For the last 40 years I have had and continue to have a deeply passionate, ever enlightening, and endlessly inquisitive relationship with the ancient psycho-bio-spiritual science and humanistic life therapy known as "the body of living meditation". However, when I speak of "living meditation", I am making reference to an "original root body of meditation" that was the deep spiritual ground or 'the Way of life' for the prehistoric Chinese Ancients (5000-4500 BC). In my research and practice, I have come to understand the 'original root body of meditation' as the actual experiential background or 'somatic template' behind the ancient Chinese teachings in the I Ching and the Tao Te Ching. The I Ching or The Book of Changes was written about 2500 BC and the Tao Te Ching or The Book of the Way and Its Virtue was written about 500 BC. Although these two texts infer the daily meditative life Way of the Ancients, no dominant historical figure emerged in China who actually lived and taught the 'original root body of meditation'. However, in the land of India, the historical Buddha (566-488 BC) did emerge as a human being who intuitively embodied the 'ancient root of meditation', awakened to its enlightened and compassionate Way of daily life, and taught that Way for over 45 years. Although the Buddha verbally shared his embodied wisdom in the common language of his people, he also freely transmitted his deepest felt experiences of 'living meditation' through a 'nonverbal somatic intimacy' or 'body to body transmission' between himself and his closest lay and monastic practitioners of the Way. This bodily felt empathic transmission of the Buddha's root meditation and his enlightened life practice was perpetuated as the authentic Buddha seal of his 'Only Moment Body' that continues to be openly transmitted between the ancestral lineage of Zen teachers and their student practitioners to this very day.

Since its prehistoric origins in China and its historical embodiment and intimate transmission in India, the original root body of meditation has continued to nourish, inspire and guide humanity in its continued evolution toward higher levels of creative consciousness & intuitive intelligence, peak states of embodiment & physical performance, unconditional compassion & wisdom based relationships, and optimum levels of health, healing, and longevity.

Over the last 30 years of my teaching, training, and counseling practice, I have integrated a wide variety of psychotherapeutic growth strategies from humanistic psychology, transpersonal psychology, cognitive psychology, and Jungian depth psychology with the enduring somatic wisdom, life mindfulness skills, character growth postures, and spiritual self-realizations that together constitute the ancient root body of living Meditation. I have named this complimentary integration between the growth strategies and insights from Western Psychology and the ancient cognitive skills and behavioral postures of the Ancient Root Body of Meditation Applied Meditation Psychology™.

Applied Meditation Psychology™ redefines the ancient root body of meditation as a "dynamic psycho-bio-spiritual practice of peak human embodiment". By 'peak human embodiment' I am making reference to the farther reaches of wellness, longevity, mental clarity, behavioral wisdom, spiritual growth, empathic intelligence, human knowledge, compassion, intuition, creativity, and effortless performance.

As a peak embodiment practice, this root body of meditation includes the daily application of a 1) cognitive-behavioral therapy, 2) a humanistic interpersonal therapy, 3) a somatic biofeedback therapy, 4) a transpersonal growth therapy, and 5) an embodied life investigation & experiential research methodology. I have come to call this dynamic psycho-bio-spiritual practice of peak embodiment, Applied Meditation Therapy® or AMT.

1) As an applied cognitive behavioral therapy, AMT is a practical tool for bringing the light of consciousness to causal interactions between thoughts, perceptions, feelings, sensations, and behaviors that usually keep us in bondage to fear and anxiety, unhealthy dependencies, egocentric views, social/religious conditioning, chronic mental chatter, self-preoccupation, and dysfunctional reactive impulses.

2) As a humanistic interpersonal therapy, AMT encourages the practice of embodied truth, genuine compassion, deep listening, forgiveness, open dialogue, upright communication, authentic and congruent relationship, mutual respect, balanced in-dependency, romantic sensuality, and the ecstatic mystical sacredness of sexual union.

3) As a somatic biofeedback therapy, AMT encourages you to experience your body as an intelligent and wisdoming resource. Somatic education and training in AMT emphasizes that being consciously intimate with your "only moment body functioning" is vital to wellness, healing, growth, intuition, creativity, joy and peak performance. AMT deepens and broadens awareness of what is happening within the body moment-by-moment. AMT somatic therapy focuses on passing sensations, arising tensions, finding alert relaxation, being intimate with breath and vital energy, skeletal-muscular ease, postural alignment, spontaneous and creative movement, and the meaningful orchestration of biofeedback wisdoming.

4) As a transpersonal growth therapy, AMT focuses on the emergence of our True Nature or Original Self. The word "transpersonal" means beyond the personal, or transcendence of attachment to the ego-self and the reactive or conditioned patterns of our personality and thinking mind. AMT training and practice gradually reveals the transparency and insubstantiality of our arising thoughts, our ego-self, the psycho-dynamics of our personality, and our over identification with thinking mind. Thus, AMT as a transpersonal therapy reveals that human beings have an original Self that is free from bondage to reactive behavioral patterns, perceptual biases, and the conditioned self-talk that hinders inner growth, bright wisdoming, self-compassion, relational intimacy, loving kindness, clarity of being, passionate living, and multidimensional life success. AMT helps us to recover our pristine human experience of childlike wonder and awe, our originally enlightened consciousness, and our felt empathic intimacy with a Infinite Transpersonal Wisdom that penetrates our own bodies and all of life and death.

5) As a life research methodology, AMT investigates the meaning, direction, and purpose of our ever changing needs, desires, perceptions, intentions, feelings, and motivations in order to clearly illuminate the wisdom nature of impermanence, the wisdom nature of being and becoming, the wisdom nature of the embodied Self just as IT is, and the wisdom nature of all things and life circumstances just as they are.

This is the historical, multidimensional, holistic and integrative approach that I emphasize when counseling and training people in the peak embodiment practice of Applied Meditation Therapy® (AMT).