Dynamic Embodiment of the Sun Salutation: Pathways to Balancing the Chakras and the Neuroendocrine System

Dynamic Embodiment of the Sun Salutation®: Pathways to Balancing the Chakras and the Neuroendocrine System guides you to do the Sun Salutation with more ease by integrating awareness of glandular and chakral embodiment cues and neuro-developmental movement. Everything in this book can be applied to your personal practice and overall health, or to teaching others. It offers a soft, organic yet powerful approach to being in the poses and transitioning between them. What you will learn is effective and surprising. There is tangible mystery in accessing this ability, which we all have, to embody the endocrine system and the related energy fields.


By working with the endocrine system and their correlations with the chakras we are grounding the subtle within the physical body. Learn about the dynamic combination of the specific electrical and systemic circulatory nature of the neuroendocrine system. Discover how the anatomical placement of the glands and the spatial tensions (or tensegrity) surrounding them are the natural bridge to activating the energy needed for a fulfilling life.


One access route to these dynamic stimuli is through Body Mind Centering's developmental approach, conveyed through the lens of Dynamic Embodiment by BMC® Master teacher Dr Martha Eddy and Shakti Smith, Master healer, Somatic Movement Educator, Yoga Teacher and Psychotherapist. This approach includes an understanding of careful skeletal positioning, brain-activating movement and hormonal balancing as well as integrating broader social somatic contexts such as the impact of lifestyle, cultural and intergenerational influences. In an age when, most likely, at least one person you know is struggling with thyroid, adrenal, or reproductive glandular imbalance, this book will provide information on the physical, emotional and spiritual impact of attuning with the glands and early childhood development imprints while practising the Sun Salutation. It includes clues for what to do when yoga or endocrine work brings on chaos - from trauma triggers, kundalini overwhelm, to basic life confusion. It gives you the tools to help ground yourself and others, and to take centered action in a dynamic world.

Martha Eddy is the Founding Director of Moving For Life (non-profit); Founder and Director of Dynamic Embodiment Somatic Movement Therapy Training; and Founding Director of the Center for Kinesthetic Education. She has taught at Columbia, Princeton, San Francisco State and New York universities and currently is the Geraldine Ferraro Fellow of Social Justice through Movement at Marymount Manhattan College where she also advises the Body, Science and Motion program. She has been a strong advocate for Somatic Movement as a Certified Teacher of Body-Mind Centering since 1984, former President and Executive Director at the Laban Institute of Movement Studies, Past-President of ISMETA and author of Mindful Movement - the Evolution of the Somatic Arts and Conscious Action.

She began practising the Sun Salutation in 1975 and continued taking yoga classes together with Body-Mind Centering (BMC) community members including Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. By 1984 she was teaching the neuroendocrine developmental courses for the School for BMC and quickly began to apply that knowledge to her Sun Salutation practice which she has sustained for the past 35 years. This Dynamic Embodiment somatic approach has become a road to trauma recovery Post 9/11 (Inner Resilience-Tides Program) and for cancer survivors (Moving For Life Gentle Yoga Moves) as well as a gentle health giving force for dealing with her own Lyme Disease, Hashimotos and other immunological and inflammatory stressors.

Shakti Andrea Smith, RSMT, LMT, RYE, APP is a registered Somatic Movement Therapist, Licensed Massage Therapist, Registered 500 Hour Yoga Teacher, Polarity Practitioner and owner, teacher, and healer at Prema Soma Healing Arts. She also teaches at the Swedish Institute College of Health Sciences, and is a former faculty member at Movement Research in NYC, as well as being a member of ISMETA and of Yoga Alliance.

She has 30 years experience as a student and teacher of the key areas the book is focused on: Yoga, Movement, Chakras, Glands (body-mind centering and anatomy), developmental movement. Shakti has been a yoga teacher for 20 years, movement teacher since 1992, and a licensed professional health practitioner since 1998. She is based in New York City.