Praise for the Book
“The alchemy of moving, witnessing, speaking, and listening generates awareness, acceptance, and trust, through time revealing who is moving, who is witnessing, who is speaking, and who is listening, within the clear light of sacred space. My deepest gratitude to Janet, Bonnie, Paula, and the publishers for creating this very special book.”
—Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, developer of Body-Mind Centering® and author of Basic Neurocellular Patterns: Exploring Developmental Movement.
“An important new vision for the transformation of suffering at the intersection of the individual and the world. Eye to eye, heart to heart.”
— Mirabai Bush, coauthor (with Ram Dass) Walking Each Other Home: Conversations on Loving and Dying
“Intimacy in Emptiness invites us into the embodied witnessing of our moment to moment experience—a portal to the sacred mystery behind all existence. The gift is discovering the fullness of our love, creativity, wisdom and aliveness.”
— Tara Brach, author of Trusting the Gold
“This book is a harvest, an ingathering, a symphony, singing us back into our sacred embodied selves. Janet Adler’s writings are deeply personal and powerfully universal, life-changing and life-giving, rendered even more lucid and accessible through the deft overtures offered by editors Bonnie Morrissey and Paula Sager. Intimacy in Emptiness not only invites us to celebrate the temple of our own bodies, but is also an elixir for healing the body of the world.”
— Mirabai Starr, author of Caravan of No Despair and Wild Mercy
“Imagine a somatic practice that is disciplined yet mystical, individual yet collective, “not knowing” in the mind yet conscious in the body. This is the Discipline of Authentic Movement, a deeply spiritual approach to witnessing one’s inner experience. The path may lead to healing, to evolving, or to finding divinity within. Janet Adler and editors Bonnie Morrissey and Paula Sager use poetic language to offer an exquisite sense of the uniting of body and spirit. ”
— Wendy Perron, dancer, choreographer, teacher, and author
Intimacy in Emptiness is a jewel adding significantly to the treasury of contemplative wisdom. Janet’s body of work documents a profound reality. Cultivating the practice of witnessing the human essence reveals the depth and mystery of embodiment.
— Jeff Genung, cofounder of Contemplative Life and managing director of Prosocial World
“A guiding light, Janet Adler has helped us negotiate our own humanity with her profound wisdom and empathy. This new volume, expertly edited by Bonnie Morrissey and Paula Sager, gathers together writings from Adler’s career, mapping her journey and her unique understanding of the sacred bond between witness and mover, central to this embodied awareness practice. Essential reading for anyone attempting to understand the related fields of somatics, meditation, spirituality and dance.”
— Linda Murray, curator of Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library
This book is a celebration of and a call for both humanity and divinity, crystallized through the deep healing power of the Discipline of Authentic Movement. In this turbulent and polarized world, Janet Adler’s focus on compassion, clear seeing, and embodied consciousness is a necessary and precious gift to our global community.
— Tony Yu Zhou, founder of Inspirees Institute, China; CEO, IACAET
“A must read for contemplatives, regarding the enfleshed communion of the physical and the metaphysical. Janet Adler’s half-century of work and writing calls us to develop our inner witness toward presence, toward coming to know our humanity as consciously embodied, deeply interconnected, and an ever-evolving experience. I will be thinking, being, moving with and through these writings for a long time to come.”
— David Robinson-Morris, executive director of The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
“An important tribute to an invaluable life’s work. Janet Adler’s Discipline of Authentic Movement unites body and psyche, individual and collective, psychotherapy and spirituality in a profound experiential exploration of the relationship of mover and witness. A unique portrayal of the potential of embodied consciousness.”
— Gay Watson, author of A Philosophy of Emptiness
“Within dance, somatics and therapy, many will be sincerely interested and grateful for this offering. Janet Adler’s writings will be a breath of fresh air for those dancers and movement therapists whose intuitions have travelled in unnamable directions, whose longing has been for more direct language connecting the numinous, and who may find permission in these pages to validate their own experiences.”
— Mandoline Whittlesey, dancer, teacher, writer
“Janet Adler’s life and work are a powerful, creative, and generous manifestation of a process of embodied and relational awakening, so necessary for the healing and transformation of humanity in these critical times.”
— Donald Rothberg, author of The Engaged Spiritual Life: A Buddhist Approach to Transforming Ourselves and the World, senior teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center
“Authenticity is a practice. Although it can arise spontaneously, it also requires discipline. Each of these chapters with their introductions and images are companions, perseverant guides helping us endure with hope and celebrate with imagination.”
— Andrea Olsen, author of The Place of Dance: A Somatic Guide to Moving and Making
“Within each articulate breath, Janet has—from a deep, visceral understanding of movement and word—described a position of poignant enriched life.”
— Peter Schmitz, Dance/Theater Artist