Embodiment in the Buddhist Tradition

In Buddhism — and especially within Vajrayana — the body has never been separate from the path of awakening. The body is understood as the very arena where our conditioning, our emotions, and our wisdom arise. Through breath, sensation, and presence, we learn to meet experience directly rather than through concepts alone.

The Buddha taught that liberation is not an escape from the body, but a deeper intimacy with our embodied life — where awareness, compassion, and insight are lived and felt. Somatic practices found across Buddhist lineages reveal the body as a gateway into the nature of mind, a teacher of interconnection, and a sacred source of transformation.

When we turn toward the body with curiosity and care, we begin to rediscover an innate intelligence — one that supports healing, safety, and awakening from within.

A little bit about my path…

For much of my adult life, I have been devoted to the study and practice of contemplative traditions, particularly Vajrayana Buddhism. Rooted in the Mahayana, Vajrayana is sometimes described as an “extraction” or flowering of that tradition, carrying forward its vision of awakening through compassion and wisdom. Vajrayana offers direct methods — meditation, ritual, visualization, and embodied practices — to recognize the luminous nature of mind and the sacredness of body and world.

Central to both Mahayana and Vajrayana is the path of the bodhisattva — the vow to awaken not for oneself alone, but for the benefit of all beings. This path anchors us in life and relationship, asking us to embody compassion not as an ideal, but as a lived reality in our heart, mind, and body. The bodhisattva path reminds us that every moment — in healing, in struggle, in daily life — is an opportunity to cultivate presence, open-heartedness, and care.

I spent more than a decade living and studying in Nepal, completing over three years of traditional meditation retreats. These retreats were a profound training in presence and compassion — learning to rest with the mind as it is, to open the heart in all circumstances, and to experience awakening as inseparable from the body.

This grounding in Vajrayana and the bodhisattva vow continues to inspire and guide my work. It is the thread that weaves through my somatic practice, yoga teaching, and psychotherapy — reminding me, and those I work with, that the body is sacred ground, and that healing and awakening are paths of compassion walked together.