The Radical Path of Somatic Dharma

Radiant Body, Radiant Mind

Will Johnson

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English

Inner Traditions Bear and Company
19 March 2025

Buddhist life & practice; Popular psychology; Complementary therapies, healing & health; Mind, body, spirit: meditation & visualisation

Finding the path to radiance through deeply felt, sitting meditation

• Shares practices to show how sitting meditation can be reconnected to lived, bodily experience and help you rediscover your natural somatic radiance

• Explores how the modern thought-focused frame of mind introduces patterns of holding and tension into our bodies

• Draws on techniques from the Buddhist, Sufi, and somatic wisdom traditions as well as insights from the author’s own teachers and collaborators, including Ida Rolf and Judith Aston

The modern practice of seated meditation is in serious need of reformation. What began as a living, vibrant, and felt practice—the primary practice of the Buddhist path to spiritual realization—has painted itself into a corner of frozen stillness, divorced from lived, bodily experience.

Presenting an accessible and deeply felt guide to sitting meditation as an active exploration, Will Johnson offers a revitalized understanding of this essential spiritual practice through deeper connection with the body. Johnson argues that the thought-focused mode of consciousness of modern rigid seated meditation introduces patterns of holding and tension into our bodies and virtually guarantees that awakening will not occur. He explains how our focus on thought, rather than embodied experience, results in a numbing of our connection to our physical self and the dimming of the body’s natural somatic radiance, which in turn leads to the nagging presence of chronic pain, a general sense of malaise, and the inability to get comfortable in our own bodies.

However, this “consciousness of separation” can be overcome. Johnson presents a wide range of practices, including 14 meditations, to support the awakening of breath and presence in the body, drawing on techniques from Buddhist, Sufi, and somatic wisdom traditions as well as methods from his studies with Ida Rolf and Judith Aston.

Through the radical path of conscious sitting, Johnson shows how to transform your sitting meditation practice into a fully natural mudra of greater grace from which radiance will naturally flow. As the egoic perspective is dissolved, and chronic pain and discomfort are lessened, practitioners begin to feel a new, enlightened, bodily radiance—what Johnson calls “The Great Wide Open.”

By: Will Johnson
Imprint: Inner Traditions Bear and Company
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 210mm, Width: 137mm, Spine: 10mm
Weight: 200g
ISBN: 9798888500484
Pages: 144
Publication Date: 19 March 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Will Johnson is the director of the Institute for Embodiment Training and the founder of Bambu Hueco, a retreat center in Costa Rica that views the body as the doorway to spiritual growth and transformation. The author of several books, including Breathing through the Whole Body and Eyes Wide Open, he teaches a deeply body-oriented approach to sitting meditation at Buddhist centers around the world.

Reviews for The Radical Path of Somatic Dharma: Radiant Body, Radiant Mind

“In this evocative and important book, Will Johnson teaches us how to enter fully into our human incarnation and our deepest experience of being alive. He shows us that meditation, when fully embodied, is not about disconnecting from life, but rather about liberating us for life in all its beauty, intensity, and nuance.” * Reginald Ray, Ph.D., Buddhist teacher and author of Somatic Descent *