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

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 include:

• 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.

"Working with Peter changed the way I move my body. I exercise, dance, and live differently…it’s not only a powerful way to live in a body but a powerful way to live in a body but a powerful way to live. His knowledge and application of body mechanics is more relevant than anything I learned in seven years of medical education."—Kate McQueen, MD; Clinical Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, UTHSC-Houston"Zen Body-Being is clearl#'