Overview
Suttas direct embodiment practice
The suttas are filled with practices that are applicable to the many difficult and trying situations found in the modern world and in our personal lives. The basis for understanding and living the teachings of the suttas is right here in our bodies.
Exploring sutta based embodiment will lead us into a path of ease, play, strength, and freedom. With practice it is possible to remain steady, peaceful, and open hearted amidst anything, everything, and nothing.
Embodied Dhamma First Aid
Sometimes before or after meditation embodied Dhamma first aid is needed to help us create a state in body and mind that is receptive to deeper practice. We need a sense of safety and dignity sufficient to open and explore teachings that will rub against our conditioning and poke at our identities and views.
Body as the Canvas for Awakening
During insight practice the body is a rich ground for experiencing, studying, and understanding the characteristics and conditioning of a human birth. Awareness can be trained so that wisdom and knowledge can emerge.
Approach
Background
Nurturing Integration
It is common to compartmentalize our lives and shut off the awareness of our bodies at times so we can “do what needs to be done.” In many occupations, standard business practices seem to require a disconnect from awareness of the sensations of the heart and body, because such an awareness would impede business, or at least impede business-as-usual.
The suttas seem to indicate that we don’t need to live in such a fragmented way and that ethical embodied awareness is for everyday, not just at times dedicated to religious or other scheduled wholesome practices.
This program is designed to explore the path to freedom showcased in the suttas through somatic exercises. The exercises will be approached in a playful and curious manner that will support gradual growth of awareness, ease, and capacity to open to more compassion and wisdom.
Tools towards Wellness and the Path to Freedom
Additional Support
What I, Ayya Niyyānika, am sharing I learned from movement, communications, embodiment, somatic, peace keeping, and transformative and restorative justice leaders, as well as, other monastics and meditation teachers. What I learned has transformed my practice with the suttas and meditation. This program offering shares from that ongoing practice, that continues to evolve. References to others’ works will be included so you can follow up with those teachers for more in-depth explorations.
Also, I am a monastic and do not have any licensure as a psychotherapist or medical professional. This program is not a substitute for therapy or other medical care. If you need support for trauma recovery or another physical or mental health concern please consult a licensed professional.
Program Focus
Suttas showing the way in, out, and within community
a. Select a characteristic, quality, or state highlighted in the suttas
b. Employ somatic explorations
c. Contemplation and settling
d. Community connections
Motivation
Through the body without bypass
Embodied Dhamma practice brings us into the body. The body becomes the place of practice. Seeing, being with, exploring, and understanding the body and its interdependence on the heart/mind is seeing conditionality and is grounds for liberation.
The motivation to practice in and with the body is that it leads to wisdom and freedom.
Suttas
Words to move by
b. Lump of Foam (SN 22.95)
c. Quarrels and Disputes ()
d. Simile of the Saw (MN )
e. Rid of Resentments (AN 5.162)
f. Distortions (AN 4.49)
g. Honeycake (MN 18)
h. Māluńkyaputta (SN 35.95)
i. Nibbāna (AN 4.179)
j. The Burden (SN 22.22)
Key explorations
Showing up to
b. Opinions and views
c. Quarrels
d. Community
e. Cessation of suffering
Basis in the body
Practices that matter
b. Spacious
c. Warm-hearted
d. Aware
e. Balanced
f. Accepting
Somatic Sutta Exploration
July 2025
Five Thursdays in July at 9 am
Explore the teachings of the suttas through body based explorations. Discover ways to prepare for meditation and support daily-life practices. Nourish your practice through expansive, warm-hearted engagement.
Participation
Fully engaging in the Buddha’s teaching requires practicing with a basis in ethical conduct toward oneself and others and development of the heart/mind through direct experience in meditation and daily life as well as study of the teachings. It is a full hearted exploration not solely an academic study.
- Sila Program – grounding in ethical behavior (offered through Passaddhi Vihara)
- Sutta Study – learning the path (offered through Passaddhi Vihara)
- Somatic Sutta Exploration – engaging through the body (Ayya Niyyānika’s unaffiliated offering)
- Dhamma Reflection and Meditation – engaging through reflection and stilling (offered through Passaddhi Vihara)