When I received my basic training in 1976, the Line (along with the conditioning effects of gravity and the malleability of fascial tissue) was presented as one of the three cornerstones of Rolfing” theory. The primary assumption that we were working with was that Rolfing was leading our bodies toward a condition of enhanced structural balance and that this balance would naturally manifest as an evolved consciousness, a kind of birthright state for human beings. Dr. Rolf sincerely believed that the work could help humans evolve into a higher state of being, and she occasionally spoke of Rolfing as one of the first historical attempts to consciously accelerate the process of human evolution. She urged us to keep this vision and goal in mind and to resist the temptation to reduce Rolfing to a system of physiotherapy wherein our primary focus might be to address local symptoms individually, isolated from the body’s overall relationship to gravity and removed from the larger context of the evolution of consciousness that naturally occurs through the improvement of that relationship.

To this day the Line remains the least formally explored aspect of Rolfing, a condition that strikes me as particularly lamentable in that the Line was meant to represent the highest manifestation of the Rolf credo. Not only has an exploration of the embodiment of the Line not been actively pursued (in contrast, say, to the interest in refining our skills of manipulation), it would even appear that there are some Rolfers who would like to see the Line expunged from the teachings altogether as an antiquated concept that does not translate well into lived experience, the proverbial square peg attempting to fit itself into around hole.

I would like to suggest that the problem with the Line lies not with the Line itself, but rather with the way in which we have approached and envisioned it. It is our biases and orientation to the work of Rolfing that have misshaped this naturally round peg into something very square and unwieldy, and what I would like to do in this article is present a vision of the Line that is very round indeed.

Before I share with you my vision of Sudaba, the practice through which I actively explore the experience of the Line, I would like to state a few basic principles on which this practice rests and depends. I believe that an understanding of these principles will go far in revealing the errors that we have made in our previous approaches to the Line.

The first is that the Line does not exist as a static condition, a snapshot of structure frozen in time. It is not a noun, but rather a verb. It refers not to a specific condition of structure, but to an ongoing process of balancing. The Line is your edge of balance, and in a growth process (which is what evolution is all about) edges always change and expand. From moment to moment, a Lined body is constantly moving, constantly making spontaneous adjustments to its condition of balance. If ever this constant movement becomes frozen, the liberation of heightened awareness that is the true fruit of the Line becomes compromised and forfeited. Embodiment of the Line transforms our passage through life into a very profound dance in which all the parts of the body move freely in sympathetic coordination with every other part.

The Line, then, is not a destination that we are attempting to reach, but rather an eternally manifesting process that keeps us both aligned with and surrendered to our evolutionary impulses. It is constantly changing, constantly evolving in its moment to moment manifestation. Notions of the Line as some kind of perfected condition of structure have been one of the chief perpetrators of the visioning of the Line as a square peg. Playing with balance has nothing to do with striving to arrive at a specific goal. It’s all about organic unfolding, a surrendered yielding to the energetic dance that wants to manifest through our body in this moment.

Even so, virtually all of our early attempts to define the Line have been based on trying to agree upon specific structural configurations and relationships in the body. This has led to grand theories and a good deal of bickering over such things as, for example, the precise degree of tilt that should exist at the sacrum in a balanced body. This has also left us wide open to the reasonable criticism that Rolfing was attempting to superimpose a generalized sameness and idealized template onto everyone’s body, rather than helping each unique body come alive in its own unique way. When we try to superimpose balance from the outside in, we only succeed in creating another layer of willful holding, albeit a perhaps more aesthetically pleasing one. The Line can only be felt into from the inside out. It is lived experience, and the process by which we enter into its realms comes through accepting, and then surrendering to, the feeling tones, sensations, and energies of the body and has nothing at all to do with willfully manipulating the structure of the body to conform to an image of heightened balance. It is high time that we get out of our heads about the Line, letting go of our attempts to formalize it in structural terms, and literally try it on for size. The only way that we can have any understanding of the Line is to experience it in our own bodies, to see how it affects our tactile sensations, how it affects our minds, and how it affects our fundamental identity and sense of self.

