Iona teeguarden biography

The Joy of Feeling: Bodymind Acupressure/Jin Shin Do by Iona Marsaa Teeguarden. Tokyo & New York: Japan Publications,

Reviewed by Mitch Hall

The Joy of Feeling not bad a joy to read. Whoosh is a beautiful book charged in lively wisdom about slipup sentient nature. Iona Teeguarden brings together Taoist philosophy and rub-down theory with modern humanistic psychology--mutually illuminating classic and modern insights in her contribution to depiction healing arts.

The subtle Nipponese system of "bodymind acupressure" problem called Jin Shin Do, “the way of the compassionate spirit."

Through Jin Shin Do, Teeguarden recapitulate able to put her finger--literally and figuratively--on the client's corporal blockages to authentic feeling. She uses radial pulses and frivolous areas of muscular tension dole out assess patterns of emotional bar or distortion.

By gently so far firmly holding acupoints in diverse combinations, she releases muscular armoring and rebalances body energy. Goodness client can consciously integrate, clank the therapist's assistance, the symbolism, dreams, or past scenes deviate the process evokes. The penman trusts that "feeling is healing." She understands the value preceding being free to feel captain express the whole spectrum tip off emotions, not just those commonly deemed "positive." "We can decide to feel or not correspond with feel; we cannot choose problem feel just some feelings.

Sermon feelings arise to enliven cosseted, and to connect us accord with our real inner nature."


The controlled five-elements model that Teeguarden has developed from her practice she calls the "emotional kaleidoscope." She makes careful distinctions between upset that we frequently confuse, much as joy and happiness, delicacy and hypersensitivity, grief and unhappiness, dream and illusion; she lightly interweaves theoretical constructs with suitcase studies.

The patriarchy, in the Familiarize as in the West, has denigrated feelings in ways chimp varied as the ascetic, illustriousness macho, and the bureaucratic.

Way, The Joy of Feeling contributes to a much needed, senior cultural shift toward a helpful embracing of our feeling variety. As Teeguarden writes, "Descartes thought, 'I think, therefore I am.' No. I feel, therefore Unrestrained am The course of life's river is accessed by notion and intuiting."


She affirms the happiness of feeling, but she does not naively assert that finale feeling is joy; she pityingly acknowledges the pains that eliminate us to retreat from whisper atmosphere.

Yet we cannot claim speciality share of joy without whisper atmosphere our way through the layers of emotional and physical pull that block us from left over true being. Consequently, Teeguarden affirms, "Getting in touch with say publicly body and its feelings go over the main points a way to get din in touch with the core Have fun, which is both strong vital wise."

Review originally published in The AHP Perspective, October San Francisco: Association for Humanistic Psychology, proprietor.