Judith Blackstone is a pioneering teacher of contemporary spirituality best known for developing The Realization Process, a direct path toward nondual awakening. With Sounds True, she has most recently published the book Trauma and the Unbound Body. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Judith about applying The Realization Process to the healing process—whether it’s physical, relational, or psychological. They discuss the Process’s application to unprocessed trauma—especially how fully inhabiting the body can highlight long-term physical constrictions. Tami and Judith talk about the methods for releasing that constriction, as well as the difference between awareness of the body and inhabiting it. Finally, Judith leads listeners in a core breath practice for settling into the body and attuning to the fundamental consciousness that is always available to us. (57 minutes)
Tami’s Takeaway: As part of our conversation about “disentangling the constrictions” that are held in the body as a result of trauma, Judith Blackstone teaches one of the central practices of The Realization Process—the Core Breath Practice. This is a powerful technique for quickly entering the subtle core of the body (a vertical channel that is described in many spiritual traditions). Once we enter this subtle core, we have a powerful resource available to us for releasing traumatic experiences held in the body. The takeaway: do the Core Breath Practice regularly as a way to stay in deep inward contact and “unbind the body.”
Judith Blackstone, PhD, is a psychotherapist and innovative teacher in contemporary spirituality. She developed the Realization Process®, an embodied approach to personal and relational healing and nondual realization. She is the author of Trauma and the Unbound Body, Belonging Here, The Intimate Life, The Enlightenment Process, and The Empathic Ground.For more, see realizationprocess.org.
Subscribe to Insights at the Edge to hear all of Tami’s interviews (transcripts available too!), featuring Eckhart Tolle, Caroline Myss, Tara Brach, Jack Kornfield, Adyashanti, and many more.
Founded Sounds True in 1985 as a multimedia publishing house with a mission to disseminate spiritual wisdom. She hosts a popular weekly podcast called Insights at the Edge, where she has interviewed many of today's leading teachers. Tami lives with her wife, Julie M. Kramer, and their two spoodles, Rasberry and Bula, in Boulder, Colorado.
We find ourselves in a time that is rich with paths toward spiritual awakening, especially that pinnacle of awakening called “nonduality.”
The Fullness of the Ground is my contribution to that abundance. It describes in detail the lived experience of nondual realization.
In the book, I offer a series of gentle attunement practices, called the Realization Process, for uncovering and knowing ourselves as a fundamental, undivided dimension of consciousness, pervading our whole body and environment. Pervading our body, fundamental consciousness is experienced as the authentic ground of our individual being. Pervading our body and environment, it is the basis of our oneness with everyone and everything around us. This means that we become whole as individuals at the same time as we transcend our individuality and experience unity with our surroundings.
As a longtime spiritual teacher and psychotherapist, I feel that there is not enough emphasis in some of the nonduality teachings about how this realization enriches our lives. I have been particularly concerned about teachings that encourage people to disconnect from themselves as individuals or to suppress their emotional responses to the world around them. In this book, I instead offer a path to nondual realization that is deeply embodied and that matures us as individuals, at the same time that it opens us to self–other oneness. Far from erasing us as individuals, nondual realization enhances our experience of our own unique existence. It deepens all of our human capacities, including our ability to feel, to think, and to enjoy our lives. It can help heal and enhance our relationships with other people by enabling us to experience deep contact with others without losing inward contact with ourselves.
Central to the method in this book is the important difference between being aware of the body and inhabiting the body. So I often begin with this simple exercise for experiencing this distinction:
Sit upright with your hands in your lap.
Take a moment to become aware of your hands. You may notice how warm or cold they are or how tense or relaxed they are. This is becoming aware of your hands.
Now enter into your hands. Experience yourself as present, living within your hands. This is inhabiting your hands.
You can go on to inhabiting different parts of your body and, finally, your body as a whole. See if you can feel present everywhere within your body, rather than aware of it from the outside.
In the Realization Process, we go through several steps, taking around 30 minutes, to reach this next part. But, for a very shortened version, if you can feel that you are living within your body, then next find the space outside of your body, the space in your environment.
Let yourself experience that the space inside and outside of your body is the same undivided space. Without leaving your body, experience that the space that pervades your body also pervades your whole environment. This is the spacious expanse of fundamental consciousness.
Judith Blackstone, PhD
Judith Blackstone, PhD, is a psychotherapist and innovative teacher in contemporary spirituality. She developed the Realization Process®, an embodied approach to personal and relational healing and nondual realization. She is the author of Trauma and the Unbound Body, Belonging Here, The Intimate Life, The Enlightenment Process, and The Empathic Ground.
When we attune to ourselves as fundamental consciousness, we
find that this pervasive space is not empty in the sense of void. Even though
it is experienced as stillness, it is lively, luminous stillness.
