Our Course is Now Online

Dear Readers,

Ellen and I are pleased to announce that our asynchronous online course, called Hara Foundations, is now available. You can find it here. We encourage you all to check it out.

We designed the course to be accessible to a wide range of people—from those with no prior experience with hara breathing, martial arts, Zen, meditation, or Japanese cultural arts, to experienced practitioners in these disciplines. While we begin with background information on hara, the course is primarily practical and exercise-based.

The first series of exercises is drawn from Hanna Somatics, which Ellen has introduced in earlier blog posts. These initial movements are preparatory, helping to develop the bodily awareness needed for deep, relaxed inhalations. We then shift focus to inhalation itself, using exercises based on Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR). Finally, we introduce techniques for setting the hara and maintaining expansion of the lower abdomen during exhalation.

While we have presented some of these exercises previously on the blog, the course includes new (and, we believe, improved) videos, commentary, and supplementary materials. We’re also planning a second, more advanced course focused on deepening and strengthening hara breathing. Together, these courses will form a sequence we’re calling Hara Development: A New Approach.

Since the course is asynchronous, you can proceed at your own pace. We recommend following the order in which the material is introduced. Because we want to make hara development accessible to all, we’ve chosen not to place the course behind a paywall. However, we kindly ask that participants consider making a donation to Chosei Zen to support our work. Please note that due to the requirements of Squarespace, our hosting platform, enrollment is required to access the course.

We hope you find the course as rewarding to take as it was for us to create. We welcome your feedback, and we encourage you to share it with others who may be interested.