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Anat Baniel
MOVE INTO LIFE: THE NINE ESSENTIALS FOR LIFELONG VITALITY Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Crown Archetype. 2009. ISBN-10: 9780307395290 reviewed by T. Patrick Killough (1) biblio.com 05/07/2011 Would you recommend this book to other readers? YES. * * * * review: I have found much on line about Ms Anat Baniel, but not her age or date of birth. The latter I guess to be around 1950 and the former, inferentially, about 61 in 2011. She was born into a scientific milieu in a very young Israel. As a child she met Dr Moshe Feldenkrais, whose apprentice and unusually close associate she became in her 20s. She now lives, teaches and practices healing in California. Moshe Feldenkrais was one of a number of 20th Century pioneers who focused on the the human brain attending to bodily movements as a major driver of human health. As structured today, Feldenkrais practice takes two major forms: -- Awareness Through Movement (ATM), often taught to fairly large groups at fitness centers, and -- Functional Integration (FI), which tends to be one-on-one work by a client with a certified Feldenkrais practitioner. ATM is said to be "active." A student, more often than not lying on a mat, applies to himself instructions on attending to minute bodily movements (in neck, head, spine, feet, etc.) being given orally by a hands-off instructor. In FI, the client, student or perhaps 'patient' is said to be "passive," being touched, gently guided and manipulated by a Feldenkrais practitioner. Often the client's goal is to be relieved of pain. If Feldenkrais doesn't work. the next step may be surgery. Anat Baniel in 2009 issued her first book, MOVE INTO LIFE: THE NINE ESSENTIALS FOR LIFELONG VITALITY. Her reliance on the theory and practice of Moshe Feldenkrais is obvious, admitted and celebrated. But she also cites another dozen or so major sources behind her views. Mainly, however, Ms Baniel presents and draws conclusions from case studies selected from her three decades applying and enlarging the practices of Moshe Feldenkrais. She is up to date on advances in neuro-plasticity and stresses that her work is brain work. She lays out nine ways to train the brain to guide the human body into healthful ways. Ms Banat uses black and white drawings by David Gerstein to showcase gentle exercises designed to bring quick changes in awareness of various organs and limbs through active "lighting up" of millions of brain cells. Each of her nine numbered chapters concludes with a kind of test or quiz to allow the reader to measure herself on various aspects of personal vitality: enthusiasm, imagination, goal-setting and the like. And on that basis to concentrate on what needs to be improved. BOTTOM LINE: Ms Baniel does not claim originality as an abstract theorist of health. What is original, I think, in Anat Baniel's book is her thirty years of hands-on success in helping her clients improve their healthy, happy living in their bodies. Her sources for theory and some aspects of practice are clearly listed. She generalizes, hypothesizes, derives laws from practical real-life successes. That she was and remains so effective in helping people is a big drawing card to make many readers want to take up her book and peruse it from cover to cover. -OOO- http://www.biblio.com/books/406466268.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (2) lunch.com 05/07/2001 name of review: I see danger rushing at me. Do I fight? flee? freeze? Try something else? rating: * * * * review: I have a very few quibbles with Anat Baniel's excellent 2009 MOVE INTO LIFE: THE NINE ESSENTIALS FOR LIFELONG VITALITY. So let me get them out of the way up front. -- (1) That the book has a co-writer is not something you learn on the dust jacket or title page. Rather that fact is mentioned almost en passant nearly 300 pages along in "Acknowledgements." Thus: "I have
been blessed with an incredible co-writer, Hal Zina Bennett. During the
process, Hal was a lot more than just a fabulous writer. His wisdom,
curiosity, warmth, integrity and remarkable knowledge and experience
have enriched and deepened every page
of this book" (the bold type is my addition).
