Let’s begin with three deep breaths.

Beginnings matter, don’t you think? Let’s make this a good one.

This poem by David Whyte is a good start, let’s begin there.

“Start with your own question, give up on other people’s questions.”

I like that; I like it a lot. There’s a reflex that comes with this territory—inner work, getting in touch with yourself, meditation, examining experience—a reflex to flip into a receptive osmosis mode; to let other people’s questions and concerns Trojan-horse their way in.

I’m not here to give you my questions and priorities—you have your own. You should stay with them.

I’d like to help introduce you to more ways to resonate with your questions, your priorities. I want to get you in touch with the felt body where those questions unravel themselves into something that’s not quite an answer, not quite a rebirth, but something about 3 inches north both.

“take a small step you can call your own”

Finding, feeling, and taking small steps you can call your own—that’s what we’re here for. Get in touch with the soma and everything else will start to follow from there.

We’ve said the word now, soma. What do I mean by that, what am I saying?

Maybe more importantly: what am I not saying?

Start close in, don’t take the second step or the third, start with the first thing close in the step you don’t want to take…

Start with your own question, give up on other people’s questions, don’t let them smother something simple…

Start right now take a small step you can call your own don’t follow someone else’s heroics, be humble and focused, start close in, don’t mistake that other for your own.

I use the word soma somewhat impressionistically, more to point towards a region of experience than to denote something with a hard outline and definition. It’s both the classical Greek word for “body” and the name of an unknown psychoactive drink that was important in the Vedic tradition.

This overlap feels fitting to me. Your body is a holy drug.

Other terms I sometimes use to point at the same region as soma are:

• the felt body
• field of experience
• phenomenological field
• everything in your awareness
• whatever is here for you now
• the meta-sensory field
• inter-connective tissue
• the teacher in your body
• the angel emanating from spine

What I’m pointing at when I talk about the soma (or even sometimes ‘the body’—I use them semi-interchangeably) is a broad, open *experience of experience itself—*and a view in which this experience of experience is a close friend of yours.

The physical body and its senses are a uniquely effective entryway to this region of experience—and one we’ll take great advantage of here. But the physical body isn’t the entirety of that region.

Which leads us to the issue of “what do I not mean by soma?” Which is another way of asking “what should I not expect from this course?”

Just to run through a few of the common misconceptions that come up when I describe Somatic Resonance: