Will Johnson - The Posture of Meditation: A Practical Manual for Meditators of All Traditions
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When Will Johnson first offered the The Posture of Meditation in 1996, meditation posture was widely seen as a relatively unimportant, somewhat peripheral aspect of ones practice. This book changed all that, and, over the course of the next twenty-five years, Johnson convinced more and more practitioners that without the three somatic foundationsalignment, relaxation, and resiliencemeditation cant go anywhere. With those three fundaments, it can and does go everywhere, right up to realization. And it doesnt matter what your meditative tradition is. Johnsons book has deeply influenced several generations of meditators and meditation teachers. He has changed the conversation. He has been a bright light in the darkness of the disembodiedas he says, the somatophobicspirituality of our times. Hence, the reissuing of his groundbreaking work must be a source of delight and joy for all who practice and teach meditation.
Reginald A. Ray, author of Somatic Descent and The Awakening Body
Will Johnsons much-welcomed second edition to his classic book, The Posture of Meditation, is a poetic and powerful declaration of the centrality of bodily experience in our task of waking up. Going thoroughly through and then beyond the important physicalities of sitting practice, Johnson deftly shows us how sensation and movement can be our primary delivery systems of resilience, quiescence, and profound presence. He calls this somatic dharma, and it is indeed a powerful teaching. He simply and clearly reveals the ways in which our physical alivenessour being with our ongoing shimmering sensations and amoeba-like movementscarries us into awakened states of mind. This in turn helps us to experience a felt union with all. Once again, a classic is born.
Christine Caldwell, author of Bodyfulness and Getting Our Bodies Back
Finally, after years in the shadows, the somatic turn is revolutionizing modern Buddhism. Will Johnson, with the gentleness and clarity of a master meditator, leads us home to the body where the wakefulness we have been seeking awaits. The Posture of Meditation, a true classic, demonstrates how body and breath are our true spiritual home, how the simplest of practices ground, enliven, and free you. This path of somatic dharma will not only transform your mindfulness practiceit may well change your life.
Lama Willa Miller, author of Everyday Dharma
Spiritual awakening is not an escape from the human body, but rather a conscious surrender into the experience of being fully human. Will Johnson understands the vital importance of humanity realizing its true nature as living form, living embodiment.
Robert K. Hall, MD, cofounder of the Lomi Foundation
Shambhala Publications, Inc.
4720 Walnut Street
Boulder, Colorado 80301
www.shambhala.com
1996, 2020 by Will Johnson
Konchog Lhadrepa, Seated Buddha from The Art of Awakening, by Konchog Lhadrepa and Charlotte Davis. 2017 by Konchog Lhadrepa.
This edition published 2020
Cover art: krissikunterbunt/Shutterstock
Cover design: Rebecca Lown
Interior design: Lora Zorian
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Johnson, Will, 1946 author.
Title: The posture of meditation: a practical manual for meditators of all traditions / Will Johnson.
Description: Second edition. | Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala, 2020.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019043410 | ISBN 978570622328 (first edition)
ISBN 9781611808001 (second edition)
eISBN 9780834842915
Subjects: LCSH: Meditation.
Classification: LCC BL624.2 .J65 2020 | DDC 158.1/2dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043410
a_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0
Dedication
To everyone whos had the good fortune to bring a sitting meditation practice into their lives, may the information here catalyze and accelerate your practice, making it more physically comfortable and emotionally joyous as you dive ever more deeply into the mystery of your body and mind.
Over the past twenty-five years Ive watched as the three primary principles of The Posture of Meditationalignment, relaxation, and resiliencehave started finding their way into Vipassana retreats, Vajrayana dhatuns, and Zen ses-shins. All of these practices tell us to sit down and breathe, so it only makes sense that refining our felt experience of sitting and breathing would be powerfully supportive of the teachings. Ive had people from all the different dharma traditionsas well as Christian contemplatives, Quakers, and people exploring Hindu mystical practices, secular mindfulness practices, and Sufi breathing practicescontact me with gratitude, telling me that by bringing the principles of the posture into their sitting practice, theyve suddenly come to a radically deeper understanding of the teachings of their lineage or religion.
While its gratifying to see the three principles of the posture spread to all these communities individual by individual, I would dearly like to see them recognized as foundational to the teachings and presented right at the onset of practice rather than being discovered only belatedly by seasoned practitioners as a special esoteric understanding that radically catalyzes and accelerates spiritual growth. The resurrection of feeling presence throughout the body is not just the proverbial idea whose time has come but also the experience that needs to reawaken. This is especially true as meditation is entering the mainstream of global culture rather than remaining confined, as it has been in the past, to small esoteric tributaries.
As I write about in depth in part two of this book, we live in a predominantly somatophobic culture that values thought over sensation and wants little to do with soma, the powerful felt presence of the body. But as the principles of the posture show us, the awakening that meditation can effect needs to be based on the establishment of bodily conditions: aligning the upright torso around an imaginary vertical axis; relaxing the body deeply; and allowing constant, subtle motion. Even so, the world of meditation, in all its different forms and teachings, is not immune to the somatophobic bias that has a stranglehold on our cultural body. Indeed, many traditional approaches to sitting attempt to leapfrog over the establishment of these foundational postural principles, if not ignore them altogether. Its time that this oversight is acknowledged, addressed, and reformed.
This is an unusual book in that its writings span more than two decades. It is an updated, revised, and expanded version of the original The Posture of Meditation, first published twenty-five years ago. The insights from that earlier version came directly out of a twenty-one-day self-retreat I had entered. On the afternoon of the twelfth or thirteenth day, the posture suddenly came together in a flashing moment of recognition. I understood how establishing an upright alignment of the spine was necessary if my body was truly to relax, and then I experienced how my body needed to stay in constant, resilient motion in response to the breath if that relaxation was to continue over time.
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