The other principle that I would like to stress is one that I have made before but bears repeating: the Line is a mudra of transformation capable of altering our felt experience, sense of self, and relationship with both our inner and outer worlds in ways that are truly radical in their effect (in Hinduism and Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism, mudras are physical gestures or postures that can create specific energies and states of consciousness). The square peggers amongst us who would like to jettison the Line from the canon of Rolf theory will argue quite accurately that our traditional notions of the Line do not necessarily translate into improved function in the human body. The problem with this argument is that the improvement of generalized human function (the ability to move more easily from here to there, for example, or the lessening of pain in the shoulder), as worthy and important as it is, is not what an embodiment of the Line is all about. The Line does not offer change and simple improvement of function. It offers the possibility of a radical transformation of consciousness that has been spoken of in all the great spiritual traditions and literatures. This transformation takes us beyond the confines of our beliefs about ourselves and the world in which we live into the direct experience of who and what we are at the deepest core of our being. It is not possible to explore the physical experience of the Line and stay rooted in our conventional consciousness and sense of self, for a true surrender into the domains and dimensions of the Line will radically alter who and what we experience ourselves to be. If we are unwilling to undergo such a transformation, then we will effectively block our attempts at truly embodying the Line and will: be tempted to conclude that the Line hall no application to our lives and to our work Can we let go of this defended approach and summon up the courage to undergo the transformation of self that an honest exploration of the Line naturally causes to occur: Is this not what Dr. Rolf wanted of us?

THE SPASM AND CONTRACTION OF THE MIND

As Rolfers we are trained to feel into the spasms and contractions in the soft tissues of our client’s body and then, through the application of skillful pressure, coax those contractions to release their holding and binding. We all have experienced the relief that accompanies the release of fascial tension and holding. I would like to suggest however, that one of the core sources to the fascial tensions that exist throughout the entire body can be traced to the spasm and contraction in the middle of the head that is responsible not only for our tendency to get lost in involuntary internal monologues but to manufacture our sense of self as an entity named “I,” possessing all the linguistic attributes with which we familiarly identify (man, daughter, intelligent, poor, artistic, etc.).

This spasm or contraction in the head (much like a spasm or contraction anywhere in the body) blocks the free flow of life energy and functions as a dike holding back the oceanic forces of being. If we can feel into this spasm and contraction, however, yielding to the pressures that naturally want to move through this part of the body, we can eventually soften and release it, and a powerful flow of life energy, like a river with a strong current, becomes activated and can be felt to move through the entire body. This energy, like a swiftly moving river that eventually erodes sandstone rocks that sit in its path, can eventually cleanse our bodies and minds of the residues, accretions, and beliefs that have accumulated over the years.

Once this current becomes strongly activated, a very interesting phenomenon begins to occur. The internal monologue of the mind may simply shut itself off. Where previously we were a fixed and specific something (based on a spasm or contraction) named “I,” we now become a very spacious and open-ended phenomenon of awareness (based on the release of the spasm and contraction) that is highly fluid in its moment-to-moment manifestation. In this condition we will feel a strong sense of palpable presence whose contents, at levels of both body and mind, are eternally in flux. This presence is like a birthright condition. I have stated before that it can bring with it an experience of bodily comfort that needs to be experienced to be believed. It is completely functional, yet fundamentally empty of a traditional sense of self. Where formerly there was a felt sense of separation (and the existential angst and fear that accompany this), this open-ended presence carries a feeling awareness of profound union. Subject and object, inner and outer, merge and reconcile their differences. Entering into this place of deconstructed self, we become transformed. And my whole point is that this transformation of self is exactly what occurs through a true and undefended exploration and embodiment of the Line. I: such transformation of experience does no naturally manifest, then we are still holding back in some way from totally surrendering into the profound physical balance that is the Line.

As a friend of mine recently observed, the Line takes the wind out of the sails of the discursive mind. Another way of saying this is that an embodiment of the Line allows the spasm and contraction in the head to relax its tension and for deeper dimensions of the mind naturally to come forward and make themselves known. Over the past thirty years I have spent much time exploring different practices from the Buddhist, Sufi, and tantric traditions, all of which serve in their own way to take the wind out of the sails of the superficial mind. I am enormously grateful for the understandings and growth that I continue to experience through these practices. Even so, the most important spiritual teaching that I have followed and explored, and through whose lens I have always entered into these other, more traditional practices, is Dr. Rolf’s hint that a condition of profound structural balance may initiate profound spiritual opening.

To stand up straight is the most apparent and consistent goal of the long history of human evolution, and the heightened moments of balance that are the Line initiate a kind of evolutionary detonation that can be palpably and powerfully felt throughout the entire body and the entire mind as well. By practicing Sudaba, we become active participants in our own evolutionary destiny.

