BOOK REVIEW | Reimagining the Body:

Aline Newton, in her expansive new book Reimagining the Body: Somatic  Practice,  Embodiment,

and the Science of Movement (2025), writes that, “the body is not an object; it is an activity” (136). Newton, a Rolfer®, Rolf Movement® practitioner, and educator, applies this thinking beyond the body, inviting her readers to consider for themselves what the body might be as an activity – mobilizing the many ways that bodies move, sense, and stabilize. Through this insightful book, which includes generous contributions from her collaborator, Rolf Movement Instructor Rebecca Carli-Mills, Newton crafts new possibilities for understanding the body through imagery, imagination, and embodied inquiry.

As with many texts on embodiment written by somatics practitioners, the book begins with Newton’s personal exposition, situating her initial encounters with Rolfing® Structural Integration and her ongoing studies with French dancer, Rolfer, and Rolf Movement Practitioner Hubert Godard. The book draws heavily from Newton’s three decades of collaboration with Godard, whose influence threads through every chapter. Organized into five sections – Moving, Expressing, Perceiving, Imagining, and Becoming – the book mirrors the living dynamism it describes. Throughout, Newton offers alternatives to long- standing models that treat the body as an object or machine, presenting surprising and often delightful examples from her research and practice.

The ‘Moving’ section is a real standout in comparison to many writings about embodiment and somatics. It begins with an unexpected paradox: to understand human movement, Newton turns toward robotics and artificial intelligence, reflecting on her early 2000s experiments at MIT with gymnastics coach Noah Riskin and engineering students. These experiments sought to bridge conventional notions of movement such as muscular contraction and joint action with Rolfing-based understandings of embodied perception. Newton describes the limitations of robotic movement [within the context of the early aughts (the 2000s)] and uses these limitations to uplift the complex sensory experience of the human body as relational and perceptual. Her discussion extends somatic and Rolfing frameworks while touching on ideas surrounding ecological psychology, dynamic systems theory, and effortless action. Her personal, humorous accounts of robots failing and falling highlight what robots lack – premovement, orientation, and tonic function, all topics central to Godard’s teachings.

Newton’s research is quite thorough, both drawing connections and noting frictions between disciplines, as with her describing the difference between her understanding of embodied experience and roboticists’ concept of “embodied intelligence” (34). While she acknowledges that some examples of early robotics research are dated due to the accelerated rate of the robotics field at large, her reflections remain conceptually relevant and reveal the complexity of human movement.

In later sections, Newton turns to case studies that demonstrate wide-ranging views of embodiment, notably the story of Ian Waterman, a man who lost kinesthetic and proprioceptive nerve function. Through this case, she examines body schema, visual compensation, and perception scientist David Lee’s concept of “ex-proprioception” – perception through external reference points (180). This discussion exemplifies Newton’s expansive research style and gift for weaving science, philosophy, and narrative, reminding readers how deeply intertwined sensory systems are in shaping our sense of self and world.

Each chapter includes boxed sections titled embodiments – simple, practice- based invitations for readers to synthesize and experience the chapter’s ideas. These subtle, inquiry-based movement prompts are characteristic of Rolf Movement: not prescriptive exercises but questions posed through the body. For somatics practitioners, they offer both new and familiar territory while elegantly connecting sensory experience to theory.

The breadth of this book is stimulating but occasionally unwieldy – a nomadic exploration through varied and overlapping subjects. It’s a book to wander through rather than master. Readers must release expectations of a singular takeaway and instead engage with its swirl of interconnected ideas. Readers outside the somatic disciplines might experience it differently, but for bodyworkers and educators, the cross-

disciplinary scope is invigorating and much-needed.

Reimagining the Body (2025) offers a vast, imaginative field of inquiry that refuses reduction. Newton’s research is particularly exciting and resonant for me, an educator at a small liberal arts college, for its exquisite demonstration of interdisciplinarity and nomadic thinking. It is anecdotal, personal, and expansive – a book to sit with, to wander through, and to be changed by. Newton’s personal anecdotes – especially those describing her own transformation through Godard’s exercises – underscore her belief that change is always possible. As she writes, somatic work invites us to “renew rather than repeat” (201). For a related interview with Aline Newton and Rebecca Carli- Mills, see page 29.

References

Newton, Aline with Carli Mills, Rebecca. 2025. Reimagining the Body: Somatic Practice, Embodiment, and the Science of Movement. Great Britain: Handspring

Publishing. ■