Adam Baraz

Adam Baraz <samadhibody@gmail.com>1:30 AM (0 minutes ago)to me
Bio
I began meditating at seven, trained by my father, James Baraz — a founding teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center.
Over the past two decades, I’ve spent more than a year of my life in intensive retreat. Between 2017 and 2024, I completed five solitary dark retreats — 112 days total in complete darkness. Each one deepened the work.
My work is simple: helping people ground, center, and come home to themselves — to their embodied being — where something real opens.
Expertise
Naropa University. Eighteen years. Somatic psychology, counseling, bodywork, and meditation — woven into a single thread.
Clinical foundation: Somatic Experiencing, Hakomi, cranial-sacral bodywork. Contemplative foundation: Vipassana, Mahamudra, Dzogchen — trained under Joseph Goldstein, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, and Mingyur Rinpoche.
I’ve taught at Spirit Rock, Insight Meditation Berkeley, and Esalen.
SomaWaken is what eighteen years of sitting at that intersection produces. A five-phase map — from chronic tension and survival, into a body that finally feels like home.
Darkness Retreat Philosophy
In the dark, there’s nothing to orient around. No image, no reference point. Only direct experience.
If you know how to be there, the system begins to unwind on its own. The body settles. The mind quiets. What’s been held starts to release.
It’s not about pushing through. It’s about not interfering.
Done well, darkness isn’t extreme — it’s intimate. Precise. Often unexpectedly kind.
I work with people at all levels of practice. What matters most isn’t experience — it’s how you prepare, how you ground, and how you meet the journey itself.
Having spent 112 days in solitary darkness over seven years, I know the terrain.
I’ll meet you at your edge.