The body is, of course, integral to meditation, but there are only a few books that focus this specifically on the body and the meditative experience. Awake Where You Are addresses that need, and additionally integrates psychological concepts, which provides a more familiar entry point for people less familiar with Buddhism.

Pulled around by desires and distractions, we’re so easily disconnected from ourselves.

Life is happening right in front of us, and within us—but still, we manage to miss so much of it.

Awake Where You Are provides the antidote, inviting us to go deep into our own bodies, to inhabit our sensory experience carefully; to learn the art of living from the inside out, and, in the process, to find ease, clarity, and an authentic, unshakeable freedom.

The practices in the book literally bring us back into our skin, where we can reconnect with a more rich, meaningful, and peaceful life. Aylward writes with sophisticated subtlety, as well as the heart-opening simplicity and clarity born of deep experience.

And this book is more than a meditation guide—it’s a guide to living an embodied life. You’ll learn about the following areas and practices:

• Understanding and liberating our primal human drives. Aylward explains how the three primary drives—survival, sexual, and social—function within us, and how we can engage their energy to explore, understand, and liberate them.
• Integrating psychological understanding with meditative practice. Awake Where You Are goes beyond the broad brushstrokes of Buddhist psychology, inviting the listener into an exploration of their own particular psychological history and conditioning.
• Investigating the nuances of love. Listeners will learn to see the classical Buddhist heart qualities, or brahmaviharas (loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity) as distinct flavors of love, and as the natural resting places of a free heart.