Böcker av Will Johnson

- 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 and helps meditation practitioners find their own inner radiance 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 and 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 audio 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 from one of tension and struggle 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."

Understanding Your "Spiritual Identity" in Jesus Christ!This is a daily Spiritual devotional of self-discovery regarding one's relationship with God & all other existence. The key to abundant living filled with the power, knowledge, and presence of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begins with a solid foundation of understanding our dual nature of being an "eternal" spirit having a "temporary" human experience.

Between interstates and county lines, life in rural Missouri unfolds in a progression of simple moments that carry the weight of every hard thing gone by. Parker and Melinda are searching for themselves in the hollows of their estranged marriage. Parker, haunted by the demons of addiction, lives every moment at the edge of an undiagnosed disorder - a darkness that steals his awareness and throws him into convulsions. Melinda, on an odyssey of her own, knows Parker's struggles all too well, and as they try to help their teenage son come to terms with their lives apart, they have only their memories of a brighter life to get by.Haunting and lyrical, Johnson's powerful debut is a hymn to the lives we overlook in the quiet places around us. And how close we are to living them ourselves.Will Johnson is a musician and songwriter who has played in the bands Centro-matic, South San Gabriel, Marie/Lepanto, Overseas, New Multitudes, and Monsters of Folk. He also releases records under his own name, and makes paintings centering on the subject of baseball and its history. His work has appeared in American Short Fiction. He was born in Kennett, Missouri, and currently lives in Austin, Texas. If or WhenI Call is his first novel.

A guide to meditative breathing practices in Western religions and how these practices provide a direct experience of God

SPIRITUALITY / WELLNESS "With simplicity and elegance, Will Johnson returns us to the original teachings of the Buddha on embodied spirituality, taking us deeper by teaching us a fuller and more subtle engagement with body and breath, leading directly to the expanse of liberation. This book will be treasured as a brilliant revelation of the spiritual possibilities of our own human mind." --Reginald Ray, Ph.D., Buddhist teacher and author of Touching Enlightenment Explaining how stillness in meditation refers not to a rigid and frozen body but to a quality of mind, Will Johnson examines the Buddha's own words at the core of the Satipatthana Sutta "As you breathe in, breathe in through the whole body; as you breathe out, breathe out through the whole body"--an instruction often overlooked in the majority of Buddhist schools. Exploring the Buddha's complete series of steps for deepening awareness of the breath, he shows how to invite natural, responsive movement back into the posture of meditation by extending breath awareness beyond the nostrils, lungs, and abdomen to the entire body--a practice that unifies the breath, body, and mind into a single shared phenomenon. Showing how the flow of breath is directly affected by chronic tensions in the body and in the mind, Johnson explains that when breath starts flowing through more and more of the body, it becomes a direct agent of healing, massaging and melting any areas of tension it touches and moves through, whether physical or emotional. By breathing through the whole body in accordance with the Buddha's instructions on breath, the body becomes much more comfortable, the mind starts resolving its addiction to thinking, and meditative practice deepens much more rapidly, allowing the teachings of the Buddha to be directly glimpsed and revealed. WILL JOHNSON is the founder and director of the Institute for Embodiment Training, which combines Western somatic psychotherapy with Eastern meditation practices. He is the author of several books, including The Posture of Meditation and the award-winning The Spiritual Practices of Rumi. He lives in British Columbia.