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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
Life
Feelings
Deeply
Restricts
Doesn
Breathe
Narrows
Body
Fully
Psychotherapy
Persons
Limits
Reduces
Person
Expression
Restriction
Self
Move
Reducing
Feel
Freedom
Physicians
Feels
Moving
Freely
Constricted

More quotes by Alexander Lowen

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Sustenance for the infant and child is more than alimentary nourishment. The child needs love, security, narcissistic supplies -- however one may describe it.
Alexander Lowen
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No one is exempt from the rule that learning occurs through recognition of error.
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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Life is not a mixture of matter and energy but energy in matter, bound in such a way that dissociation is impossible so long as the living process continues.
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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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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Mature love is not a surrender of the self but a surrender to the self. The ego surrenders its hegemony of the personality to the heart, but in this surrender it is not annihilated. Rather it is strengthened because its roots in the body are nourished by the joy that the body feels.
Alexander Lowen
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The single factor most responsible for the disruption of the family is the automobile. Its full effect cannot be assessed. Modern life, as we know, would be impossible without the ubiquitous motorcar. It broke up the old family and community.
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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It is only by making the past alive again for a person that a true growth in the present is facilitated. If the past is cut off, the future does not exist.
Alexander Lowen
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A person with faith does not question its roots, for he knows that if he subjected it to the critical examination of his intellect, he would end up without faith. The same thing can be said of any feeling. You can analyze any feeling to death, but when you do that, you end up without feeling and without a meaninful life.
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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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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Because we are afraid of life, we seek to control or master it.
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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Sexuality is not a leisure or part-time activity. It is a way of being.
Alexander Lowen
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Everyone who becomes a psychotherapist eventually adopts a theory that suits his needs.
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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In my opinion the hectic and almost frantic pace of modern living is a clear sign of the fear we have of being and of life. And as long as this fear exists in a person's unconscious, he will run faster and do more so as not to feel his fear.
Alexander Lowen
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Despair is the only cure for illusion.
Alexander Lowen