In my method, the Realization Process, I attempt to avoid
metaphysical assertions about what fundamental consciousness actually is or
what qualities it actually possesses. However, an important part of the
Realization Process, for both healing from trauma and for spiritual awakening,
is to attune to specific qualities that appear to be inherent in this lively
pervasive space. These qualities, which we can attune to pervading everywhere,
are experienced as the fundamental qualities of our own being. In this work, we name these qualities: awareness,
emotion, and physical sensation. Attuning to these three qualities can help
us feel whole within ourselves and unified with our surroundings.
Before we go further, by “quality,” I mean the “feel” of our experience. A distinguishing characteristic of a quality is that it cannot be translated into a direct description of the experience. For example, the quality of love, exactly how it feels, cannot really be conveyed to someone who has not experienced it. We can talk about the experience—we can say that love is warm or that it causes us to want to connect with someone that we feel this toward, but we cannot put into words the exact experience of love itself. In the same way, we cannot convey, to someone who has not experienced it, the color red, the taste of vanilla, or the sensation of coldness. This is true for all of the many qualities that make up our experience, including the unchanging qualities of fundamental consciousness.
We attune to each quality through a different section of our body. We attune to the ground of awareness in, around, and above our head. By awareness, I mean that part of the ground within which perceptions and thoughts occur. We attune to the ground of emotion in the mid-third of our body—our chest and midsection. By emotion, I mean that part of the ground within which emotions, such as grief, anger, and joy, occur. We attune to physical sensation through the bottom third of our body—our lower torso, legs, and feet. By physical sensation, I mean that part of the ground in which physical sensations such as heat and sexual pleasure occur.
We need to be attuned to all three qualities of fundamental
consciousness in order to reach our most subtle and most complete experience of
ourselves and the world around us. The blend of awareness, emotion, and
physical sensation pervading everywhere helps us attune to and resonate with
the awareness, emotion, and physical sensation in other people and in all of
nature.
PRACTICE: Attuning to
Fundamental Consciousness
Sit upright with your feet on the floor. Keep your eyes open.
Feel that you are inside your whole body at once. Find the
space outside your body, the space in the room. Experience that the space
inside and outside your body is the same, continuous space. It pervades you.
Experience that the space pervading your own body also pervades your whole
environment. Do not move from within your body to do this: attune to the space
that seems to already be there, pervading you and your environment.
Attune to the quality
of awareness. This means becoming aware of your awareness. Attune to
awareness around, within, and way above your head. Experience the quality of
awareness pervading your whole body so that it feels like you are made of the
quality of awareness. Experience the quality of awareness pervading your whole
body and environment at the same time.
Attune to the quality
of emotion. Sense the quality of emotion in the middle of your body: your
chest and gut. Experience the quality of emotion pervading your whole body so
that it feels like you are made of the quality of emotion. This is not a
specific emotion; it is the subtle ground of emotion. Experience the quality of
emotion pervading your whole body and environment at the same time.
Attune to the quality
of physical sensation. Come down into the bottom of your torso, legs, and
feet to attune to the quality of physical sensation. Experience the quality of
physical sensation pervading your whole body so that it feels like you are made
of the quality of physical sensation. Again, this is not a specific physical
sensation; it is the subtle ground of physical sensation. Experience the
quality of physical sensation pervading your whole body and environment at the
same time.
Now experience the quality of physical sensation pervading
your whole body and environment and the quality of awareness pervading your
whole body and environment at the same time. Add the quality of emotion
pervading your whole body and environment. At this point, the qualities blend
together; they become indistinguishable from each other.
Sit for a moment in this rich field of awareness, emotion, and physical sensation, pervading your body and environment.
Judith Blackstone, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychotherapist in New York and an innovative teacher in contemporary spirituality. Her published works include the books Belonging Here, The Enlightenment Process, The Empathic Ground, and The Intimate Life, as well as the audio learning course The Realization Process.
Buy your copy of Trauma
and the Unbound Body at your favorite bookseller!
Judith Blackstone is a pioneering teacher of contemporary spirituality best known for developing The Realization Process, a direct path toward nondual awakening. With Sounds True, she has most recently published the book Trauma and the Unbound Body. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Judith about applying The Realization Process to the healing process—whether it’s physical, relational, or psychological. They discuss the Process’s application to unprocessed trauma—especially how fully inhabiting the body can highlight long-term physical constrictions. Tami and Judith talk about the methods for releasing that constriction, as well as the difference between awareness of the body and inhabiting it. Finally, Judith leads listeners in a core breath practice for settling into the body and attuning to the fundamental consciousness that is always available to us. (57 minutes)
Tami’s Takeaway: As part of our conversation about “disentangling the constrictions” that are held in the body as a result of trauma, Judith Blackstone teaches one of the central practices of The Realization Process—the Core Breath Practice. This is a powerful technique for quickly entering the subtle core of the body (a vertical channel that is described in many spiritual traditions). Once we enter this subtle core, we have a powerful resource available to us for releasing traumatic experiences held in the body. The takeaway: do the Core Breath Practice regularly as a way to stay in deep inward contact and “unbind the body.”
