Awakening Through the Nine Bodies: Exploring Levels of Consciousness in Meditation

Phillip Moffitt is a Buddhist meditation teacher and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has served as co-guiding teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center since 2010 and leads meditation retreats throughout the United States. His teacher, the Venerable Ajahn Sumedho, inspired his book on the Four Noble Truths, Dancing with Life: Buddhist Insights for Finding Meaning and Joy in the Face of Suffering (Rodale, 2008).

Prior to immersing himself in the study of Theravadan Buddhism, Moffitt spent over ten years studying and practicing yoga with teachers in the Sivananda and Iyengar traditions. He has written numerous articles for both Buddhist and yoga magazines and journals.

In addition to teaching meditation, Moffitt is the president of Life Balance Institute, which he founded in 1995. In his work at the institute, he trains individuals and groups in the principles of values-based leadership and living with an emphasis on how to skillfully make major transitions. His book, Emotional Chaos to Clarity (Penguin, 2012), presents many of the principles that he uses in Life Balance work.

Before becoming a meditation teacher and founding Life Balance Institute, Moffitt was editor-in-chief and CEO of Esquire and led the successful turnaround of the magazine in the 1980s.

Based on meditation practices Phillip Moffitt learned twenty years ago from Himalayan yoga master Sri Swami Balyogi Premvarni, this beautifully illustrated book is a guide to exploring the nature of mind and gaining a better understanding of experiences that arise during meditation. The Nine Bodies teachings map out a journey that starts with consciousness that arises in the physical body and is directly observable, and then travels through ever more subtle levels of consciousness to that which is not manifest and is only potential, and therefore has to be inferred. The book includes a series of mysterious illustrations that Balyogi created during his time of intense Samadhi explorations. Each illustration is a rich composition of symbols that express aspects of inner experiences that are almost impossible to express with language.Moffitt makes these teachings available for meditation students from all spiritual traditions to use as gateways for exploring the nature of mind and as additional means for tracking and classifying meditative experiences. Students of yoga will also find value in the teachings of the Nine Bodies as they provide a means for contextualizing and connecting with yogic teachings on chakras, koshas, gunas, and the Three Bodies.