Zen Body-Being: An Enlightened Approach to Physical Skill, Grace, and Power

by Peter Ralston, Laura Ralston

A Zen-inspired “physical education” program for martial arts practitioners and anyone interested in mind-body transformation

Using simple, clear language to demystify the Zen mindset, Ralston draws on more than three decades of experience teaching students and apprentices worldwide who have applied his body-being approach.

More of a transformative guide than a specific list of exercises devoted to any particular physical approach,  Zen Body-Being  explains how to create a state of mental control, enhanced feeling-awareness, correct structural alignment, increased spatial acuity, and even a greater interactive presence.

Exercises are simple, often involving feeling-imagery and meditative awareness, which have a profound and sometimes instant effect. Areas of exploration

• Beginner’s Body-Being
• Three aspects of body awareness
• Five principles for an effortlessly effective body
• Opening a door--five steps to transformation
• Fourteen points on structural alignment

Where similar guides teach readers what to  do , this book teaches readers how to  be .

Genres: Martial Arts, Spirituality, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Meditation, Self Help

200 pages, Paperback

First published July 27, 2006

About the author

Peter Ralston works with people to authentically expand and deepen their “consciousness,” and to become more real, honest, and effective human beings. He facilitates people in understanding their own selves and minds, and in becoming increasingly conscious of the nature of perception, experience, and existence, and the nature of “being.” He also does this through teaching people about their bodies and how to be most effective in its use, as well as teaching them the Art of Effortless Power — a large scope internal martial art using an effortless power to “play” with others, deepening an understanding of effective interaction using such principles as joining, complementing, leading, and so forth to create masterful interactive skills.

Reviews

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to love this book. I really did. However, reading it made me appreciate the simple statements of masters like Musashi Miyamoto. Statements like: "Consider this carefully."

Ralston gives no doubt as to his own mastery, but his mind is, like so many of ours, prone to redundant and excessive explanation as though trying to give you every detail of some form of enlightenment and its merits over another form, which goes like so...

Perhaps it's not so much his mind as his intended audience. Westerners tend to think like this and it doesn't work for subjects like martial arts, awareness, and meditation. It just doesn't.

The principles in this book are indeed valuable and worthwhile as objects of study and refinement, but they don't need a couple hundred pages to explain them. Those couple hundred pages of exposition don't actually help you understand them any more than singing a 12 hour opera about fish teaches you how to swim.

Allow me to sum it up:
1. Feel the ground. Knowing which way is up helps.
2. Feel your body. Know which way is supposed to go up.
3. The more ways you move, the more you can feel both the ground and your body.

Think about it.

Zen Body-Being gets three stars. As someone with training and experience in this sort of thing, I didn't really get much out of it. However, it's not really written for those with training. It's written for those who have no idea what they're doing with their bodies at any given moment. For those people, perhaps the repetitive calls to attention and self-awareness will benefit them in some way.

For those who want to delve into it, understand that it can't really be read cover-to-cover like one would a novel. It contains exercises and drills that you must practice frequently if you're to get any benefit out of the book. None were new to me, but they may be to you.

[Brendan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zen Body-Being by Peter Ralston is a genius work that tells about body and mind function that can greatly improve physical ability. It is based on personal insights and breakthroughs on the nature of being a body. You are invited to check it out.
Peter Ralston
Zen Body-Being and Enlightened Approach to Physical Skill, Grace, and Power


Brendan

[Temo Tchanukvadze · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am surprised how simple and significant Peter's explanations are. In Zen Body-Being Ralston guides us on how to sens your body and use effortless power and gives us some tips about finding the True Self which is the subject of his next books.
If you just discovered his books I would recommend getting started with this book first, because there are some good contemplation guides you would find useful. And then check out The Book Of Not Knowing, it's the bible of spirituality!

[Magnus Lidbom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now this is my type of spiritual book!

I came to this book looking not for exceptional physical performance, but to expand my perspectives on how to improve well-being. As it turns out, Ralston delivers this in spades even though the book is, nominally, focused on physical performance.

I consider the teachings and practices in this book to provide one of the best core curriculums I've seen for improving well-being. Ralston has distilled away the dogma and obfuscation of full blown spiritual traditions and the remaining core is predominantly truly conducive for improved relationships with oneself, objects, and other people. And that is what spirituality and well-being should be all about in my opinion.

