Reginald A. Ray - Somatic Descent: How to Unlock the Deepest Wisdom of the Body

THIS BOOK INTRODUCES the transformative practice of Somatic Descent, a meditation that puts us directly in touch with the wisdom of the body. Through this practice, you will learn how to take virtually any circumstance in your life that is perplexing, or leaving you with doubt, and discover what the body, in its infinite wisdom, has to say about it and what clarification and even possible approach it may offer.

The teachings in this book are derived from the Buddhist meditative tradition, specifically the Vajrayana or tantric lineage, primarily practiced in Tibet and Central Asia. Vajrayana means the diamond vehicle, and is so called because it teaches that whoever we are and whatever our life is, everything can be brought immediately into the path of awakening. Similarly, tantra means continuity and indicates that each moment of life is a step on the journey; no matter how it may seem, there are actually no sidetracks and no regressions.

What do I mean by the wisdom of the body? And how do we gain access to that wisdom so that we can be informed by it, nourished by it, and put it to use in our lives? I have written this book in order to respond to these questions and it will take us the entire journey of the following pages to arrive at some answers. At this point, however, I do want to say a couple of preliminary things. By wisdom, I mean a spiritual perception that arises from outside of the domain of our conscious ego, or small self, with its conceptual biases, self-serving filtering of information, and self-protective mechanisms. Wisdom is the knowledge of things as they truly are, spoken of in Buddhism, developed primarily through the sitting practice of meditation.

As humans, we need that particular wisdom perhaps more than we need anything else, not just because it helps us to understand the deepest meaning and the significance of our lives. In addition, it is only that wisdom that can bring about the kind of ultimate transformations that we may seek; and, it is only that wisdom that can guide us without fail or misstep in our day-to-day existence.

But where does the body come into it? Why are we talking about wisdom of the body? For tantric (or Vajrayana) Buddhism, the tradition in which I was trained, the ultimate enlightened wisdom is found in the body, in the knowingness of our total being, in our full embodiment. This kind of knowingness is very different from the abstract, conceptual knowledge of our thinking mind. By journeying into the body, using specific meditation methods, we discover, paradoxically, that which is beyond our relative existence, beyond birth and death. Seen from this standpoint, the wisdom of the body is not just one spiritual experience among many others; it is the ultimate experience or realization, including all others, capable of bringing us to complete human fulfillment. In that sense, the wisdom of the body is a momentous and august thing. From the tantric standpoint, any attempt to wake up fully that does not take its grounding in the body and the way the body knows is going to be one-sided and limited, still caught by ego, and is not going to bring us what we seek.