Ron Kurtz - The Body Reveals
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THE BODY REVEALS
An Illustrated Guide to the Psychology of the Body
RON KURTZ AND HECTOR
PRESTERA, M.D.
FOREWORD BY JOHN C. LILLY, M.D.
THE BODY REVEALS
PHOTOGRAPHY—FRANK DESCISCIOLO
ILLUSTRATIONS—MICK BRADY and LYNDA BRAUN
FOREWORD—JOHN C. LILLY, M.D.
THE BODY REVEALS
AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE
BODY
RON KURTZ AND
HECTOR PRESTERA, M.D.
HARPER & ROW/QUICKSILVER BOOKS, PUBLISHERS NEW YORK, SAN
FRANCISCO, LONDON
This book is dedicated to our parents, to Ida P. Rolf and Wilhelm Reich, our teachers
in the flesh and in the spirit, and to the
Great Teacher Whose patience is indeed
Infinite.
"The Silken Tent" from The Poetry of Robert Frost edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1942 by Robert Frost. Copyright © 1969 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Copyright © 1970 by Lesley Frost Ballantine. Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Publishers.
THE BODY REVEALS. Copyright © 1976 by Ron Kurtz and Hector Prestera. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10022. Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, Toronto.
Designed by Janice Willcocks Stern
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Kurtz, Ron.
The body reveals.
Bibliography: p
1. Mind and body. 2. Somatotypes—Psychological aspects. I. Prestera, Hector, joint author. II. Title. [DNLM: 1. Kinesics. HM258 K96i]
BF161.K86 1976 155.2 75-66800 ISBN 0-06-066680-3
81 82 83 84 85 86 10 9 8 7 6 5
CONTENTS
|
Foreword by John C. Lilly, M.D. |
vi |
|
Preface |
viii |
1. |
What the Body Reveals |
1 |
2. |
A Conversation |
13 |
3. |
Basics |
17 |
4. |
Body Parts |
42 |
5. |
Five People |
104 |
6. |
The Authors Look at Themselves |
110 |
7. |
Your Own Body Profile |
127 |
8. |
Last Thoughts |
137 |
Some Books and Authors |
147 |
FOREWORD
BY JOHN C. LILLY, M.D.
For an understanding of the silent communication between bodies, I recommend this book. Without benefit of voicing or whispering, without the sounds of the larynx, pharynx, tongue, lips, teeth excited by expired gases traveling above critical velocities, the body transmits messages to those trained to receive them. Beyond/under phons/words/sentences/utterances, each of our bodies says who/what/where/how each of the residents in the body is/was/will be.
To change these body-messages to a closer correspondence with that which we can become, we change the resident-in-thebody and the body. The messages then change to correspond to the new form/substance of the resident. All such changes and their corresponding messages are slow. They take time, awareness and intent.
Two of the men/women deciphering this "silent language" are Hector Prestera and Ron Kurtz. Hector is a unique M.D. He and I shared life together for some time at Esalen Institute, Big Sur, California. We mutually learned and taught ourselves and others. We shared exciting changes in ourselves, our bodies, our minds, our loves, our antipathies, our attachments, our aversions.
Over the years since then we have stayed in contact, apart yet still together in spirit. His is the explorer-healer domain; mine that of the explorer-teacher. Yet we overlap enough in
Foreword |
vii |
our domains to remain close companions in our journey through the samsaric existence.
Hector has been most fortunate in finding Ron Kurtz as a traveling companion in mapping new areas of healing. Ron is exploring healing by seeing and utilizing the unity of body, mind and spirit. My meeting with him was brief though in it I felt his warmth and openness of mind.
Both Hector and Ron have traveled far beyond this book. The primitive mechanical nature of publishing books always leaves fast travelers way ahead of where they were when they wrote them. Currently they continue their explorations of healing which are not yet part of the medical curriculum, though through efforts such as theirs, new areas will open in the training of physicians.
I am waiting for their next book/manuscript: it should be excitingly new for all of us.
PREFACE
The focus of therapeutic practice has been changing dramatically, away from the purely verbal approaches of the previous decades towards action and doing. No longer will patient and therapist just talk. Since the new approaches are primarily experiential and bodyoriented, the future more and more will focus on the body.
We have written a book that we hope will be a simple, useful introduction to what body structure, posture, and physiognomy reveal about people. For those who can see and understand, the body speaks clearly, revealing character and a person's way of being in the world. It reveals past trauma and present personality, feelings expressed and feelings unexpressed. The trained eye sees this and much more.
Though much knowledge is available about what bodies reveal, it is not widely known. And while some use this knowledge intensively, it is not widely used. So it is our intention to present a basic outline of that knowledge, without subtlety or lengthy exposition. We want it to be useful to both lay people and those who heal. We hope mainly to make this point: the body reveals the person; it is the person. And we wish to bring that awareness to a wider audience.
In the chapters of this book we first discuss what the body reveals, what can be learned about a person by looking at their posture and body structure. Then we cover such basic con-
Preface
ix
cepts as energy, gravity, grounding, etc., the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of the body-oriented approach. In the chapter "Body Parts" we cover the body section by section, giving detailed information on the relationship between the physical aspects of the body and the emotions and attitudes to which they correspond. In "Five People," we look at five individuals and give short descriptions of what one can tell from their bodies. This demonstrates the typical approach to reading whole, live people. Then we take a look at our own bodies in detail. We read our bodies and discuss them in a long transcript with comments.
Next, we provide a chapter which the reader can use to discover what his own body reveals, with instructions, illustrations and tables for that purpose. Finally, in "Last Thoughts," we discuss some the main approaches to body-oriented therapies. We get a nice assist there from such practitioners as Ilana Rubenfeld, Betty Fuller, and Richard Wheeler who discuss their work.
Every author faces and, certainly in this case, wholeheartedly enjoys the task of giving credit to those who have furthered his understanding and growth. They are surely too many to list separately. We hope to partially fulfill this pleasant obligation by mentioning a few.
Because of their great contribution to the understanding of the part played by the body in emotional illness and wellbeing, we are indebted to the pioneering work of Wilhelm Reich and Ida Rolf. Fritz Perls, Alexander Lowen, John Pierrakos, Moshe Feldenkrais, Judith Aston, Professor Jack Worsley, F. Matthias Alexander, Charlotte Selver, Will Schutz, and Randolph Stone also added immeasurably to our knowledge of the body/mind. For their personal help, we'd like to thank John Lilly, John Pierrakos, Pat Terry, Rosemary Feitis, Dick Price, John Heider, the late George Simon, Ron Robbins, Ken Lux, Philo Farnsworth III, Bill Solomon, Sam Pasiencier, who contributed to our conversations and offered stimulating in-