Write it: Seven Step Massage Meditation

Dhr. Seven, Jen Bradford, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly

The deepest relaxation, writing or massage?

My teacher, Seven, taught me to meditate then told me to write about the experience for the benefit of others. I'd rather talk or stay quiet. I can't write. Can I write? Seven says if a person can talk, that person can write. They're almost the same...but not quite, not by a longshot sometimes.

• WRITE? 18 Things People Who Love Writing Understand (guide2free.com)

Yoga and good posture help body relax and get still.

Seven once came up with the ideal "American meditation," sinking into a warm bath to relax. Suds, scents, a candle in the dark or soft accent lights, all converge to bring about stillness. Until the water gets cold.

Stillness, samadhi, is the initial goal. Without a tub it's tough. So I used a sauna, steam room, and a hot tub (jacuzzi), but in public, with the jets, the excess heat, and cringey chlorine, nah. The warmth is relaxing. All the rest is not.

Asked where I do relax, I could only think of our massage table or chair in the quiet room. At Reiki shares, I might even fall asleep under warm hands and mysterious energy, prana or solar chi, unless I mindfully come back and back.

Pup knows I'm more relaxed than ever

Coming back and back, like Sharon Salzberg says, is part of a mindfulness practice. Seven says mindfulness (sati) is necessary for samadhi ("stillness" not "concentration"). And stillness is needed for the sort of systematic fourfold mindfulness necessary for insight meditation (vipassana).

That's the next goal, if there are goals: INSIGHT. Wisdom is the cause of liberation, because wisdom is "direct penetration into the reality all around." Sayalay Aloka said her teacher pointed out that the "Truth" is actually everywhere all around all the time. We don't "see" (know) it.

Think about it. The Three Characteristics of Existence are that all dhammas, all "things," are impermanent, imperfect (dukkha), and impersonal.

1. They're hurtling toward destruction.
2. They disappoint and can never fulfill.
3. They aren't what they seem to be (not themselves) but rather are empty (not-self).

Dharma Buddha Meditation @Reiki Share in HB

Those are the insights reached by vipassana, when it's at the level of knowing-and-seeing ULTIMATE materiality and mentality (kalapas and cittas, particles and mind-moments). Otherwise, it's just intellectualizing and won't liberate the mind/heart. That's next. First, relax.

Calm meditation is the beginning of the Path. That and questioning because the Buddha has answers. (The answer to there not being a self is that -- we have to ask -- "Well, what is there then? What's THIS!?"

Are these two "meditating" or just kicking around in the dirt loving plants?

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Organic vegan gardening and farming can help.

The Buddha answers. It's Dependent Origination, that is, the thing we see (the Five Aggregates clung to as self) is dependently originated, conditioned, arising when the constituent factors (causes and conditions) are present and not when they are not.

"When this is, that comes to be. With the arising of this, this arises. When this is not, that does not come to be. With the perishing of this, that perishes," the Buddha taught as a sort of summary of the causal links of paticcasamuppada or Dependent Origination.

"Massage Meditation" in seven steps

1. Pick a trusted practitioner you're comfortable with.
2. Be sure to be well-rested with enough sleep (or you'll just fall asleep during this).
3. With lights down and a light touch, advert (turn) attention to the breath.
4. The massage, with a good oil like virgin coconut butter or real olive oil, depending on skin, avoiding anything synthetic, using instead hexane-free essential oils.
5. This works much better with a masseuse or masseur who meditates because the initial phase is calming and firm or so light as to energetically relax the physical body so that the mental body relaxes.
6. Then firm warm hands hold in one place as the mind is brought back again and again until it rests on the breath as it's known under the nose.
7. The massage stops with the body almost in sleep-paralysis, but mind fully awake, full stillness, so that the subtlest breath is now the focus, sustaining it until a nimitta appears.

The body comes out of it not needing to rest, as in sitting full or half lotus, but calm, refreshed, and ready to mindfully engage in daily activities. The mind may want to rest, and now the body is very supple for that.