Aligned, Relaxed, Resilient

June 15, 2000
Johnson, director of the Institute for Embodiment Training in Cobble Hill, British Columbia, believes that the body should not be overlooked in meditation. As he points out, the Buddhist principle called mindfulness--sensing the body's presence--is known as "the royal road to enlightenment." The themes expressed here are largely continuations and reconstructions of those in Johnson's other book on the physical realm of meditation, The Posture of Meditation: A Practical Manual for Meditators of All Traditions. Focusing on bodily sensations and aligning the body so that it is not in opposition to gravity are stressed through numerous metaphors. Just reading Johnson's grounded and rhythmically poetic prose will put one in a meditative state. Suitable for beginning meditators or advanced meditators with somatic orientations, this book is recommended for large public libraries.--LeAnna DeAngelo, Springfield, MS

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2000
In the burgeoning literature on meditation, this fills a special niche. Johnson not only knows meditative traditions--most intimately, the mindfulness tradition of Buddhism--but is also a professional body worker with an expert's knowledge of human physiology. In this brief but ample book, he shows how meditation helps us in three major ways. We become, he argues, aligned not only in terms of posture but in deeper terms of our connections to our bodies and to the earth itself. We also become more relaxed, not lazily but in an alert and lively fashion. Finally, we become more resilent, our immune systems may get a boost, we may become more graceful, but those alterations stem from a greater spiritual flexibility. A fine, approachable, and useful book. ((Reviewed June 1 & 15, 2000))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)