God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness and Embodied Spiritual Practice

by Jay Michaelson

Book Overview

The first comprehensive treatment of the body in Jewish spiritual practice. With meditations, physical exercises, visualizations and sacred texts you will learn how to experience the presence of the Divine in and through your body, uniting body and spirit.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 158023304X
• ISBN13: 9781580233040
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: Jewish Lights Publishing
• Length: 266 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Good overall presentation

Jay Michaelson has put together an excellent overall presentation of the theme, God in Your Body. The book reads well and is inspirational, along with practical suggestions for applying the principles he presents. The book is vibrant in its presentation, and the author's enthusiasm shines throughout. The book is a helpful resource for a topic which there is not a huge amount of literature available. Some examples of the wide range of subjects addressed include: Eating, Praying, Breathing, Walking, Using the Bathroom, Mirroring the Divine, Dancing, Fasting, Nature, The Five Senses, Embodied Emotions, and Sickness and Health. Each of the topics is engaging and practical applications can be gleaned from them. One of the things which stuck me while reading was this suggesstion: "Practice, then is the key: actually doing, actually experiencing... the idea of practice is to keep doubting -- but keep doing, also, in order to obtain the evidence that you seek... Experience first, and then the concepts come alive." If your taste buds are whetted by God in Your Body, I suggest trying Everything Is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism, also by Jay Michaelson -- it is extremely well-done and is a terrific read.

Fabulous & quite useful book

I very much enjoy this book, which I bought to inform my leading of a yoga & meditation class on yom kippur. It was recommended to my by two rabbis (one who teaches Jewish mysticism at Naropa University), and I've found much that I will put to use in my daily life.

I've never reviewed anything before

I have never reviewed anything before, but for this book I will. I found this book to be extremely helpful. My therapist and I are using it to deal with some difficult issues, and each chapter makes the discussion so much easier. I'm looking at my life, my body and my health with new eyes.

Wherever We Let Him In

A beautifully-written perspective on the holiness of whole-ness. As a martial artist and teacher of the arts, as well as a Torah-committed Jew, I am inspired by the author's call to see beyond the body-mind schism and embrace a view that transcends East vs. West. Since there is One Creator, it stands to reason and faith that each of us, body-mind-soul, should be testament to His Oneness. I read this book joyfully and often pick it up and open to random sections to read and reexperience that joy. A treasure.

Body and Mind in Judaism

For years I have been involved in physical things, tai chi, jogging, basketball, baseball, and then as I got into more "spiritual things" the dichotomy emerged; mind and body are two oppossing forces. Try as we may many taught, we must overcome the body to reach the spiritual. My interest in Judaism as I matured caused me to explore that in fact there are many physical pathways to Jewish spiritual practices. Yet I never could find an explanantion that satisfied me. Well this book does so. First off the author is a very wise and thoughtful writer. There is brilliance here and throughout the author writes from experience both in learning (which many Jewish books in my opinion lack nowdays) and also his own life learning from meditation and body work (he appears to have done yoga nd much more). What I learned from this book is that the physical mitzvot and commandments are deep spiritual teachings and they compliment the theory which many readers may have read or learned about. There is a humility here as well as he asks the reader to experience for themselves doing, learning and then knowing when one eats, prays, breaths, loves and walks (and after all Jewish law, Halacha is a way of walking to and with G-d). I do not agree w/ everything the author writes but so what. I learned an incredible amount and he opened my eys to new ways of being and experiencing the Jewish pathway. If a book does that then it surely is a valuable friend. I am thankful for this book and Jay Michaelson hopefully will share some more of his wisdom in the future.