Everyone Is Right Awakening Through the Body
4 snips
Mar 20, 2026 
Myles Kessler, longtime Aikido practitioner and Mahasi-style meditation teacher who founded the Integral Dojo, talks about embodiment and awakening. He traces movement from martial arts to long meditation retreats. They explore somatic shadow work, reinhabiting the body after nondual states, relational practice for integration, and applying embodied conflict skills to real-world polarization.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Embodied Awakening Produces Durable Change
- Awakening through the body complements meditative insight by providing durable, embodied change.
- Myles Kessler recounts decades in Aikido and long Vipassana retreats showing body-rooted awakenings last and inform daily presence.
Vipassana Tends Toward Dissolving The Body Representation
- Classic Vipassana's noting method tends to dissolve the mental representation of the body as practice refines.
- Myles explains that as object/observer split refines, the body and sense of self phenomenologically disappear toward non-self.
No-Self States Can Mask Somatic Trauma
- Dissociation into no-self can hide stored trauma because trauma resides in the body.
- Keith warns that floating off into non-self may bypass somatic signals of being triggered and block necessary shadow work.