Embodiment · “Being Precedes Having”
The Ten Points
To bring relaxed awareness down into ten contact-points where the body meets the earth, releasing tension and surrendering into felt sensation rather than scanning the body as an observer.
Ten Points in 5 lines: Lie on your back, knees up and strapped together, feet flat. Relax and let attention drop from thinking into feeling. Move slowly through the ten earth-contact points — feet, buttocks, mid-back, shoulder blades, elbows, head — sinking into each. At each one feel the tension, then let it release and melt into the ground. Rest in the felt body and notice what it holds.
What it is
The Ten Points is Reginald (Reggie) Ray’s foundational somatic-meditation practice: lying on the back, you bring slow, relaxed awareness down into ten places where the body rests against the ground, feeling and releasing the tension held there.
It is the entry practice of his “somatic descent” — his insistence that, as he puts it, “there is no other way to touch enlightenment except in and through our bodies.” Crucially this is not a detached scan in which a watcher inspects body parts from above.
The instruction is to sink into and surrender into each point, letting awareness drop down to meet sensation, so that, in Ray’s words, “the more we relax the tension. the more we can actually begin to feel the information that. the body is holding for us.” It operationalizes present-moment grounding (Everything Happens in the Now), the creative redirection of attention into the soma (The Inner Creates the Outer), and the stillness in which the body’s quieter signals can be felt (The Inner Creates the Outer).
The Method
Faithfully, in outline (lying-down practice):
- Set the posture. Lie on your back on a mat or carpet. Bring the knees up and tie them together with a yoga strap or belt — Ray uses this “to reduce pressure on our lower back and psoas muscle.” Feet flat and spread for stability; hands resting crossed over the lower belly.
- Settle and let go. Take a few moments to let the body completely relax — “Relax. Let go. And just let your body open.” Let attention drop out of thinking and into sensing.
- Move down through the ten points. Bring awareness, one at a time, to the ten places where the body contacts the earth: (1–2) the two feet, (3–4) the two sides of the buttocks, (5) the mid-back opposite the sternum, (6–7) the two shoulder blades, (8–9) the two elbows, and (10) the head.
- At each point: feel, then release. At each location the instruction is to “feel the sensations, feel the tension,” and then allow it to “release” and “melt” — letting the weight of that part sink down and surrender into the ground. Ray frames the points as “energetic conduits enabling us to release tension into the earth.”
- Work in fine detail where useful. Especially in the lower body, move slowly through small regions — the toes, ball, arch, heel, ankle bones of each foot; then calves, knees, thighs, inner thighs, pelvis, sacrum — feeling each rather than picturing it.
- Listen for what the body holds. As tension lets go, simply rest in the felt body and notice whatever sensation, image, or feeling arises — this is the “information the body is holding,” met without analysis. (Sourcing note: quoted phrases — “knees up and tied together with a yoga strap or belt,” “energetic conduits enabling us to release tension into the earth,” “the more we relax the tension. the more we can actually begin to feel the information. the body is holding,” “there is no other way to touch enlightenment except in and through our bodies” — are short, attributed renderings from Ray’s books and the Dharma Ocean guided practice; the protocol is a faithful description, not a reproduction.)
Source & Lineage
Reginald A. Ray is a longtime student of Chogyam Trungpa and founder of Dharma Ocean, where he teaches a somatic approach to Tibetan Vajrayana and Dzogchen.
The Ten Points is the gateway practice of the body work he lays out in Touching Enlightenment (2008) and The Awakening Body (2016): realization as a descent into the felt body rather than an ascent into disembodied mind.
The Traditions' versions
MBSR body scan — sweeping attention through the body, lying down.
- Yoga Nidra / 61-points relaxation — systematic point-by-point release.
- Spira’s whole-body somatic exploration — feeling the body as bare sensation.
- Klein “sensing the body as space” — non-postural felt-body inquiry.
- Sensation grounding — anchoring in physical sensation.
Common refinements
Scanning instead of sinking. The practice is to drop into each point and surrender, not to observe it from a distance. If you notice a detached watcher, let awareness fall back down into sensation.
- Forcing release. Tension melts when allowed, not when commanded. Feel it first; release follows.
- Rushing the points. The settling depends on slow, patient attention; hurrying keeps the body braced.
- Skipping the posture aids. The tied knees protect the lower back and psoas — don’t omit them.
- Bypassing rising emotion. Material that surfaces is part of the practice; meet it gently (see Safety).