Next the author thanks illustrator David Gerstein. The obvious difference in Baniel's treatment of the two men is that Gerstein appears on the title page; Bennett does not. So who is Bennett? He is a writer himself, but also and perhaps mainly a much sought-after writing coach with website at http://www.halzinabennett.com/ What precisely did this "unindicted co-writer" contribute to MOVE INTO LIFE? Hal Zina Bennett sounds like a man worth our knowing better. -- (2) When was Anat Baniel born? Nowhere does she say in the book. I infer a birth in the very young State of Israel around 1950, which would make Anat 60-something in 1911. For a good overview verging on executive summary of the book's contents see http://www.scribd.com/doc/14728045/Move-Into...by-Anat-Baniel-Excerpt/ As for her age: don't ask me! -- (3) Author Anat Baniel believes that she has created (evolved) a unique Anat Baniel Method for teaching clients to use their brains to recharge sagging vitality. In the course of more than three decades of both hands-on one-on-one practice as well as lecturing, this dancer and clinical psychologist has discovered Nine so-called Essentials. These Nine Essentials she conceives as gifts that anyone can make to his own brain to inspire it to work better across-the-board. My quibble is that the author's use of the Nine Essentials seems to shift from time to time from training my individual brain to the author's interacting better with clients and students. In the context of Nine Essentials for helping others, one key factor that would, I think, have to be made explicit is RESPECT for the person you are trying to help. Ms Baniel's dozens of case studies for a fact show her respecting others (sometimes in the face of near hopeless challenges from or feisty behavior of a client). For those whom she has chosen to serve. I suppose that Ms Baniel would agree that one should respect one's brain, too. So why isn't this a Tenth Essential? End of Quibbles! * * * * * Anat Baniel argues that by a certain point in their lives, many adults have cut way back on learning new things: languages, say, or dance steps or new sports. They now, burning up their brain capital, just throttle back and coast along in grooves begun long ago and now habitual. Unexercised, the brain slows down, is nothing like as bright and busy as when we were children learning to talk, crawl, ride bikes, etc. A visible effect of our slowing brain: we look older than our age, we grow uncertain, depressed. We ache. We complain. How reverse all this? How revive the brain's ability to learn new things? Apply Anat Baniel's Nine Essentials! Here are examples of us putting a few of Baniel's Nine Essentials to work. -- Do not rush headlong into learning
something new as if it were a contest of strength.
-- Slow down. -- Pay detailed attention to the very early stages of tai chi or making love or whatever. -- Teach yourself how to be passionate about the new undertaking. -- Perceive subtle differences in the way you arch an eyebrow. Try singing a new tune in different pitches. Your brain loves all this and responds in ways that make your heart sing. -- Dream. If you can't (yet) press 100 pounds, Imagine yourself doing it. Ditto doing a tango or touching your toes. Let yourself dream. Anat Baniel's text abounds in easy exercises with quick results to make you more aware of what you are doing: open invitations to your brain to empower you to do more and bigger things. Each of nine numbered chapters of MOVE INTO LIFE ends with a questionnaire: "What's Your Vitality Quotient" on a scale of one to five for enthusiasm, for example, or for slowing down, paying attention and on and on. One way to grow happier and more alive is to start focusing on those among the Nine Essentials where you scored lowest on the questionnaires. When danger confronts us, "the old reptilian part of our brains still influences much of our behavior." The reptilian brain sends signals that make us want to fight or run. "And if we can't do either of these, we freeze; we essentially 'play possum' until the