly translates her profound insights into actionable, hands-on experiences. This engaging guide empowers readers with prompts, activities, and contemplative moments, facilitating a deeper connection with their physical selves. As a visually captivating resource, it dismantles societal misconceptions about the 'perfect' body and encourages a rediscovery of the inherent goodness within. Covering a wide array of themes, from trauma to body image, it equips individuals and groups alike with transformative exercises to rebuild the vital bridge between mind and body.
A welcome companion to The Wisdom of Your Body. Full of gems like The Stress-Response Staircase, Boundary-creating skills, and suggestions for embodied prayers. A brief appendix contains a guide for group leaders. The ARC was mostly text and formatting and images were lost, but even so the content was amazing. I will definitely be getting the finished version which, as a PDF preview shows, will be even more powerful with its graphic presentation. Another wonderful and much-needed resource from McBride.
Embodiment is such a big subject right now in chaplaincy work so I was excited to see this title and its strong recommendations. The way it is written makes it easy to read with some passages in bold and key phrases and I am eager to try the practices. Recommended for those interested in learning more about this subject and for fans of Hillary L. McBride. I now look forward to reading her other books. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.