My guest this week is Dr. Willa Blythe Baker, author of an excellent book called The Wakeful Body (affiliate link). Willa and I had a great conversation about how the body draws us into connection with ourselves and with this moment. She had recently arrived in Hawaii, and you can hear the sounds of birds singing in the background!

Topics we discussed included:

• Waiting for something to happen in meditation
• Realizing that what we might be waiting for is already here
• The difficulty we have with doing something simple in meditation
• The awareness that the body is already paying attention
• Letting go of the sense of using effort to direct our attention
• Paying attention to the body’s attention
• Inadvertently strengthening the “managing” mind in meditation
• Acknowledging the body’s own wisdom
• Meditation as a practice of deep listening
• Letting the body and our senses lead us into practice
• Mindful awareness as surrender
• Dropping, sinking, or falling into the body
• Realizing we are already being held and supported by the earth
• How we can remember to come back from our minds into our bodies
• Holding and loving the afflicted parts of ourselves, rather than trying to fix them
• Befriending our experience, even things we see as “hindrances”
• What to do when we have a complicated relationship with the body, e.g., due to illness or a negative body image
• Recognizing the impermanence of the body
• Bodily decay as evolution and flow
• What happens to the body’s inherent wakefulness when the body dies

Photo: Gulnara Niaz

Willa Blythe Baker, PhD, is the founder and spiritual director of Natural Dharma Fellowship and its retreat center Wonderwell Mountain Refuge in Springfield, NH.

She was authorized as a lineage holder (lama) in the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism after twelve years of monastic training and two consecutive three-year retreats.

She was a visiting lecturer in Buddhist Ministry at Harvard Divinity School from 2013 to 2017.

Willa is a member of Clark University’s Council of the Uncertain Human Future, sits on the advisory board for One Earth Sangha, and is on the contemplative faculty of the Mind and Life Institute.

Willa’s books include The Wakeful Body, The Arts of Contemplative Care, and Everyday Dharma. She is the translator (Tibetan to English) of Tarantha’s Lamrim Essence of Ambrosia: A Guide to Buddhist Contemplations.

Her articles have appeared in Lion’s Roar, Buddhadharma Magazine, Tricycle Magazine, Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, Journal of Buddhist-Christian Studies, The Tibet Journal, and a number of anthologies.

You can follow along to Willa’s free guided meditations from The Wakeful Body here, and learn more about her here.