p.3 The idea of this book is to call attention to an aspect of human experience that remains largely "hidden in plain view." This is the experience of vitality. It is rarely talked about, yet vitality takes on many dynamic forms and permeates daily life, psychology, psychotherapy, and the arts.

 However, what is vitality? ...We naturally experience people in terms of their vitality. We intuitively evaluate their emotions, states of mind, what they are thinking and what they really mean, their authenticity, what they are likely to do next, as well as their health and illness on the basis of the vitality expressed in their almost constant movements.

p.4 Without manifestations of vitality, the world would be bereft of much interest, and human interactions would be digital rather than analogic, whatever that might be like.

p.4-5 movement does not occur alone when experienced by the human mind. It carries along with it other events. A movement unfolds in a certain stretch of time, even if that is very short. There is a temporal contour or time profile of the movement as it begins, its shape and duration is created in the mind, along with the movement. After all, time is a human invention.

 Movement also brings with it the perception or attribution of force(s) "behind" or "within" the movement.

 Finally, a movement has directionality. It seems to be going somewhere. A sense of intentionality is also inevitably added. In a sense force, time, space, and directionality could be called the four daughters of movement.

 Therefore, starting with movement, we get five dynamic events linked together. These five theoretically different events - movement, time, force, space, and intention/directionality - taken together give rise to the experience of vitality. As a globality, a Gestalt, these five components create a "fundamental dynamic pentad." This natural Gestalt gives rise to the experience of vitality in one's own movements and in those of others.

p.5 Vitality is a whole. It is a Gestalt that emerges from the theoretically separate experiences of a movement, force, time, space, and intention. It is not analyzed in any conscious way piece by piece, any more than a familiar face is, even though each separate element could be taken aside and studied in isolation.

p.5 The Gestalt or "emergent property" seems to be the most useful concept for dealing with holistic experience. The leap to a Gestalt is as mysterious as the appearance of an emergent property. The sciences struggle with it (e.g. dynamic systems theory, complexity theory, and chaos theory). However, wholes, Gestalts, and emergent properties are what we have to work with and are, largely, what the familiar world seems to be made of.

p.6-7 The fundamental dynamic pentad of movement, time, force, space, and intention appears to be a basic, natural Gestalt that applies to the inanimate world as we observe it, to interpersonal relationships as we live them, and to the products of culture as we experience them.

p.7 The term "dynamics" has many meanings... It is energy, power, and force in motion. Alternatively, it is change that is in process. It is the opposite of static.

p.8 I argue that dynamic forms of vitality are the most fundamental of all felt experience when dealing with other humans in motion.

p.11 Forms of vitality are part of all past experience. As such, they offer a special verbal way to evoke past experience (see Chapter 7). Gestalt and other therapies do this, too, but without a particular focus or mention that dynamic aspects are an important element of opening the past.

p.14 Dynamic forms of vitality dynamics help one to adapt to new situations that arise. If one had to deal with each dynamic element separately (its speed, intensity, temporal contour, etc.), the process would require much integrative work with the fragments and would be inefficient. Some Gestalt that integrates the many dynamic elements needs to be interposed between the stimuli and the subjective experience as acted upon so as to streamline the processes of adaptation. This Gestalt is the dynamic form of vitality.

p.15 forms of vitality... are involved in the translation from the general to the specific, in the moment-to-moment process of adaptation and enactment. Vitality dynamics are thus crucial for fitting a living organism into the world that it encounters.

p.19 Movement is our most primitive and fundamental experience.

p.24 We can focus on the reach-to-goal or the explosion of the act, or back and forth, or merge them.

p.27 We usually think of emotions as containing at least three aspects: first, a felt quality such as angry(ness) or joyful(ness); secondly, characteristic action tendencies and specific motor patterns... and thirdly, the dynamic aspects of its arising and enactment.

p.35 Within this framework, vitality dynamics are crucial for a sense of being alive. Put more strongly, the dynamic aspects of experience are what "aliveness" is about.

p.42 Vitality forms are seen more clearly as a Gestalt, a subjective phenomenon. Force, motion, aliveness, space, and content have been added to temporal contour and intensity (force). Vitality forms are the overarching concepts for the previous terms. It is a more global, holistic grasp.

p.45 Vitality dynamics refer mainly to the shifts in forces felt to be acting during an event in motion, and thus focus more on the dynamic qualities of the experience, in particular the profile of the fluctuations in excitement, interest, and aliveness.

p.46 Vitality dynamics are about the "feel" of being alive and full of vitality.

p.48 How does the central nervous system track and encode vitality forms?

p.49 a dynamic representation of all stimuli is the primary and fundamental layer of experience.

p.53 This is the backbone of vitality dynamics where "being with another" is accomplished by sharing the vitality dynamic flow.

p.57 The arousal systems provide the felt "force" of vitality dynamics

p.58 The neuroscientist, Donald Pfaff (2006), states it clearly: "The most fundamental force in the nervous system is arousal."

