Whole Body Meditations : Igniting Your Natural Instinct to Heal [Paperback]

Lorin Roche (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Meditation as Medicine

When you sense yourself being stretched to the limit, what do you do? Maybe you're feeling anxious, uneasy, or downright sick. Do you pop a pill? Believe it or not, there is a faster, more natural way to find relief. Whether your symptoms are a result of stress or related to a specific health condition, the simple act of paying attention to yourself can be your first and best defense.

The belief in our natural instinct to heal dates back thousands of years, yet modern medicine has for the most part put its faith in drugs instead of people. So today, the concept of self-healing is once again progressive. Likewise, Dr. Lorin Roche is considered something of a rebel when it comes to meditation. He recommends leaving the rigid techniques and painful positions to celibate yogis and long-faced monks and instead promotes a more Western approach.

"Lorin Roche, probably the friendliest meditation teacher in America, has written a gentle, supportive book that makes it clear as crystal why meditation is healing." --James Fadiman, Ph.D., author of Unlimit Your Life

"Whole Body Meditations is filled with practical and creative wisdom. This excellent book offers real tools for initiating personal change, and makes Roche's years of careful practice and reflection available to us all." --Ruth Cox, Ph.D., Institute for Holistic Healing Studies, San Francisco State University

About the Author

Lorin Roche received his Ph.D. in social science from the University of California at Irvine. During the past 30 years of studying and teaching meditation, he has developed a popular approach that favors an individual's instincts over the techniques of so-called meditation authorities. He is coauthor, along with his wife, Camille Maurine, of Meditation Secrets for Women, and the author of two other books.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Rodale Books (April 6, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1579543456
• ISBN-13: 978-1579543457
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,575,074 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Now 59, Lorin has been meditating since age 18, when he signed up to be part of a research project on the physiology of meditation. He was a control subject, and received no instructions whatsoever they wanted him to just sit in a totally dark, soundproofed room in the lab for two hours a day for several weeks, and measure his brain waves. With no instructions, and never having heard of meditation, Lorin just paid attention to the total silence and darkness, and spontaneously entered entered a state of intense alertness. A few months later, someone handed him a little book describing 112 meditation practices, and he realized that he had experienced many of them while sitting in the lab.

This experience made it clear that meditation is a spontaneous and natural human experience, and that there are many doorways into meditation. After the experiment was over, people began asking Lorin to teach simple meditation practices as part of scientific studies and university classes. One thing led to another, and soon Lorin was running his own College-within-the University, called Experiential Workshops, which offered classes in meditation, Tai Chi, Structural Integration Movement Awareness, Yoga, Dance Meditation, Art Meditation, and Gestalt Body Awareness.

Lorin was born in 1949 and grew up in Southern California, in little beach towns such as Ventura, Malibu and Dana Point, which in the 1950's, 60's and 70's were middle-class and unpretentious. Both his parents were surfers and members of the San Onofre Surfing Club from the 1940's on, and took him into the ocean before he could walk.