What is Somatic Meditation?

We’re following instructions that weren’t meant for us, weren’t taking our phenomenology into account, weren’t a good fit for the composition of modern western bodyminds.

in the end, your own soma is the best and only resource. Anything and everything else is just helpful ways of getting you in touch with the soma, and putting you in a position to listen clearly and without interference to what it’s telling you.

We are perhaps the most “living-above-the-shoulders-behind-the-eyes-and-between-the-ears” culture that has ever existed, and despite this we are directly lifting instructions that were meant for people whose sense of self was much more distributed in other parts of the body. For western audiences, investigating our thoughts tends to lead us to the ... See more

Let go of anatomical body maps, and simply let your body feel how it feels. No need for what you’re feeling to correspond to any organs, or even to be inside of your anatomical body. If you have a sense or impression of something above you or to your left, that’s valid. Just let it be, don’t try to make it fit a rational map of where it’s possible ... See more

Feel into, interact with, and listen to everything in the felt-body, diligently and over a long period of time, in whatever ways feel fruitful. Patiently listen for physical sensations, emotional content, vague impressions, inchoate yearnings, long-forgotten memories, fantastic images—all of it. Get into the toes, the knees, the ulna, the space ove... See more

In a phrase: somatic meditation offers depth. Spending time in the body without agenda or expectation, listening to it, sensing it, letting go of the habit of experiencing it as “it”—there’s something in the experience that builds over time, it grounds you into a firmness of being.

the most fruitful exercise seems to be when you’re able to rest your awareness in your torso (especially the gut and the heart) and simply stay there. Be with the gut. Be with the heart. Allow whatever wants to happen to happen.