What's the best place to start experiencing God, freeing yourself from stress, and practicing the vast majority of Jewish commandments? Your body. Join Jay Michaelson, author of the book God in Your Body and fresh from a year of Kabbalah study in Jerusalem, to learn how the mystical and the mundane, the Jewish and the Buddhist, the traditional and the transformative can be unified in an integral embrace -- beginning and ending with the body.

This will be a week you will not forget. Over the course of our week together, we will study text, walk in the woods, meditate with potato chips, and even learn how to use the bathroom according to Kabbalah.

This workshop is being offered as a half-day workshop at Elat Chayyim, the Jewish Retreat Center in Accord, New York, from August 7-13. During the other half of the day, you may take a second workshop -- with Rabbi Dovber Pinson, Cantor Robert Esformes, Rabbi Itzchak Marmorstein, or Rabbi Tsura August -- or take the time to relax in a beautiful rural setting, surrounded by country roads, lakes, and open fields. You can register now at Elat Chayyim's website. The cost is $300 plus room and board.

The following are some of the practices and topics we will cover:

Waking up the Jewish prayer. It's easy to miss the fact that the three main Jewish prayers are the kneeling (barchu), listening (shema) and standing (amidah) prayer -- but what does this body-centric language tell us about how the body influences the soul, and how different modes of being can be embodied with movement and mindfulness? We will focus on the different emotional valences of traditional Jewish prayer, and innovate some of our own.

Eat your way to Enlightenment. Eating meditation is one of the easiest, and most immediately rewarding, forms of contemplative practice. Admit it -- it's also very Jewish. By combining Buddhist mindfulness practices with Jewish blessing practices, we will create an integral form of contemplative work that will enrich your everyday life.

Encountering God in Nature. It's the summertime, and we're not going to spend it indoors. We will practice different kinds of walking meditation, again combining Buddhist mindfulness with Jewish paths of blessing and hitbodedut (solitary meditation) to experience the body in its intended context: the natural world.

... and there is much more to come.

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