SUDABA

Sudaba is a practice for people who would like, on a daily basis, to explore the uniquely transformational and spiritual dimensions of what Ida Rolf spoke of as the Line. Dr. Rolf believed that the Line was a mudra that could both awaken, and then ground, the evolutionary energies that mostly lie dormant within the human body. The practice of Sudaba directly awakens the core energies of the body. These deep, evolutionary energies are extremely powerful and profound and are revered in many of the Hindu yoga systems. If the Line’s gift to Buddhism is in the news that a condition of mindfulness manifests naturally and spontaneously in a body that is aligned, relaxed and resilient, its gift to yoga is as a key to awaken the deep, evolutionary energies.

The practice is part Continuum/Subud latihan, part yoga, part spontaneous dance, part spontaneous self-Rolfing, part internal journeying, part mindfulness practice, all explored within the context of physical balance (Subud is a spiritual path from Indonesia whose primary practice is a form of spontaneous movement called the latihan). Sudaba is, first and foremost, a surrender practice. It is always helpful to remind ourselves that the Line can only be surrendered into; it can’t be willfully created. What we surrender to is the current of the life force that wants to move freely, without restriction, through the body. Through surrender and the giving up of willful resistance, we cooperate with the evolutionary energies in their organic dance of unfolding.

The easiest way to initiate the practice is simply by coming to standing. Stand in as naturally comfortable a way as you can. Begin by becoming aware of the sensations in your body as you stand like this. Feel where you’re loose and your energies are flowing. Feel where you’re tight and your energies are restricted. Feel where you don’t feel, and then start relaxing and yielding to all these feelings. In a matter of moments, as a direct response to your awareness of these sensations, your body will begin to move, making spontaneous adjustments to balance. These adjustments may be very small and barely discernible, or they may become very large and dance-like. Continue to yield to these energies, these wholly organic impulses to move, and in a short time the practice will gain momentum. In Sudaba you give up your conscious control as much as possible and simply allow the body to move however it wants and needs to, maintaining your awareness of balance from moment to moment. This spontaneous movement serves to let you feel into and release habitual patterns of holding and brings you into ever more refined conditions of balance. These patterns of holding keep the evolutionary energies dormant; their gradual release, therefore, allows these energies to come directly alive. As the practice proceeds, the sensations and energies in the body may become very strong and palpable, and your sense of self may undergo dramatic shifts in consciousness as well. Daily practice both tones the soft tissues of the body and reinforces the body’s natural evolution toward a more relaxed and upright structure. In general, my sessions of Sudaba last about an hour.

One of the challenges that I am constantly faced with in sharing these practices with others is figuring out how to provide instructions for what is fundamentally a surrender practice. If I provide too little instruction, no one has a clue what I’m talking about. Were I to provide too much instruction, however, it might get in the way of learning how your body needs uniquely to surrender. This is clearly not the kind of dance practice whose precise steps (left foot, right foot, back step) can be taught, and indeed everyone’s expression of Sudaba will be different. So what I have done instead is to create general guidelines in the form of what I call somatic koans. In the Rinzai tradition of Zen Buddhism, the student is presented with a koan, an unsolvable riddle that he or she nonetheless needs to keep probing in search of a resolution. Buddhist koans are presented directly to the mind of the practitioner. Somatic koans are to be entered into through the body. At any given time during Sudaba practice, the practitioner may find him/ herself exploring the following somatic koans:

1) Stand up as tall as you possibly can while remaining as relaxed as you possibly can. Ordinarily, these two somatic gestures are at cross purposes to each other. It is easy to do one or the other, but very challenging indeed to do both simultaneously. In a condition of balance you can completely relax the musculature and surrender the weight of the body to the pull of gravity and not topple over. This is real relaxation. At the same time there is an accompanying, and sometimes explosive, energetic movement upwards that this act of true relaxation liberates. The establishment of the Line’s verticality does not depend on the creation of specific structural coordinates in the body, but rather on the creation of what might be called energetic coordinates instead. As the weight of the body drops down, the evolutionary energies are liberated and rise up. It is not possible to overemphasize the importance of the body’s ability to surrender its weight to the pull of gravity to initiate the embodiment of the Line. By dropping the weight, but staying tall, we incarnate ourselves fully into our bodies. The upright human body is the line that connects heaven and earth. Find that Line.

