Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, American novelist and professor of philosophy. Humanist of the Year; Fellow, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study; Guggenheim Fellow; Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; MacArthur Fellow; Graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College, receiving the Montague Prize for Excellence in Philosophy; while at Princeton University, she was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship; Whiting Foundation Fellowship.
“I am not a person who usually goes in for either yoga or meditation.
All my previous experiences in these domains had left me cold and skeptical. But I was visiting as a scholar at the Santa Fe Institute for three months, and someone I met praised Hallie Love to me so highly that I thought I’d suspend my disbelief and go see her, at least once."
Well, I may be a skeptic but I’m not, at least I hope not, a close-minded one. I’m always looking for the experience that will reveal the inadequacies of my previous impressions. Hallie proved to be that experience. She knew exactly how to speak to me. My sense is that, intuitive as she is, she had sized me up and spoke to me with the scientific precision she knew I’d feel most comfortable with. All the while that we were speaking she was studying how I stand, and she could read off from my body all the injuries I’ve sustained, as well as my habit of twisting my body during the long hours that I sit and write.Hallie set about teaching me how to untwist myself, stressing how I have to use my core. After just the first session, as I was walking up the hill to my office, I suddenly felt my core waking up and taking over, and I fairly floated up the path. I scheduled as many visits as I could during my three months in Santa Fe and felt the difference after each visit. Hallie’s attention to the whole person, her truly caring attention, is unlike anything I’ve experienced. When I had to leave Santa Fe to go back to Boston she made up a sheet for me, with photographs of her in the poses she recommended for me. There are many things I miss intensely about Santa Fe, and chief among them is my sessions with Hallie.”