danger passes." In our daily social life (e.g., a horrible boss at work), we freeze, i.e., we hunker down, go along to get along. "Our vitality disappears." This is stress. Anat Baniel teaches us to invite our brains to look for alternatives to fight, flee or freeze. Find new ways that will keep us joyful, creative, happy (Ch.2). Ms Baniel is well read in the literature of brain and neuroplasticity. Brain specialists and MDs laud her decades of work with people in pain. She offers a solid bibliography and many pages of detailed end notes. Yet I feel most confident that she knows what she is about when I read her very well told case studies. They are about people queuing up for a taxi, lifting a holocaust survivor out of depression, about keeping a failing company from going belly up and more. Anat Baniel is a teacher who never stops learning from her art and her Method and loves to tell readers how they can go and do likewise. -OOO- http://www.lunch.com/EditReview?id=1728328 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (3) bn.com 05/08/2011 Review Title: "The slower I went, the faster my clients responded." Reviewer's rating of MOVE INTO LIFE: * * * * I am not yet well enough versed in Moshe Feldenkrais's exercises in mind-directed movements to know what is or is not additional or original in his disciple's 2009 book MOVE INTO LIFE: THE NINE ESSENTIALS FOR LIFELONG VITALITY. Author is 60-something Anat Baniel, originally of Israel, now of San Rafael, California. Ms. Baniel, dancer, clinical psychologist, wife and mother, claims originality for her Anat Baniel Method for helping people find joy in life. At the core of the Method are Nine Essentials for training the brain. Some readers of MOVE INTO LIFE may find practically every word new and a revelation. Others, more familiar with the literature on physical fitness through movement, will find much less new and original. Much depends on whether you approach MOVE INTO LIFE from a background in yoga, tai chi, chi kung, Feldenkrais, Pilates or some other trend in the health through mind-directed movement arena. I come to Anat Baniel's Method with three years experience in tai chi, over a year taking Feldenkrais classes and half a year doing Pilates. One of Baniel's Nine Essentials is SLOW: move slowly and thereby notice better what you are doing. This is familiar to me from tai chi. Nonetheless, I found Baniel's text a very helpful extended meditation on going slow, counteracting Americans' tendency to rush through things we do not understand. I liked Baniel's "slow listening" which shows respect for your interlocutor and makes it easier to concentrate on what you are hearing. Slowing down your teaching is also important: "...when
I was able to slow way down the speed with which I was working with
people, my clients woke up. The slower I went, the faster my clients
responded" (Ch 5).
Other ideas that Anat Baniel presents were familiar to me from Feldenkrais: move with attention, be aware of what you are doing and how you look, make small discriminations between one movement and another much like it. Here her case studies and graphic examples gave context to what I already knew. A few notions came across to me as new: being able to switch ENTHUSIASM on and off and how my teaching or learning improve when I am enthusiastic. The next day during an outdoor tai chi class I noticed how consistently enthusiastic my teacher is and how infectious that learnable skill is. The author keeps abreast of the rapidly expanding field of brain studies, especially neuroplasticity. She offers a good bibliography and massive, detailed end notes. She rererences her authors throughout her narrative. Her anecdotal case studies, e.g. of a pianist who raced while playing materials she had not mastered, are well told. I have retold several of them. The book is not without its limitations. -- (1)
For some reason the author does not give her birth year, which I
infer must be around 1950. Pictures scattered on dust jacket and
internet seem to make her look less than 40. Is she sensitive to her
age?