I believe that much of what Ralston teaches applies broadly to interactions with oneself and with others and should not be limited to physical interactions only. Well-being as a whole including transforming ones relationships to others is entirely possible to cultivate through the teachings in this book.

The book is very much in line with my own perspectives and experiences and complements them beautifully.

Practicing constant body awareness and relaxation has been the central focus of my journey of healing and growth for more than two years now. Self-massage, meditation and Yin Yoga have all been integral parts of this. I've personally experienced how practicing like this can gradually transform ones moment to moment experience from one dominated by anxiety, tension, pain and cold alienation towards an experience dominated by calm, relaxation, harmony and a warm cozy sense of safety. While Ralston's book focuses on performance, I believe that changes such as those I've experienced can be found by practicing what Ralston teaches.

What I have been practicing largely intersects with what Ralston teaches and my intuition, and early experience of practicing them, is that his additions are very helpful indeed, filling out missing pieces in my practice.

Ralston clearly explains core insights required to enable us to transform our mind, body and experience. Here for instance is a quote that clearly explains in a single paragraph what countless spiritual books spend dozens or hundreds of pages of blurry obfuscated text failing to clearly communicate:

"holding our thoughts, feelings, and ideas as if they are the truth is very limiting, and even harmful. Variations in interpretation are endless and complex, but in each case, the results produced by acting from them will match the beliefs and assumptions that shaped the interpretation in the first place. In other words, the same beliefs that influence one’s perception in an encounter will also influence the perception of any resulting feedback. In this way, beliefs have a tendency to reinforce themselves. Allowing yourself to openly investigate—to experiment and question beyond what you believe—opens the door to learning and improvement."

As I read such paragraphs throughout the book I want to give Ralston a high five and shout for joy. I fervently hope that readers understand just how valuable and potentially liberating the insights that he delivers, with little embellishment or fanfare, throughout the book are.

Another paragraph states a vital truth(explanations for how and why this is true are scattered throughout the book):

"Enhancing the depth and sensitivity of our feeling-awareness initiates a natural process that begins the healing of traumas and the relaxing of tension."

I urge you to read that sentence several more times and reflect deeply on the implications. Few single sentences have greater potential for changing ones whole life.

He follows up with this:
"Feeling like a child playing with a nimble, flexible, and relatively pain-free body, full of energy and a ferocious self-confidence, is not something commonly enjoyed by most adults. But perhaps it could be. I’m not suggesting that outlandish possibilities are attainable without commitment, but to whatever degree or depth you are willing to apply yourself, you can make real progress."

Again, my experience testifies to the truth of this. I certainly have a long way to go, but comparing the state of my bodymind experience now to the state two years ago makes me tear up. I fervently wish that many people will read this book, practice what it teaches, and see the same type of transformation of experience and bodily state that I am seeing from my practice.

[Wandering Soul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has revolutionized my approach to martial arts (and mental/spiritual development) and is the most important book about body and mind that I have ever read. Its proposition is simple, though it requires years of study and experimentation to realize:

We can become much more effective (and incredibly so!) in any physical activity, if we become more aware - of our bodies, the space around, other objects, even the inner workings of our perception and mind.

I have practiced Aikido with teachers that had great insight and an ability to teach it. Yet I always understood better, more deeply, and more broadly - in relation to other principles - what they were demonstrating when I related it to this book. That is because it focuses on the fundamental principles of effective body (and mind) use and the means of realizing them - irrespective of the particular physical activity.

We are largely unaware of our bodies - and we are even likely unaware of this lack of awareness. Increased awareness offers huge benefits.

This is not a book that you can just read. To benefit from it, you must use it as a guide for your own explorations of your body-being and mind. To help the reader, the author suggests a number of varied exercises and encourages her to make up her own ones.

An amazing thing is that Ralston doesn't ask you to just accept his authority and believe in what he says. He challenges the reader to explore and find for herself. Which is actually the only way to really "get it." He only asks you to have an open mind and to question everything deeply (in the best tradition of Zen contemplation).

Throughout the book, you will be challenged to "zoom in" on your body and mind to discover details and distinctions in feelings and mental processes that have previously escaped you.

