Science writer Sandra Blakeslee spoke at the Zen Brain gathering of meditators and scientists hosted at Upaya Zen Center in January 2009. She’s a fast talker and frankly, I don’t remember too much of what she had to say other than that she reminded me of Bud Craig’s work on the insula & awareness and Antonio D’amasio’s somatic marker hypothesis, theories I was familiar with as a result of attending the Emotion & Cognition Symposium at U of Wisc in Spring 2008.
I was surprised to see a copy on the shelf at my not-so-well-stocked local library recently and grabbed it along with the books I’d come for. Wide awake at 3 a.m. last night I picked it up and was treated to a most unexpected explosion of my mental phase space (I might be addicted to these explosions).
This book is a revelation. The ways in which she clearly articulates the disproportionate allocation of neuronal territory to pretty much everything in our experience (all of which builds up from our motor and sensory maps) has changed the way I look at everything from emotional intelligence, to my sucky cello playing, to teaching yoga (I’m only marginally better at that). I can’t recommend this book enough.
The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better