-- (2) Almost at the very end of the book she thanks "co-writer" Hal Zina Bennett for contributions to every page, but does not give him credit on the title page -- something she does for her illustrator David Gerstein. --(3) Finally, the book is supposed to be what the Nine Essentials do for the brain. But most of the illustrations are instead about what applying the Principles does for other people, especially Baniel's clients or students. Sometimes the blurred perspective is confusing. -OOO- recommended reading: -- Daniel Coyle: THE TALENT CODE -- Moshe Feldenkrais: AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT, BODY AWARENESS AS HEALING THERAPY: THE CASE OF NORA. -- Eric Franklin: PELVIC POWER. -- Lavinia Plonka: WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF, WALKING YOUR TALK. http://my.barnesandnoble.com/communityportal/ review.aspx?reviewid=1650859 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (4) amazon.com 05/08/2011 title of review: "Who brings much, brings something for everyone." rating: * * * * review: "Who brings much, brings something for everyone." So says Goethe in his On-Stage Prolog to FAUST PART ONE. Anat Baniel's 2009 book MOVE INTO LIFE: THE NINE ESSENTIALS FOR LIFELONG VITALITY, like Goethe's FAUST, spreads a large, rich table before eager readers. In my opinion, to read this paradoxical book is to find something in it to like, dislike, to gnaw over, apply, quote from and share with friends. What is this septuagenarian's slant on MOVE INTO LIFE? I have not much more than a year's background in the writings and practices of the author's beloved mentor, Moshe Feldenkrais. I have taken classes from and/or heard lectures by three local Feldenkrais practitioners who know one another and study together. As I write, I am engaged in early days of being one of three students taking a six part seminar from one Feldenkrais teacher while receiving hands-on physical therapy from another. For over six months I have also been doing with two other teachers Pilates exercises and undertaking related reading. I have been taking tai chi for over three years, with four different teachers. That slight but not negligible history is all that I bring to reviewing Anat Baniel's first book. I judge it not remotely enough background for me to do even-handed, informed justice to this virtuoso book by a dancer, clinical psychologist, wife and mother. The more often I return to Baniel's individual case studies, texts, cited sources, rich endnotes, well done illustrations (by David Gerstein), the more I like and the more I dislike. In the words of Catullus, "Odi et amo" ("I hate and I love"). I am both fascinated by and simultaneously repelled by the author's selective citing of a few allegedly "miraculous" differences that her Method has made in both herself and her clients. And, although the author makes no general claim that Anat Baniel Method transformations will take place quickly, most changes are, in fact, presented as occurring much faster than I would expect or can readily accept. For MOVE INTO LIFE is not the world of Moshe Feldenkrais's THE CASE OF NORA with its many months of trial and error before difficult breakthroughs in coaching Nora's damaged brain to learn again to read and write. In one Anat Baniel class, within minutes a whole group allegedly became sexually aroused while learning the power of SLOW. Or a few touches by Baniel cause a very tense woman almost effortlessly to begin to relax and open up to Ms Baniel. And on and on. The subliminal message that, rightly or wrongly, I take from MOVE INTO LIFE is this: my Method, my Nine Essentials get unique results, extraordinarily good, healthy results and they usually get them FAST! I hesitate to write more at this time. MOVE INTO LIFE is rich in citations from literature unfamiliar to me about the fast moving discipline of neuroplasticity. Every day the gifted author is out there helping new patients, gaining fresh insights, theorizing from concrete successes into new generalizations which she is willing to share with readers. Her generalities are sweeping, abundant, sometimes original and deserve both much respect as well as some skepticism, further research and reflection. On the basis of my admittedly slight but growing familiarity with Feldenkrais methods and its more modest -- or at least slower -- results, I remain cautious about accepting at face value the rapid transformations in so many painful lives that Anat Baniel describes. In my case, doing Feldenkrais has not been remotely thus. Instructive, informative, fun, challenging: yes. Ridding me of lumbar pain? Transformational, no! At least not yet. I will therefore reserve mature evaluation of MOVE INTO LIFE for a later date. There is a German saying, "If you have to swallow a hedgehog, best do it FAST." I have happily and fruitfully tasted and swallowed MOVE INTO LIFE -- but fast, possibly too fast. Here is my humble promise: I shall return again and again properly to digest this provocative, deceptively smooth book. -OOO- http://www.amazon.com/Move-into-Life-Essentials-Lifelong/product-reviews/ 0307395294/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_4?