Judith Blackstone, Ph.D. is a practicing American psychotherapist who has explore widely in Eastern nondual spiritual traditions and developed a stream of teaching uniquely her own that focuses on the embodiment of what she terms fundamental consciousness. She conducts workshops and gives talks throughout the U.S. and has published a number of books and audio CDs presenting her teachings. What I find unique about her teachings is her emphasis on the experience of embodied consciousness and the felt/sensate experience of awareness in the body. Her books present a number of exercises that have evolved from her unique perspective, developed experientially in her own self-healing efforts and spiritual explorations, taking participants through the process of feeling what she terms the subtle core of consciousness in the body and remaining aware of that even when attention is focused outward. In some respects, her exercises overlap with the teachings of Eckhart Tolle, but she takes the somatic details much deeper. Her teachings do not focus on metaphysics or philosophy, nor do they present an ethical/religious framework for consideration. Instead, my impression is that her method, termed the Realization Process, is superbly adapted to the Western mindset, free from overlays of religious imagery and beside-the-point conceptualizations. It is entirely practical and one might even term it a secular perspective on becoming aware of oneself, informed by Buddhist and Advaita Vedanta ideas, but uniquely western with roots in her knowledge of human growth and development from a psychological perspective. Her more recent focus has been on the role of trauma in the limitation of human consciousness and spiritual methods to address it.
Judith is an innovative, experienced teacher in the contemporary fields of nondual realization and spiritual, relational and somatic psychotherapy. She developed the Realization Process, a direct path for realizing fundamental (nondual) consciousness, as well as the application of nondual realization for psychological, relational and physical healing. She currently has six books in publication and has taught the Realization Process for over thirty-five years throughout the United States and Europe. Her newest book is Trauma and the Unbound Body: the Healing Power of Fundamental Consciousness.
Judith studied with many teachers in the Hindu traditions (Advaita Vedanta, Bhakti and Kashmir Shaivism), and the Zen Buddhist and Tibetan Buddhist traditions. She was in residence at a Zen monastery for a year and has received teachings, over the past three decades, in the Mahamudra and Dzog-chen paths of Tibetan Buddhism. However, the Realization Process practices for embodied nondual awakening emerged outside of any traditional lineage. The practices arose in response to her own needs for healing and realization, and the needs of the people in her classes and private practice. Her main teacher has been nature–the subtle emanations from all living forms, the challenges presented by a severe back injury, the natural unwinding, in meditation, of the body, heart and mind toward openness, and the spontaneous emergence of fundamental consciousness.
She has a Masters degree in Transpersonal Psychology and a Ph.D. in Psychology, Eastern Religion and Embodiment. She trained at the Institute for Integrative Psychotherapy in New York City. She has thirty-five years of clinical experience as a psychotherapist and is now retired from private practice.
Judith is the author of Trauma and the Unbound Body: the Healing Power of Fundamental Consciousness, Belonging Here: A Guide for the Spiritually Sensitive Person; The Enlightenment Process; The Intimate Life; The Subtle Self and The Empathic Ground: Intersubjectivity and Nonduality in the Psychotherapeutic Process. Her essays have been published in the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, the International Journal of Self Psychology, the USA Body Psychotherapy Journal, Undivided, Inner Directions Journal and the anthologies, Listening from the Heart of Silence, Finding a Way, Being Called, and The Self-Acceptance Project. A six-CD audio series of Judith explaining and teaching the Realization Process is available from Sounds True.
She has presented the Realization Process and papers on the interface of psychotherapy and nondual spirituality at Psychology of the Self conferences, the Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy conference, the Towards a Science of Consciousness conference, the Consciousness and Experiential Psychology conference at Oxford University, UK, the USA Body Psychotherapy conference, the Science and Nonduality conference (SAND), the Society for Consciousness Studies conference and the Conference on Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy.
With her husband, Zoran Josipovic, Judith founded the Nonduality Institute, dedicated to the practice and scientific study of nonduality. For more information on Zoran’s scientific research, visit http://www.nondualityinstitute.org
Source: About Judith, Realization Process
Although enlightenment is no more mysterious than many other human experiences, such as our ability to love or to create, it is more rare. It only occurs as we reach a particular degree of sensitivity or openness to life. … many people are capable, with some practice, of … the realization, or unveiling, of a subtle dimension of consciousness pervading our own being and everything around us as a unified whole. It is the experience of the luminous transparency of ourselves and our environment, and the fullness and vividness of being that occurs with it. Meditation practices show that there is a potentially spontaneous process toward complete enlightenment. Just by sitting and doing nothing but breathing, the body and mind unwind toward the balance and openness of fundamental consciousness. … this spontaneous process is impeded by the bound childhood pain and psychological defenses that we hold in our bodies, (but) this binding can be released.
Judith Blackstone, The Enlightenment Process
There may be fear involved in releasing the psychological defenses that obscure our realization of fundamental consciousness (awakening), because psychological defenses have given us a sense of safety and power. We may think that we will cease to exist without them. But we do not cease to exist. The process of releasing our defenses and opening to fundamental consciousness reaps an unmistakable deepening of all our human qualities, such as our ability to love, to think, and to experience pleasure. We have a felt sense of coming to life – of becoming fully born – within our body.
Judith Blackstone, The Enlightenment Process
One of Judith’s primary and foundational body meditations – finding the subtle core of the body:
Via Perennis 