Ancestral Movement Recommended Reading

[[DW]]

Simon Thakur (SimonT) has been kind enough to put together a list of his favorite tomes and texts, the ones most influential (along with practice and experiential studies, of course) to the development of his method Ancestral Movement. 

 

[ http://ancestralmovement.com/about/ ]

 

 

EVOLUTION - ANTHROPOLOGY

 

Shapes of Time - Kenneth McNamara

Morphogenesis - John Tyler Bonner

The Evolution of Complexity - John Tyler Bonner

On Deep History and the Brain - Daniel Smail
Darwin Machines - Henry Plotkin
Darwin's Cathedral - D.S. Wilson
Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers - Robert Sapolsky
The Natural Science of the Human Species - Konrad Lorenz
Your Inner Fish - Niel Shubin
The Chosen Ape - Adam Kuper
The Invention of Primitive Society - Adam Kuper
The Lopsided Ape - Michael Corballis
Guns Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond
The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee - Jared Diamond
The Naked Ape - Desmond Morris
The Human Zoo - Desmond Morris
Manwatching - Desmond Morris
The Domestication of the Human Species - Peter J Wilson
Evolution of Sickness and Healing - Horacio Fabrega
The Spell of the Sensuous - David Abram
Coming to Our Senses - Morris Berman
The Re-enchantment of the World - Morris Berman
Wandering God - Morris Berman
Animal Wise - Virginia Morell
Sex At Dawn - Cacilda Jethá and Christopher Ryan
Born To Run - Christopher McDougall
The Continuum Concept - Jean Liedloff
The Ancestor's Tale - Richard Dawkins
Shamanism: Techniques of Ecstasy - Mircea Eliade
The Book of Life - Stephen Jay Gould
The Hero With a Thousand Faces - Joseph Campbell
The Forest People - Colin Turnbull
The Shaman's Apprentice - Mark Plotkin
The Cosmic Serpent - Jeremy Narby
Shamans Through Time - Jeremy Narby
Intelligence in Nature - Jeremy Narby
The Way of the Shaman - Michael Harner
The Archaic Revival - Terrence McKenna
Singing to the Plants - Stephen Beyer
Plants of the Gods - Richard Schultzes, Albert Hoffman
Food of the Gods - Terrence McKenna
Songlines - Bruce Chatwin

DAOISM/CHINESE MEDICINE
Yijing - several
Daodejing - several
Chuang tsu - several
Mantak Chia
The inner smile, iron shirt, daoist sexual yoga, etc
The Secrets of Chinese Meditation - Kuan Yu Lu
The Secret of the Golden Flower - ?
Cultivating the Energy of Life - Liu Hua Yang
The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine - Maoshing Ni
In the Footsteps of the Yellow Emperor - ?
An Exposition on the Eight Extraordinary Vessels
The Stone Monkey: An Alternative, Chinese Scientific, Reality - ?
The Web That Has No Weaver - Ted Kaptchuk
Fundamentals of Traditional Chinese Medicine - Joseph Needham?
Foundations of Traditional Chinese Medicine - Giovanni Maccioccia
Nourishing Destiny - Lonny Jarrett
Oriental Medicine - Edward O'Baidey
Between Heaven and Earth - Harriet Beinfield, Efrem Korn
The Practical Application of Meridian Style Acupuncture - John Pirog
Japanese Classical Acupuncture - Shudo Denmei
Traditional Acupuncture: Traditional Diagnosis - J.R. Worsley

 

YOGA/HINDUISM

The Deeper Dimension of Yoga - Georg Feuerstein

Inner Yoga - Sri Anirvan

Philosophy of Goraknath - Akshaya Kumar Banerjea

The Upanishads - various translations and commentaries.
From the Satyananda/Bihar School of Yoga:
- Sri Vijnana Bhairava Tantra
- Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha
- Practical Yoga Psychology
- Kundalini Tantra
- Hatha Yoga Pradipika
- Moola Bandha: The Master Key
- Yoga Nidra
- Yoga Darshan: Visions of the Upanishads
- 9 Principle Upanishads
- Dharana Darshan
By Swami Sivananda:
- several books but can't remember the titles
Yoga Therapy - A.G. and Ganesh Mohan
Yoga for Body, Breath and Mind - A.G. Mohan
Anatomy of Hatha Yoga - David Coulter
Yoga Yajnavalkya - A.G. Mohan
Introduction to Indian Philosophy - Bina Gupta
The Yoga of Mindfulness - Asokananda
 

