Towards Trauma-Informed Buddhist Spiritual Care: A Mutual Critical Correlation of Vipassana Meditation and Somatic Experiencing

Current scholarship on Buddhism and trauma therapy in the United States is largely focused on insight meditation (vipassana) as taught by the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) and Spirit Rock. The scholarship has discussed how IMS/Spirit Rock vipassana teachings have been integrated into trauma therapy and how Spirit Rock has supplemented its vipassana teacher training with somatic trauma therapy theory and practice. Researchers have sought to empower Buddhist-informed psychotherapists and trauma-informed Spirit Rock vipassana teachers. This article argues that current theories can be advanced by incorporating vipassana teachings from the S. N. Goenka tradition with Somatic Experiencing (R) as they are strikingly similar. The article employs the methodology of mutual critical correlation based on a theoretical framework that distinguishes between early Buddhist yogic, later Buddhist scholastic, and modern scientific scholastic traditions of theory and practice. The framework evidences the similarities between Goenka vipassana and Somatic Experiencing. The article demonstrates that unlike IMS/Spirit Rock's vipassana teachings based on later Buddhist scholastic teachings, Goenka vipassana does not need to be supplemented by somatic trauma therapy because its early Buddhist yogic teachings are already very similar to Somatic Experiencing. Further, this article lays the groundwork for a revised theory of trauma-informed Buddhist spiritual care and counseling that seeks to empower trauma therapy-informed Buddhist counselors as religious workers.