Conversation at Zen Mountain Monastery

In this podcast interview recorded at Zen Mountain Monastery, Monastic Hokyu Aronson speaks with Vangeline about embodied movement and healing. Along the way, they discuss some of the deep history of butoh and how trauma-informed guidance can help students settle their nervous systems, whether they are pursuing Zen, butoh, or life itself. Although Vangeline emphasizes this approach in her teaching, and speaks widely on the benefits of butoh as a form of creative engagement, she is quick to add that butoh should not be considered a replacement for therapy, and nor should Zen practice. That said, the movement workshops she leads, explore the body as a vehicle for working with challenging emotions, accessing deeper connection, and finding freedom.

The Mountains and Rivers Order (MRO) is a Western Zen Buddhist lineage established by the late John Daido Loori Roshi and dedicated to sharing the dharma as it has been passed down, generation to generation, since the time of Shakyamuni Buddha. https://zmm.org/about/about-mountains-and-rivers-order/

This episode is also available on the ZMM podcast:

https://zmm.org/podcast/vangeline-butoh/