Quote

A person who doesn't breathe deeply reduces the life of his body. If he doesn't move freely, he restricts the life of his body. If he doesn't feel fully, he narrows the life of his body. And if his self-expression is constricted, he limits the life of his body.

Alexander Lowen

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Alexander Lowen
Age: 97 †
Born: 1910
Born: December 23
Died: 2008
Died: October 28
Psychotherapist
New York City
New York
Person
Expression
Restriction
Self
Move
Reducing
Feel
Freedom
Physicians
Feels
Moving
Freely
Constricted
Life
Feelings
Deeply
Restricts
Doesn
Breathe
Narrows
Body
Fully
Psychotherapy
Persons
Limits
Reduces

More quotes by Alexander Lowen

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Above all, faith is grounded in one's body, in one's humanity, and in one's animal nature. It is an biological phenomenon and not a psychic creation
Alexander Lowen
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Beneath the seemingly rational exterior of our lives is a fear of insanity. We dare not question the values by which we live or rebel against the roles we play for fear of putting our sanity in doubt.
Alexander Lowen
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If the ego is inflated it must be gradually deflated.
Alexander Lowen
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Fear is another emotion that is strongly suppressed. We cannot afford to be afraid, and so we don't allow ourselves to sense and feel the fear within us. We lower our brows to deny it, set our jaws to defy it, and smile to deceive ourselves. But inwardly we remain scared to death.
Alexander Lowen
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I would describe a hero as a person who has no fear of life, who can face life squarely.
Alexander Lowen
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We live in an ocean of air like fish in a body of water. By our breathing we are attuned to our atmosphere. If we inhibit our breathing we isolate ourselves from the medium in which we exist. In all Oriental and mystic philosophies, the breath holds the secret to the highest bliss.
Alexander Lowen
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The repression of the memory is dependent upon and related to the suppression of feeling, for as long as the feeling persists, the memory remains vivid.
Alexander Lowen
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Despair is the only cure for illusion.
Alexander Lowen
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Death is the fate no one can escape. The question, then, is, How does one die? A person can die like a hero or like a coward. The difference is that the hero can face death without fear, whereas the coward can't.
Alexander Lowen
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The only way you can make a marriage work is as free, independent people. It needs to be based on the good feelings that you have for each other, not on need.
Alexander Lowen
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Sexuality is not a leisure or part-time activity. It is a way of being.
Alexander Lowen
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The ego exists as a powerful force in Western man that cannot be dismissed or denied. The therapeutic goal is to integrate the ego with the body and its striving for pleasure and sexual fulfilment.
Alexander Lowen
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Power seems to confer on its possessor a mantle of superiority, specialness, and sexual potency, which the envious person desperately wants because he feels himself on some level to be inferior, unimportant, and impotent.
Alexander Lowen
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What happened to me is that as I grew up, I found that I was smart. My mother had insisted on that you see. Oh, but I loved to play ball. I loved the physical aspect. So you have one leg in one field, and one leg in the other and you're nowhere.
Alexander Lowen
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Not to fear a person with power--to profess, instead, one's love--is to deny that that person has power.
Alexander Lowen
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Change is possible, but it must start with self-acceptance.
Alexander Lowen
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The feeling of love is a rich feeling, but the expression of love in word or deed is a joy.
Alexander Lowen
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Bioenergetics is an adventure in self-discovery. It differs from similar explorations into the nature of the self by attempting to understand the human personality in terms of the human body. Most previous explorations focused their investigations on the mind.
Alexander Lowen
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Without awareness of bodily feeling and attitude, a person becomes split into a disembodied spirit and a disenchanted body.
Alexander Lowen
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Because we are afraid of life, we seek to control or master it.
Alexander Lowen