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filter By=addFourStar =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=- =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (5) epinions.com 05/09/2011 Review Title: Train Your Brain for Big Gains, No Pain ... FAST! Product Rating: * * * * PROS: Nine ways to recharge our brains and feel younger, healthier and happier. CONS: Sketchy case studies of health improved so fast as to warrant skepticism. Read with caution. BOTTOM LINE: MOVE INTO LIFE elbows lustily into the red-hot market for health through mind-directed bodily movements. It re-bases Feldenkrais in brain plasticity. Techniques allegedly work fast, very fast. aohcapablanca's Full Review: "Big Gains, No Pain" is the title of a section within Chapter Four in Anat Baniel's 2009 movement science book, MOVE INTO LIFE: THE NINE ESSENTIALS FOR LIFELONG VITALITY. Chapter Four's title is "Variation--Enjoy Abundant Possibilities." Variation, in movements, golf swings, in the way you dance or plan your day, in physical exercises, etc., is one of the nine "essentials" that Ms Baniel wants each of us to give as gifts to our brains. Our grateful brains, in turn, will then rejuvenate us, take years off our age, free us from much pain and make us healthier, smarter and happier. The section titled "Big Gains, No Pain" tells the anecdotal case study of Jill, an incipient golf widow who came to her old friend 60-something Anat for advice on how to learn to play the game of kings. Anat had earlier on helped Jill with back-pain. Non-athletic Jill demonstrated for Anat how a pro golf instructor had taught her to hold a driver and swing it. "I immediately saw how stiff she became, clinging to the club as if her life depended on it." This, Jill had been told, was the right way, indeed the only way to hold a club. Anat thought: well, yes, to be sure, but's let's loosen Jill up by varying her approach: swinging while Jill is lying on the floor, reversing hand positions, swinging with one hand. Result: Jill eventually played as well as her husband. The lesson? When alive and functioning at their finest, our brains crave variation, novelty, always looking for something new. Repeating, therefore, the same old "correct" swing over and over teaches nothing the brain is eager to learn. Repetition turns the brain off. The Anat Baniel Method (ABM) teaches us how to unleash our tired old brain and lift it out of its ruts. It occurs to me that "Big Gains, No Pain" is pretty much the general promise that Anat Baniel makes to all her readers in MOVE INTO LIFE. Teach your brain to notice small variations in movements you make in mat classes. It is also better if you exercise very slowly. Learn the art of enthusiasm, of pumping yourself up for a project, of magnifying, glorifying your movements. Move elegantly, with minimal force. Minimal force allows you to hoard energy for other projects. Dream your movements. Move with imagination. If a particular movement hurts, stop doing it and simply imagine yourself doing it. Anat Baniel cites examples where sheer unaided imagination has improved gross bodily movements. Before you know it, you will have learned all nine of Anat Baniel's Essentials for revitalizing your brains and your lives. You will have admired the black and white drawings of exercises by David Gerstein. You will have done all the exercises in the book: simple, pain-free, liberating. Gains will have been big. Pain there will have been none, or at least none if you did correctly the gentle exercises scattered through MOVE INTO LIFE. Moreover, to judge from almost all Baniel's examples, your progress will have been fast, very, very fast. Remember Jill? "She soon resumed her lessons with the
golf pro and even dared to tell him about some of the work she had done
with me. To both her and her and her teacher's amazement, her game
improved exponentially."
