Somatic Meditation

"The practice of somatic meditation, on the other hand, does bring us into a state of peace, but it is a profoundly somatic peace-- one that is inseparable from deep relaxation-- which permeates the body like a deeply satisfying, spreading, golden glow.  We feel the peace, not in a primarily mental way, but more in a fully physical way.  It is not our mind that is at peace, but rather our body that is deeply peaceful, relaxed, and at extraordinarily deep ease.  Shamatha, when practiced in a somatic way, can lead to a deep sense of inner well-being and even bliss."

Touching Enlightenment, by Reginald Ray, p. 178-79

"We are so busy managing our lives as to cover over this great mystery we're involved with.  What has happened to our wildness?"  -- John O'Donahue

Ocean class

"If you don't become the ocean, you will be seasick everyday."

Embodiment: rest your awareness on feelings deep inside and you will merge with the great ocean within you.

Water images, ocean images

Side bends, wave shapes, watery qualities in the practice

Backstroke, side angle, leaning tree, side bend over the bolster restorative

Embodiment, continued

"We begin to understand that distress itself is an expression of the "wisdom of the body."  It is the body's way of letting us know there is work that needs to be done and life that needs to be lived-- and our discomfort shows us the way in.  Discomfort, then, is always a message-- that we are holding on too tightly to our sense of self-- and an invitation for us to relax, open, and surrender to the fire of larger experience."

-- Touching Enlightenment, Reginald Ray, p. 83

Our bodies experience everything that happens to us and around us, whereas our minds are constantly filtering things.  Experiences that our minds don't allow get stored as "unlived life" and will eventually show themselves as pain, tension, numbness, etc.

"We freeze so that we won't have to feel the intensity of what is occurring." p. 80

"Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides." -- Malraux

"As with our traumas, so with virtually every moment of our lives--  the full range of our experience is not admitted, but is pushed back, jammed down, and walled off, where is abides in the body as conscious or unconscious tension." p.114

"Rather than try to actively "figure out" what happened and how it fits into our idea of "self", we simply abide within the body, in the sting and the pain, and perhaps the humiliation and confusion of what occurred.  Abiding in that way, we let all of it work on us, in the shadows and in the darkness." p.114

In our culture we prize the thinking mind and hold sensations, dreams, images, emotions, intuition to be secondary.  But our mind is constantly filtering and judging based on an idea of "self".  Our body is open and porous, connected to everything.  Our bodies contain wisdom and information to guide us.

"When we let go of what we think, we meet in our body a being or a kind of being that is informative, self-affirming, and satisfying."  -- p. 154

New Year's Class

Let go of the resolution or intention you planned, and listen deeply to your body.

Meditate with your body.  Allow your awareness to rest on sensation.  Go towards feelings.  Be interested in images and dreams.

"Buddhism invites us to take seriously our entire human existence, to take everything in our life "as the path".  It proposes that everything that ever happens to us is part of our journey towards realization.  There is finally nothing that leads us away, no possibility of true regression, no actual mistake; everything is learning, opening, and moving forward, even when the opposite seems to be the case.  This leads to a kind of fundamental and boundless optimism about what human life is and why we are here, and an underlying trust that runs through life's most difficult circumstances."
-- Reginald Ray, Touching Enlightenment, p. 16

"We sense that our mediation has become an invitation for the body to begin showing us things."

"Thus it is that we find that we have a partner on the spiritual path that we didn't know about-- our own body." p.59