2) Feel the sensations in every small part and cell of the body. Tactile sensations can be felt to exist on every part of the body down to the smallest cell. While these sensations are almost unimaginably small in size and are oscillating at almost unimaginably rapid rates of vibratory frequency, they can still be distinctly felt. They may feel like shimmering electrical currents one moment and consolidated pain the next, and they are constantly changing like the flickering lights of a large city seen from a distance. Most of the time, however, we remain woefully unaware of the full range of these bodily sensations. A body that is not in balance needs to exert muscular tension to provide it with its source of support, and this tension will block out the awareness of sensations. The numbing of sensations through muscular tension directly participates in the creation of the internal, involuntary monologue of the mind with its limiting belief systems. Keep opening to the sensations that you can feel right now. By feeling the sensations, accepting them exactly as they appear, and surrendering to the currents that can inevitably be felt to animate them, you allow them to change on their own, and eventually you may be led to feeling the entire body as a unified field of shimmering tactile sensations. In a condition of balance this global awareness of the feeling presence of the whole body naturally and spontaneously appears. Energies and sensations are liberated, sometimes quite powerfully, even explosively. While playing with balance will bring the sensations alive, our continued awareness of, and surrender to, the emerging sensations and energies will then keep revealing ever more refined edges of balance. The sensations are the direct manifestation of the current of the life force, and by feeling them we get directly in touch with our human nature.

Jalaluddin Rumi, the thirteenth century Sufi mystic, poet, and originator of the dance of the whirling dervish, was taught the principle of ma’iyya by his father, an accomplished mystic in his own right. Ma’iyya tells us that God is not to be found in the mind alone, is not even to be found in the heart alone, but needs to be felt as a sensation or feeling in each and every small part of the body. In many ways, the practice of Sudaba takes us into what might be called ma’iyya consciousness. Risk sensations. Risk accepting the raw experience of your human nature, every last bit of it, leaving no little part of the body out.

3) Yield to the body’s impulse to move. A balanced body does not want to be still. It wants, rather, to move. Balance begets sensations, and the awareness of sensations begets spontaneous movements as the liberated sensations can be felt to build and subside, ebb and flow in the manner of an amoeba. The current of the life force wants continuously to move through the body. The result of holding back on this impulse to move is pain and tension. By surrendering to the body’s deeply organic impulse to move, the practitioner of Sudaba may be led into ecstatic states (ecstasy, or “ex-stasis,” implying a literal coming out of the condition of stasis or stillness). Those of us who have explored Continuum or the Subud latihan are familiar with this natural urgency to yield to bodily movement. Because these movements are spontaneous responses to the ebbing and flowing of energies and sensations, they cannot be “taught.” They can only be allowed. Everyone’s “dance” will be unique, the natural expression of the body’s innate urgency to heal itself through yielding to its evolutionary imperative. Through this dance the body spontaneously unravels and releases the holdings, tensions, and residues of resistances that have accumulated in the tissues.

Sometimes the practice works best in an environment of silence. The body is then able to respond to the inner music of its pulsing current of sensations. Other times it can be very helpful to move and respond to actual music. Many of us who have explored the experience of the body through the help of Rolfing have been led to become dancers. Rumi too, after the intense opening to sensations that occurred through his interaction with a wandering dervish, became an ecstatic dancer. I recall, several years ago, hearing a radio interview with a singer named Jennifer Warnes. You may remember her from the album Famous Blue Raincoat, a tribute to the songs of Leonard Cohen for whom she was once a backup singer. The interviewer asked her what she liked to do at night. Her response was that she liked to go into her living room, which was empty of furniture, turn down the lights, and put on some music. She said she would go into the center of the room and her body would spontaneously begin to move. She felt that the movements just happened, that they were beyond her conscious control, and that she never knew what was going to happen next. “It’s a very spiritual experience, you know,” she told the interviewer.

Darude, one of the more recognized figures in the rave movement (which is arguably the most popular current expression of spiritual longing on the planet), has given the following simple instructions: “Let the music take control. Put your body in motion, and let it all flow.”