 

BUDDHISM
The Anapanasati Sutta, different translations and commentaries by:
- Buddhadasa Bhikkhu
- Thanissaro Bhikkhu
- Ven. U Vimalaramsi
Mindfulness of Breathing - Buddhadasa Bhikku
Mahamudra: The Moonlight - Dakpo Tashi Namgyal
Yogins of Ladakh - John Crook and James Low
Library of Tibetan Archives (lots of small books)
Mindfulness in Plain English - Henepola Gunaratana
The Bliss of Inner Fire - Lama Yeshe

 

 

MIND/BODY

Job's Body - Deane Juhan
The Endless Web - Schultz
Structural Integration - Ida Rolf
Anatomy Trains - Thomas Myers
Mobilization of the Nervous System - David Butler
The Sensitive Nervous System - David Butler
Explain Pain - David Butler, Lorimer Moseley
Awareness Through Movement - Moshe Feldenkrais
The Body and Mature Behaviour - Feldenkrais
The Elusive Obvious - Feldenkrais
The Body Has a Mind of Its Own - Sandra Blakeslee
The Psychobiology of Mind-body healing - Ernest Rossi
Life On Land - Emelie Conrad
Sensing Feeling and Action - Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen
Wisdom of the Body Moving: an introduction to body-mind centering - ?
Behind the Mirror: a Butoh Manual for Students - Rhizome Lee
Bone, Breath and Gesture - ?
Body/Embodiment: Symbolic Interaction - ?
The Body and Society - ?
Mind and Nature - A Necessary Unity - Gregory Bateson
Steps to an Ecology of Mind - Gregory Bateson
A Mind So Rare - Merlin Donald
The Developing Mind - Dan Siegel
Mindsight - Dan Siegel
Zen and the Brain - James H. Austin
The Buddha's Brain - Rick Hanson
The Brain that Changes Itself - Norman Doidge

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - Oliver Sacks

CHAOS/COMPLEXITY/SYSTEMS THEORY/ECOLOGY

CHAOS - James Gleick
Chaos and the Evolving Ecological Universe - Sally Goerner
The Web of Life - Fritjof Capra
Emergence - ?
Order out of Chaos - Ilya Prigogine
Our Place In Nature - Stephen Boyden
GAIA - James Lovelock
Gaia: Towards a Physiology of Earth - ?
Gaia: Birth of an Idea - ?
Gaia In Action - Lovelock, Margulis, others
The Long Descent - John Michael Greer
The Ecotechnic Future - John Michael Greer

What is this thing called Science? - Chalmers

 

[SimonT]

Thanks Dave.

 

I'll need to work through it and prioritize the better ones. Quite a hard job. And also add a bunch more as I remember them - the list was written from memory, off the top of my head, in three sittings! So I guess the ones listed must have all been good enough to leave some sort of imprint.

[Craig]

That's quite the list!  Thanks """""Simon"""""!

[Benji]

that's a pretty exhaustive list: I'm bookmarking this thread for sure.

Would one of you be willing to select a quintessential handful for the uninitiated? I've only read a few of these but I'd love some more introductory texts before I jump into the deeper topics.

[SimonT]

Yeah for sure.

 

"The Body Has a Mind of Its Own" (bodymaps in the brain and neuroplasticity)

"Your Inner Fish" (evolutionary anatomy)

"Mindsight" (interpersonal neurobiology & neuroscience of attention/meditation)

"The Sensitive Nervous System" (how the nervous system feels itself)

"Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" (stress response, really really good)

"The Psychobiology of Mind-Body Healing" (early attempt to reconcile psychoneuroimmunology and mind-body practices)

"The Web of Life" (complexity, systems theory, emergence)

"The Body and Mature Behaviour" (Mr. Feldenkrais doing his thing)

"Yoga Therapy" (A.G. and Ganesh Mohan taking the minds of an engineer and an ayurvedic/biomedical doctor to the Yoga of T. Krishnamacharya)

"The Continuum Concept" (interesting and beautiful evolutionary approach to childbirth and parenting)

"The Long Descent" (An Arch-druid historian who's into systems theory and ecology's vision of the next few hundred years)

 

For a start. I'd have to have a bit of a think of where to start with any of the Chinese medical or Daoist/Buddhist/Yogic philosophical stuff. They all tend to either be too simple and thus generic and kind of crap, or they don't mess around and are nothing but the good stuff, but you pretty much need to already "speak the language" to understand them.