In the best of all possible worlds, you can go to http://www.anatbanielmethod.com and a find a practitioner near you, with his/her various certifications (e.g., certified in ABM for children, ABM for high performers) and the year certifications were awarded. You can sign up for classes or one-on-one therapy sessions. That is the best imaginable test of some of the author's very bold claims for healing or improvements that are pain free, real, enduring and that occur faster than seems possible. Anat Baniel's web site, like her book, is very rich and informative. She even invites readers of the book to download and take with Anat a "MOVE INTO LIFE FREE CLASS." What could be more fair? Anat Baniel makes it clear that many great ideas for enlivening our brains and nervous systems are very old and come from many cultures. Thus Eckhart Tolle in THE POWER OF NOW and elsewhere applies Buddhist ideas to the modern world. But what is sometimes lacking in older writers is said to be up-to-the minute familiarity with neuro-science, brain and nervous system plasticity and related, rapidly surging, neurological science. Anat Baniel stresses that her practice draws heavily on neuro-science. My impression, however, is that most of her insights and self-confidence arise straight from Baniel's three decades of hands-on therapy or practice with clients and large classes with students. She strikes me as a classic Francis Bacon inductive thinker. Baniel's generalizations, laws, Nine Essentials, etc. appear to me, that is, as primarily inferred from successful practice. Brain science is important but secondary, icing on the cake, if you will: confirming what she already knows. MOVE INTO LIFE is very well written, with acknowledged help by professional "co-writer" Hal Zina Bennett. This is a middle-brow book, with a challenging bibliography, eschewing esoteric vocabulary, full of examples and anecdotes and radiating a self-confident, cheery up-beat message. All this I like very much. But there are also things I dislike, too. I have a fair layman's knowledge of "movement science" and practice: three years of tai chi, over a year studying and/or receiving therapy with three local Feldenkrais practitioners (Anat Baniel is, I think, essentially an expositor and developer of the thoughts and practice of the great Dr Moshe Feldenkrais) and over six months of Pilates with two different Pilates trainers. One practitioner is also ABM-certfied in four competencies. These are five unusually gifted, caring, effective people. Each claims to have experience of sudden "miraculous," fast transformations through Pilates or Feldenkrais and ABM. But fast and transformative have not been my personal experiences. Progress, yes. Worth doing, yes. Quick major results or transformations? No. So be warned, dear reader. But maybe it is just that I am not either a natural athlete or a fast learner of new physical skills. -OOO- Recommended: Yes * * * * http://www.epinions.com/review/Book_Move_into_Life_ The_Nine_Essentials_for_Lifelong_Vitality_Anat_Baniel/ content_550129405572 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= ADDENDA:
I wrote the comments below on two reviews at amazon.com The first was a glowing five-star review of MOVE INTO LIFE by HAL-ZINA BENNETT I COMMENTED: "Dear Mr Bennett, In her end-of-narrative "Acknowledgments" to MOVE INTO LIFE Anat Baniel calls you the book's "co-writer," who "enriched and deepened every page of this book." How do I tell, therefore, when you are praising Anat Baniel and when you are praising Hal Zina Bennett? BTW: I agree with you that MOVING INTO LIFE is a far better than average health-through-movement book. My thanks to both writer and co-writer! Cordially, Patrick Killough" http://www.amazon.com/review/R2HZ1X21ICELC7/ref=cm_cr_pr_cmt?ie= UTF8&ASIN=0307395294&nodeID=&tag=&linkCode=#wasThisHelpful =-=-=-=-=-= I also commented on a more critical three-star review by GLEN HARRISON. I commented: Dear Glen Harrison, You wrote: "This book ... was filled mostly with inspirational fluff (by which I mean it follows the format of, case study - miraculous cure - application)." After a first reading of Baniel's MOVE INTO LIFE, I think that you are on to something. Although no expert in the methods of either Dr Feldenkrais or Ms Baniel, I found nothing obviously original in her generally very helpful writing popularizing the works of others. Her strength, it seems to me, is her hands-on practice, not her theorizing or Principles making. She moves from experience to generalized laws (Nine Principles), without clearing needing books by people who had written essentially the same things before she did. Anat Baniel's little episodic, anecdotal "case studies" are well selected, very well told, repeatable and prima facie believable. If she and her witnesses are, however, to be believed, Anat Baniel has "the King's touch" in healing. She also has that ENTHUSIASM that she teaches us how to turn on and off as a skill. After over a year working with three different Feldenkrais practitioners (one of whom studied under Baniel), I remain,nonetheless, skeptical about the speed claimed for her transformations of clients' deficiencies, aches and pains and general failures to meet their marks. Nonetheless, I keep an open mind and love "signs and wonders" as much as the next man. Thank you for your critical review. Cordially, Patrick Killough http://www.amazon.com/review/R1ZBFTMR1BBBFS/ref=cm_cr_pr_cmt?ie= UTF8&ASIN=0307395294&nodeID=&tag=&linkCode=#wasThisHelpful baniel_move http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/baniel_move.html |