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  • Published: 15 July 2011
  • ISBN: 9781583941591
  • Imprint: North Atlantic
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 200
  • RRP: $36.00

Zen Body-Being

An Enlightened Approach to Physical Skill, Grace, and Power



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.

  • Published: 15 July 2011
  • ISBN: 9781583941591
  • Imprint: North Atlantic
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 200
  • RRP: $36.00

About the authors

Peter Ralston

In 1975, Peter Ralston founded Cheng Hsin, a dogma-free approach to using direct experience in body/mind training, and two years later opened The Cheng Hsin School of Internal Martial Arts and Center for Ontological Research in Oakland, California. The first non-Asian ever to win the World Championship full-contact martial arts tournament, Ralston is author of Zen Body-Being, Cheng Hsin: Principles of Effortless Power, and other books.

Praise for Zen Body-Being