Bøker av Will Johnson

Poems and commentary that open the door for a new generation to experience the ecstatic and embodied spiritual truths contained in Rumi’s poetry • Reveals how the four practices of eating lightly, breathing deeply, moving freely, and gazing intently can invoke the divinity within us all • Explains how these practices dissolve the self’s need for identity so that we may experience a state of transcendent ecstasy and union with the divine • Takes Rumi’s path to finding God from theoretical to embodied practices The great thirteenth-century Sufi mystic and poet Jalaluddin Rumi began his life as an orthodox Islamic believer but felt that to fully experience complete union with the divine he must abandon institutionalized religion and its prescribed forms of worship. Surrendering his will to his overriding urge for a much more immediate, intuitive, and compelling union with the divine, he found that by manipulating certain behavioral aspects of his physiology--eating lightly, breathing deeply, moving freely, and gazing raptly--he was capable of loosening the rigid confines of the self, thereby overriding its limitations and achieving a transcendent merging with his own divinity. His message is simple: if you wish to affect the spirit, you must first make changes in the way your body responds to the world. Through clearly written commentary interspersed with Rumi’s beautiful poems, this book details these four practices in a very precise way. As such, it is a sweet and open invitation to follow the examples set forth in order to embark upon one’s own path of inner illumination. The freshness of Rumi’s poetry dissolves the 700 years that separate his life from our own time, making his message as pertinent today as when he walked the streets of Konya, Anatolia (present-day Turkey), reciting his inspiring verse. This book allows us, through Rumi’s gentle guidance, to touch the face of God that resides deep within us all.

- 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

Presents three simple yogic principles from Tilopa''s Song of Mahamudra• Explains how balance is the key to achieving higher consciousness• Includes somatic koansMahamudra, literally "the great gesture," is often looked upon as the highest manifestation of consciousness known within the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition. In Yoga of the Mahamudra, Will Johnson explains how it is possible to bring forth the condition of mahamudra naturally by utilizing the mystical yoga of balance to create what he calls the embodied cross. He presents three simple yogic principles from Tilopa''s Song of Mahamudra. The first principle, "do nothing with the body but relax," forms the vertical axis of the embodied cross. It is an internal process that focuses on the upright structure of the body, which opens up our relationship to the divine source. The second principle, "Let the mind cling to nothing," allows the horizontal flow of energy to our mind. This horizontal axis represents our relationship to the world: what we see and hear, and what our mind does with the objects we perceive. The establishment of these vertical and horizontal flows of energy allows us to embody the third principle, "to become like a hollow bamboo." In this way the body and mind become extraordinarily fluid, surrendering to the currents of the life forces that constantly flow through them like air through a flute. The author concludes with a number of somatic koans, exercises that allow the direct experience of balance and lead to the creation of the embodied cross.

The emphasis on the mind in meditation can be somewhat misleading: If we pay attention only to mental processes and overlook the experience of the body, we can remain stuck in our heads and not be able to break free of the involuntary thinking that we find so claustrophobic and toxic. This short, practical guide helps us embrace the fact of our embodiment-the experience of the sensations, movements, and gestures of the body-and to realize that mindfulness is the natural state of awareness of a body that has learned how to experience its feeling presence. Johnson takes us through the three primary principles of the posture of meditation: alignment, relaxation, and resilience. He devotes a large part of each chapter to specific practices to help the reader experience different aspects of physical presence. This book is of interest to meditators of all traditions-Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Jews, and others-as well as therapists, bodyworkers, and anyone interested in body-centered psychology and other natural modes of healing.

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.