Hey Friends,

Social Bodies: The Shaping of Internal and External Worlds was released a couple of months ago. I want to celebrate by sharing it with you. And drinking wine.

It's a book about bodies, and it's a book about transforming society.

This community has played a major role in shaping my experience of life, and my physical body. This book is about you, about this community. The term somatics was coined here in Gainesville in the 70's. Somatics- the study of the body from within- is what I've spent the last several years researching. Bodies are alive and actively shifting shape in response to the social world.

The push and pull of political, emotional, and social forces can tug our muscular systems out of alignment with our hopes, dreams, and values.

Beliefs shape bodies and bodies shape beliefs.

I want to share this work because it's exciting to me, and also because somatics has an unequivical potential to transform individuals, communitues, and society at large, and this excites me a lot.

-Rusti