The book first explores the 5 principles of effective body-being: feeling the whole body, relaxing, moving from the center, being grounded (and well-aligned with the force of gravity), calm mind - and how to bring them alive in your experience. (Don't make the mistake of believing you "know" what these mean! Ralston goes deeper than you could ever have imagined.) Then it explores the proper structural alignment of the body when stationary and in movement. Finally, it examines relationship (as, whether we’re dealing with people, objects, or circumstances, skillful interaction is always a matter of relationship), including the inner workings and optimization of the perception-processing-reaction cycle and learning to relate much more effectively to external objects. It also touches on "effortless power," power that stems from perfect alignment with the principles that govern bodies and physical interaction and from leveraging the inherent qualities of our body rather than from raw muscular power.

If you want to learn more, you can read an in-depth summary of the book including many quotes on the most important points on my blog.

[Frank Rissanen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book explains nuanced dimensions of bodily intelligence in a way that is easy to understand as someone (like me) who is a complete newbie at the subject and who has been struggling to find principles to become grounded body-wise. What I got out of this book was mainly was the ability to feel my bodys centre of mass as relating to gravity and the air while moving about in day-to day life. Also the visualizations for finding stability was helpful and the discussion about the importence of the role of practice in relation to the visualizations were easy to understand and apply. It was about three years ago since I finished this book, but still I sometimes practice finding a structural integrity while waiting in line in the supermarket. In general when Peter think in terms of body-world navigation and skill he communicates this in a clear and applicable way.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to explore their relationship with their body. The reason I did not give this book 5 stars is that it at times seem to be unnecessarily revolving around the author Peter Ralston himself. Too much he is described and presented in flattering terms which I think more serves his own vanity than the readers experience.

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[Anne Beardsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that talks about how to sense your own body and the things around it, how to use your body properly, and how to relate to objects and people instead of trying to overpower them.
It's for everyone, but it comes from a martial arts perspective.

Yes, it gets repetitive.
Yes, in a few places you wonder if he has anything new left to say.
Yes, he does. And it's amazing.

Honestly, a year ago I would have only picked up half of what I gained from this valuable book. (I took pages and pages of notes.) Three years ago I would have rolled my eyes at it and slid it back onto the library shelf.
It's a high level manual about the subtleties of serious bodywork. And the magic only happens if you devote yourself to really making it all real in your own mind and body.

Recommended.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter Ralston teachings/philosophy is based on his Cheng Hsin ideals, the basic meaning is "true being" or "genuine heart". A belief that everyone-whether athlete, musician, people seeking a healthier lifestyle, needs to have a total consciousness/awareness of their entire body performing any task, not to narrow the focus on just one part i.e. a runner shouldn't focus on completing a run but on how all the parts of the body achieve it or with Tai Chi, how the entire body works to move successfully through the forms. Pay attention to relaxing, feeling the whole body, moving from the center, being grounded, and being calm. It has excellent ideas that need to be mulled over and reread. I would have liked to have had a reading partner to delve into the philosophies more deeply.

[Jeffrey Spitz Cohan · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems crazy that we need a book like this to properly relate to our bodies. But we do.

I say “a book like this” because even Ralston himself would not claim to have a monopoly on truth.

However, the principles he offers are worth considering, or even embracing. I’ve seen some immediate benefits in the gym and even in my personal life.

One of the things I love about Ralston – this is the second book of his I’ve read – is that he stresses the primacy of your own experience. Don’t take his word for it.

I highly recommend his “Book of Not Knowing” but I wish I had read “Zen Body-Being” first. This is a gentle introduction into some of the approaches he explores more deeply in “Not Knowing.”

[Regina Aguilar · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a really great book!, the author teaches you some interesting principles and invites you to experiment them and to discover by your own. By using these principles and tools I discovered how to improve in a lot of my daily tasks in a fast and effective way and to be more present. I recommend it for all kind of people.

[Voldi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A treasure :)

[Claudia Goodell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd read his 1989 book Chen Hsin: Principles of Effortless Power, probably while getting my psychology degree so I was familiar with his work and mindset. This book (2011) is an interesting, but somewhat vague introduction to the method developed by Peter Ralston for tapping into physical abilities utilizing a Zen mind. Perhaps I would have benefitted by reading some of his books written between the 2.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most people walk through life... few ever actually know how to "move" through it. There is a vast difference...

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a prequel to The Principles of Effortless Power and The Art of Effortless Power.