 The importance of arousal in providing a dynamic aspect to experience has long been recognized.

p.58 what is arousal? Dictionaries and scientists agree. To be aroused is "to be put into motion" or "stirred up" or "excited into activity," physically, mentally, or emotionally. It is synonymous with "to animate." In more scientific terms, it is the force behind the initiation, the strength, and the duration of almost everything we do... Arousal also includes, by implication, turning off or turning down the arousal, calming the excitement, or deactivating the motion or emotion. Arousal determines when we do what we do, and the dynamic manner of doing it. It is well suited to direct vitality forms.

p.59 Arousal is the "fundamental force" for all bodily and mental activity. Are there no other "sources" of force for the mind? Generally speaking, no!

p.59-60 Without the support of the arousal system one cannot think, feel, perceive, or move voluntarily. At the extreme of deactivation of arousal, one goes beyond asleep and into coma. A functional definition from Pfaff follows:

"Generalized arousal" is higher in an animal or human being who is more alert to sensory stimuli of all sorts, more motorically active, and more reactive emotionally. This is a concrete definition of the most fundamental force in the nervous system...

This powerful system is not only a switch that turns the mind on or off, but is also like the accelerator in a car. It operates no matter what gear the car is in. It is a flexible system providing (usually) as much arousal as is needed for the tasks immediately at hand. Accordingly the quantity of arousal can and must fluctuate from moment to moment, in a split second, and with the potential for very wide swings in magnitude to meet sudden dangers and joys, or needs... It is generally agreed that tasks are most easily accomplished if the level of arousal is neither too high... nor too low.

p.61-62 Vitality forms are usually short-lived events with nuanced temporal patterning that arise in different contexts. Does the temporal patterning have the finesse and flexibility to shape the timing and intensity of arousal - to sculpt its force into a dynamic form - to meet specific local needs? The answer appears to be yes.

p.62-63 The complexity of this system [JLJ - the arousal pathways] and its differentiation into separate parts provides support for the idea that the arousal systems could produce a multitude of highly specific and complex arousal profiles, each eliciting a specific vitality form.

p.65 LeDoux, like many others, notes that arousal is elicited by any novel stimulus... However, he adds that if the stimulus is emotionally insignificant, the state of arousal will "dissipate almost immediately..."

p.75 We are moved by the arts from moment to moment as well as over longer stretches of time. Tensions, forces, and excitement rise and fall. Our arousal level is constantly in play during a performance. The time-based arts are largely about the dynamics of experiences. Vitality forms are the working experiential units.

p.85 As modern and improvisational dance grew, dance became less about telling a story with conventional positions and movements, and more about the play of vitality forces.

p.103 It is at this point that one feels on more secure ground in speaking of "an intention" and a "course-correcting mechanism" that shapes the act. It is only now that one can begin to think of vitality forms.

p.107 In what sense are arousal and vitality forms at the center [when parent and infant play]?

p.119 Why are vitality forms not more directly addressed in clinical theory and practice? After all, these forms are experienced all the time by therapists and patients, in themselves or in the other, consciously or nonconsciously.

p.122 The listener feels the ongoing action of the intention through the vitality forms of its expression.

p.125 Tendencies do not have a clear target. They imply soft-assembled specific actions that were unpredictable and never "written," a priori, but which find a goal and are fitted en route from moment to moment.

p.127 In short, the "intention unfolding/emerging process" shaped by vitality forms is a rich source of clinical material

p.134 Movement remains primary for animals, but during evolution it may be that imagined movement has become primary in humans. It is the pivot through which all action and thought pass... The imagined movement is not disincarnated - it has the flesh of a virtually embodied vitality form.

p.144 It is their forms of vitality as these relate to specific actions, feelings, attitudes, reactions, and how they respond to us and make us feel that are internalized and identified with. What we take in has been experienced at an intimate and local level. It is the interactive experience that is internalized, not "objects."

p.144 Recall that the arousal systems will enhance the activation of ongoing perceptions.

p.148 In addition, the negotiation was conducted mostly with changes in vitality forms.

p.149 I have tried to show that the flesh of the therapeutic relationship is formed in part from the interplay of vitality forms. These are essential to psychotherapy whether we recognize it or not.