Sometimes the movements that occur may resemble a kind of slow, improvisational Tai Chi. Other times they may look like a dervish whose body and soul are aflame, drunk on divine wine. Sometimes the body may feel the urgency to stretch like a cat and enter into hatha yoga postures in which you invite spontaneous movements and full mai?yya awareness. Other times the body will enter into strong, spontaneous stretches that feel almost as though you are Rolfing yourself from the inside out. It may look like Krishna or Radha elegantly dancing in the garden one moment and like a mad person possessed the next. The most important guide here is to trust whatever your body wants to do and know that whatever movements or experiences naturally occur are not only okay, but are in fact perfect.

4) “When you breathe in, breathe in with the whole body. When you breathe out, breathe out with the whole body.” These are the Buddha’s instructions on how to breathe as recorded in the Satipatthana Sutra. They are remarkably similar to Dr. Rolf’s response to a question about breath that I wrote down word for word during the auditing phase of my Rolfing training. When asked how balance affects breath, she replied: “In a structurally integrated body every joint in the body should be able to respond to the movement of the breath, and this includes the sutures in the skull and the joints between the small bones of the feet.” Or, as I heard Hubert Godard say recently: “Posture is breath.” Such a breath is only available to a body that is playing with heightened states of balance, for if the body is not in balance the muscular tension necessary to keep the body standing will interfere with the movement of the breath. Breathing with the whole body is directly related to feeling the sensations in the whole body. As you enter into heightened states of balance, the breath naturally wants to breathe in this way. With each breath movement occurs throughout the length of the body, and this movement massages the sensations of the body into manifestation. The places of deepest core holding in the body must be touched by the breath in order to soften and relinquish their secrets.

5) Stay aware. The relationship between the internal monologue of the mind and the condition of the body has been largely overlooked, not only in somatic circles but in Buddhist circles as well. As much as possible, come to your senses. Spiritual teachers often speak of making the mind like a mirror. See what’s in front of you right now. Hear what’s here to be heard right now. Feel the body as a field phenomenon of tactile sensations. Experience how the contents of all of these sensory fields are constantly changing, and let go of any tendency to hold onto an object of perception after it’s passed. When you are able to balance your awareness of sensations, sound, and vision, the internal monologue of the mind shuts itself off and reveals depths of being that its constant activity ordinarily obscures. This is truly a practice of embodied mindfulness. When your mind begins to wander (as it inevitably does), recognize that you’ve momentarily lost awareness of the full range of sensations, sound, and vision. Your spontaneous movements will also have become inhibited. Surrender the weight of the body once again to the pull of gravity, and begin the dance anew.

The right relationship between your inner and outer worlds (most noticeably experienced at the head center in which the primary organs responsible for thought, vision, and hearing are all situated) establishes the horizontals of the Line. Once again, these are not structural coordinates but what might be called energetic coordinates of awareness. When the mind is silenced, a stream of energy and awareness can be felt moving effortlessly through the eyes and the ears, connecting the place from which you perceive sound and sight with the objects of sound and sight. When the mind is active, this free flow of sensation and awareness is effectively blocked, and you recreate the agony of the spasm and contraction of the mind.

By balancing the awareness of sensations, sound, and vision in the context of playing with physical balance and surrendering to breath and movement, the practitioner of Sudaba may undergo a radical shift to the awareness of self. This shift in consciousness is fundamentally identical to what has been called sunyata, or the open dimension of being, in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, or rig pa, the natural state, in the Dzogchen tradition. The Line is the somatic expression of, and the foundation for, what Sufis call “the clear bead at the center” of consciousness.

As we move ever more deeply into the core awareness of our bodies and being, we enter into and explore what I call the somatic mystery, the mystery of our lived existence as incarnated beings. This palpable mystery is the doorway to the landscape of our souls; it includes both the bliss of being alive and intimately related to the whole as well as what I call the primal somatic contraction that manifests as the fearful separation of self from the world in which we live and encompasses everything in between. Feel through all the sensations that may emerge during the practice of Sudaba until the body naturally comes to rest in the birthright state of union, one again with the world, and then keep surrendering to the next manifestation, and the next. The dawning of this birthright of an embodied consciousness that experiences itself inextricably connected to all that is one of the fruits of the practice of Sudaba and is a natural function of a body in a heightened state of balance.

YOGIS AND YOGINIS OF THE LINE

It is important to stress that the conditions of consciousness that the practice of Sudaba routinely kindles and reveals are not some kind of pumped-up, exotically altered state, but are rather the natural state that our evolutionary imperative is leading us toward. Indeed, from the perspective of Sudaba practice, the condition of consciousness that passes as normal in the world at large appears as the truly altered state. When we are able to give up the struggle of living in gravity, we become who we are.

