THE WAY OF THE 4TH TOE
Into the Feeling Body
by
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The Way of the Fourth Toe is about feeling whole; about reclaiming nature’s union of body and spirit. It starts with what you can sense physically - three simple adjustments that can be made as you stand and walk. These adjustments eliminate persistent aches in your feet, knees, hips, and lower back. These simple changes promote connections from muscles to muscles, like sensing the interplay of notes in a piece of music. From the bottom of the feet to the top of the head, connections create a flow of motion whether you hammer or dance. Every blow of the hammer becomes more effective; every movement of your dance becomes more expressive. You develop a mindfulness of what has always been yours to claim; a sense of being that is grounded in the way feelings flow physically into our awareness.
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About the Book
Eliminate pain, alter embodied physical and emotional patterns.
This body-mind book details how to change habitual physical and emotional patterns by the way you experience motion through the musculature..
For dancers, dance teachers, physical therapist, psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, anyone interested in how the musculature expresses our unconscious. artists, \
“The Way of the 4th Toe” is a work of genius. There is no one who cannot benefit from its wisdom and experience. It is exactly what we need to help re-connect to our physical being. Wiener prescribes the antidote to the many pains and disabilities experienced through ignorance of the natural self.” ~Bernard Berkowitz, Ph. D. Psychologist-Psychoanalyst, Co-author “How To be your own Best Friend”, etc.
A book filled with wisdom coupled with directions for working with body tensions. Wiener opens contact and flow of feeling and thought locked in actual body life. So often I would read, try out suggestions and say - beautiful! A lifetime of practical experience and know-how richly condensed. I like your cogent, nourishing remarks. An invaluable book you’ll want to share with family and friends.
~Michael Eigen, Ph.D., Author, Contact With the Depths, The Sensitive Self, and Feeling Matters.
The Way of the Fourth Toe is a distinctive treatment of the relationships among dance, pedagogy, psychotherapy, and creative movement. Absorbing as a model of dance-as-therapy,
and as a narrative of deepening self-insight.
~Meg Chang, Ed.D. BC-DMT, Somatic Psychology Program Chair, California Institute of Integral Studies.
I did the standing stretching exercise we do at the start of your classes twice every day while away in Tanzania this past winter. It made a terrific difference in my physical state and
I’m dedicated to continuing that discipline here at home.
~Jim Morgan, Adjunct Professor, Architectural Studies, New York University.
About the Author
Mr. Wiener’s discoveries in 1959 led to his founding the School for Creative Movement (1962-1992), with over 350 students (more than 200 children, aged three to fifteen, and 150 adults), movement for actors, teacher training, and summer workshops for students from around the world. Private and group movement therapy began in 1978, and private psychotherapy followed within two years. Mr. Wiener was certified as a psychoanalyst in 1991.
Wiener directed and choreographed more than thirty productions, including the world premiers of Martin Buber’s, “Elijah,” and I. B. Singer’s, “Gimpel the Fool.” He also acted with the Yiddish Folksbiene Theatre in 1963 and ‘64 and was a featured actor in a film by Bruce Davidson Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Nightmare and Mrs. Pupko’s Beard (1973). He danced and choreographed for many years (1956-66) and was featured in a New York Times magazine article by Anatole Broyard, “It’s Your Move.” (December 17, 1978). Wiener conducted workshops for Columbia University, Syracuse University, the Toledo Museum of Art, psychoanalytic institutes, the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis, and conference presentations for the American Dance Therapy Association, Humanistic Psychology, the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis, the Institute for Expressive Analysis, and the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education.
He continues to teach small adult-movement classes, and he maintains a private psychoanalytic and psychotherapy practice in NYC. He lives in Manhattan with his wife, Arlette Thebault Wiener, and their cat, Lili.