The Clever Body.

Janet Collins is a freelance writer in Sechelt, British Columbia.

Gabor Csepregi, a highly regarded professor, musicologist, theologian, former Olympic athlete, and coach, is more than qualified to write this insightfully entertaining work about the human body.

Everyone knows the importance of being physically fit, but most of us have no idea how to keep in tune with our bodies or how to expand our emotional range. Csepregi contends that “one can never understand the living body if one persists in treating it as a self-contained, mechanical structure, unrelated to a wider context.”

In The Clever Body, Csepregi examines the innate wisdom contained in our bodies that allows it to respond to external challenges not as an instrument or machine, but rather as an entity capable of acting in a highly intelligent and creative matter. Innate abilities such as sensibility, spontaneity, mimetic faculty, sense of rhythm, memory, and imagination are among the topics Csepregi examines. In doing so, he suggests how, for example, a rock climber is able to rely on bodily timing and responsiveness to achieve new solutions while attempting a difficult summit. Or how music presses itself onto the body of a dancer and compels it to move.

Readers, whether engaged in the healing arts, music, dance, drama, sport, or intellectual pursuits, are sure to find discover fresh insight to deepen the experiences with their own clever bodies.