It is also important to stress once again that Sudaba is a surrender practice. When you truly surrender to the deep and palpable forces and energies that are your body and mind, you initiate a process of psychic unfolding or unraveling in which the tightly guarded residues of your accumulated fears and resistances begin to come undone. While the somatic koans that I have shared can be important helpers and guides as you enter into this practice, be careful not to make them into goals that you are attempting to attain and then maintain. Everything is changing and unfolding from moment to moment, so align yourself as best you can with this process of manifestation, and accept whatever happens. In Sudaba there is no perfected goal that we are attempting to embody; there is only this moment, and then this one. Each of these koans has its shadow side as well, and both the dark and the light need to be accepted and embraced.

Again, those of us familiar with Continuum or the Subud latihan know that surrender doesn’t always look like a gentle stroll in the park. While you will undoubtedly have moments of extraordinary clarity and joy through the embodiment of each of the koans, you are just as likely to have moments in which it feels as though a successful embodiment of the koan is a million miles away. Feelings of tension and struggle (rather than the hoped-for relaxation and energetic fluidity) may appear throughout the body, as deep core holdings are revealed. As you continue to surrender to the possibility of a full-bodied breath, you may find that you’re led into a place of extreme holding in which you can hardly breathe at all. You may have a clear apprehension of all the sensory fields one moment only to become hopelessly lost in a mental fantasy the next. An inner character may emerge spontaneously during your practice and express itself through a body that looks anything but balanced. In Sudaba, you need to accept everything that occurs as it is. Through accepting the unacceptable, resolution spontaneously occurs, and you are led to ever more refined moments of balance.

Sometimes when you become lost in thought and fantasy, you may enter into what I call body dreams in which the sensations that are emerging at that moment are eliciting a mental fantasy not unlike a dream, and you become completely caught up in it. Just as you can learn from your night dreams, so too is there much you can learn about yourself from your waking body dreams.

It helps to have a healthy dose of courage when it comes to exploring the deep sensations and evolutionary energies that the practice awakens, and certainly this practice is not for the faint of heart. Highly intensified feelings of profound embodied bliss are not uncommon, but neither is the awareness of deeply intensified, core physical and emotional pains. As you keep going ever deeper, you inevitably encounter your deepest holdings and withholdings releasing them through continued surrender to the practice. The goal of the practice is simply to do the practice, to accept what ever experiences emerge, to trust completely in the organic wisdom of the process, to surrender to the next sensation, the next breath. If you commit yourself to regular, sincere practice, you will inevitably come closer and closer to the birthright consciousness that is revealed as having bees here all along through embodying the principles of the Line.

While Dr. Rolf always exhorted us to view the work as a “way of life,” it has never developed beyond the form of bodywork with which we are all so familiar. While we are all grateful for the gift of this work, it cannot yet be considered even remotely complete. How wonderful it would be if, in addition to being able to roll up our sleeves and help others through the powerful manipulations of our work, we could also offer our clients a practice that they could explore daily on their own which would further the changes and growth that the bodywork of Rolfing has initiated, a practice capable of aiding them in their explorations of the deep somatic mystery that the manipulations of Rolfing often elicit and address. From the perspective of Sudaba practice, the sessions of Rolfing are not an end in themselves, but rather the initiation rites that prepare us for entrance into the practice.

What does being a Rolfer mean to you? Are you content with being a highly skilled professional practicing a powerful form of hands-on work that has real physiotherapeutic and even psychological benefits? Or do you want to keep exploring the depths of the somatic mystery that lives in you and is you, and also become a yogi or yogini of the Line?

Will Johnson has been a Certified Rolfer since 1976 and is the founder of The Institute for Embodiment Training, in British Columbia. His books include Balance of Body, Balance ofMind: A Rolfer’s Vision of Buddhist Practice in the West (Humanics, 1993); The Posture of Meditation (Shambhala, 1996); Aligned, Relaxed, Resilient: The Physical Foundations of Mindfulness (Shambhala, 2000); and Rumi, Gazing at the Beloved: The Radical Practice of Beholding the Divine(Inner Traditions, 2003). His website is www.embodiment.net, and he can be reached at [email protected].