What if aging isn’t about decline, but about becoming brighter—like a meteor that grows more luminous even as it falls through the atmosphere?
Tami Simon speaks with beloved poet-philosopher Mark Nepo about his deeply moving new book, The Fifth Season: Creativity in the Second Half of Life. Drawing from Chinese wisdom traditions and his own journey through chronic pain and back surgery, Mark illuminates aging as the “heavenly pivot” (love that phrase) which is the transformative shift from living outwardly to inhabiting life from the inside out.
Join Mark and Tami for this episode to explore:
The meteor metaphor: how we grow brighter as our outer casing flakes away • “Entering time” versus moving through it—and why slowing down opens the eternal moment • The paradox of limitation: how loss simultaneously deepens and expands us • Breaking through to joy as the depth of being that holds all the waves • Why the heart, not the mind, must lead in the second half of life • Living with chronic pain and learning to let beauty in while suffering • The difference between being victims of life versus initiates into life • How grief changes everything and why we don’t get over it, we get under it • Being swift of heart—living without hesitation from the inside out
Mark’s wisdom arises from decades of spiritual practice, surviving cancer, and facing the inevitable losses that come with a long life—essential listening for anyone navigating aging, chronic pain, loss, or simply seeking to live more fully present to the life they have.
Listen now to discover how the second half of life can be your most luminous yet.
This conversation offers genuine transmission—not just concepts about awakening, but the palpable presence of realized teachers exploring the growing edge of spiritual understanding together. Originally aired on Sounds True One.
What truly matters when we face the end of life? After decades of sitting at the bedside of hundreds of dying people, Frank Ostaseski has distilled the deepest human concerns into two essential questions: Am I loved? Have I loved well?
This week on Insights at the Edge, Tami welcomes Frank Ostaseski—co-founder of America’s first Buddhist hospice, the Zen Hospice Project, founder of the Metta Institute, and author of The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully. Frank brings extraordinary wisdom from his pioneering work in compassionate end-of-life care, along with profound personal insights from his own encounters with heart surgery, strokes, and the transformative vulnerability of being “on the other side of the sheets.”
Join Tami and Frank to explore:
The two essential questions that arise when facing death—and what they reveal about living fully now
Why emotional flexibility is the true condition for healing and transformation
How to meet our own fear and pain without abandoning ourselves or others
The practice of “allowing” as a path to both wisdom and compassion
What happens in the dying process: surrender, reconstitution, and coming home
Why Frank is allergic to the notion of a “good death”
The indestructible love that emerges when we keep our hearts open through pain
How to practice dying by paying attention to everyday endings
This conversation is for anyone grappling with loss, change, or the fundamental questions of existence—offering not prescriptive answers, but the profound medicine of honest presence and the recognition that our vulnerability itself is one of our most beautiful human qualities.
This conversation offers genuine transmission—not just concepts about awakening, but the palpable presence of realized teachers exploring the growing edge of spiritual understanding together. Originally aired on Sounds True One.
How do we remain committed to staying sober when grief strikes, when stress becomes overwhelming, or when shame threatens to pull us back into old patterns?
This week on Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon welcomes Steven Washington, a former professional Broadway dancer who has transformed his 23-year recovery journey into a powerful practice of embodied healing. Steven is the author of Recovering You: Soul Care and Mindful Movement for Overcoming Addiction and creator of the SWE Studio, an online community offering movement and meditation support for people in recovery.
In this deeply personal interview, Tami and Steven explore:
Why recovery must be “non-negotiable”—with no conditions attached, regardless of life’s challenges
How shame operates as the linchpin of addiction and the healing power of sharing it with trusted others
The connection between sensitivity and addiction, and how to transform sensitivity from vulnerability into strength
Practical tools for creating a trigger plan that works for both small daily stressors and major life crises
How Qigong and embodied practices help regulate the nervous system and process emotions held in the body
The journey from inherited shame to self-compassion and authentic self-worth
Why asking for help—practiced with small things—prepares us for life’s biggest challenges
Developing a personal relationship with a higher power that feels authentic rather than inherited
If you’re navigating recovery, supporting someone who is, or seeking to understand the connection between embodiment and transformation, Steven offers both practical wisdom and profound compassion for the journey.
Note: This interview originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at https://www.join.soundstrue.com
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