Blog

24 February 2023

This morning I meditated to a Yoga Nidra guided session on YouTube. It was very much the same as my Cradle Meditation – lying on the back, eyes covered, deep relaxation, bringing the attention to specific parts of the body.

For Cradle Meditation, I have a few extra features. Firstly my hand are placed on my body and this provides an energy loop for feelings to circulate between the hands and body. Secondly, I have specific techniques and visualisations too deepen the relaxation, other than just saying “Relax deeper.” Also I have an option to increase the energy in meditation which can prevent falling asleep (unless that’s what you want.)

Whichever meditation you like, I strongly recommend a daily practice, even if you start with only 10 minutes per day. If you are super busy, try 10 minutes after getting in bed each night.

23 February 2023

Today I launched my Tantra Experience, where I offer one-to-one sessions to learn about Tantra and to feel Tantric Energy. Sessions can include Cradle Meditation and massage touch stimulation. Have a look at the page, accessed through my Contact page on the menu. (Available in Brisbane, Australia)

13 January 2023 Don’t get High. Get Low!

Here’s a visualisation that could be useful:
If you find yourself thinking too much, you and your mind’s eye are in your head.

Get down. Bring your attention to your heart sitting there in the ribcage. Become aware of your belly moving in and out as you breathe. Bring your mind’s eye down to your hips and the secret places that lie between. These are your lower centres of energy. These are the lower lower chakras. Get into the body. These are furthest from the mind, places for healing and joy.

10 January 2023

Here’s an image:

When the eyes feel the tantric energy, they see dappled colours.
When the throat feels the energy, it expresses itself with sighs or moans or yells.
When the body feels the energy, it tingles and shudders.
When the heart feels the energy, it swells and makes you laugh.
The body shudder is the body silently laughing.

26 December 2022

Now I very quickly get into feeling the body. The breathe-hands-slump mantra works fast.

I can let the mind wander and allow thoughts and words to wash over me, but soon sensations in the body, rather than any realisation that the mind is taking over, pull my attention back into the meditation moment.

Very strong tingling seems to be more easily accessible after over 2 years of daily practice.

8 December 2022 Brisbane

Today when settling into my meditation position I observed that some part of me wanted to achieve something in today’s session. My friend in Thailand had messaged me that he had felt an anal orgasm while meditating and I wanted some of that!

Something in me was saying “My meditations have been a bit slack lately. I have just been laying there not achieving anything. What happened to the days when I was buzzing head to toe and almost bouncing off the bed? I’ve plateaued. I need to do better.”

Noticing this, I gave myself permission that I didn’t have to achieve anything from the meditation. I meditated without an aim and soon found I had a feeling of me as a vessel. I got to a place (in fact it was nowhere) where the words came to me – “I am the container. I am enough.”

5 Dec 2022 Brisbane

I’ve been trying some new mantras. For me the engineer, I treat a mantra as a bullet point list of actions or thoughts to repeat in order to deepen and empower my meditation.

In the Cradle Meditation book I present the 4 chakra elevator going down
– Gaze into the void with the eyes closed.
– Breath into the ribcage then relax and slump after the exhale.
– Breath into the belly then relax and slump after the exhale.
– Breath into the hips and hang around on that ground floor.

The book also has a stoke the ember mantra:
– Inhale as if dragging on a cigarette and watch the ember glow.
– Exhale as if blowing on hot coals to coax the fire into life.

My new mantra has 3 steps and condenses to 3 words.
– BREATHE. During the inhale, bring your attention to the breath just as in standard Buddhist meditation that stays focused on the breath and nothing else for ever.
– HANDS. During the exhale, relax and bring your attention to the being of the hands. Be in your hands.
– SLUMP. In the pause after the exhale before the inhale, slump in an instantaneous body scan as if your being falls within under gravity.

The repeating mantra cycle means that the Slump precedes the Breathe, so the body is super relaxed and ready for the inhale. As the practice deepens, the Hands stage can become “Feel”, as in feel the being and energy in the whole body. Furthermore the need to focus on the Breath and the Slump can fade, so Hands or Feel can dominate the entire meditation.

24 November 2022 Lembongan, Indonesia

These are my today thoughts:

In massage I see two different effects. Contact is made between the hand and the body. Even for the very lightest of touch, the nerves in the skin sense the contact and they can also detect temperature and, if there is movement, friction and texture. If the touch is welcomed, the local muscles can relax and muscle relaxation is the source of pleasure.

If there is any pressure applied, anything stronger than the lightest touch, the nerves deeper than the surface of the skin start to detect the touch. The muscles and the facia beneath the skin can feel the massage. With the right combination of pressure, temperature, movement, the body beneath this skin can relax and produce pleasant feelings.

To me, the lightest massage is tantric massage. The feelings are produced in the skin. Less is more, to the point where touch is almost unnecessary. Can feelings be transferred without contact?

15 November 2022 Gili Trawangan, Indonesia

I’m continuing to explore this feeling of being.

With no movement and deep relaxation of the hands, the feeling of the being of the hands merges with the being of Sacral chakra. In the book I called this the Glow.

In my tantric practice, the feeling is the tantric energy, what I feel is tantric energy. Touch links two feelings. The hand touches the body. The body feels the hand. The hand feels the body. The cause and effect flow both ways at the same time. Each induces feelings in the other – the energy is transferred by touch. This is what I experience; this is not a visualisation.

I’m deeply relaxed in my meditation. There is touch contact but there is no movement. I feel the being, the tingling, the energy.

15 October 2022, Saigon

I meditating sitting on a tile bench in a steam sauna: I’m sitting up and trying to relax every muscle that isn’t being used to stay sitting up. My arse is directly on the tiles and as I relax I am very slowly sliding forwards on the tiles. As I deepen my relaxation in the enveloping warmth of the steam room, I bring my awareness to my entire skin – the skin holding me in, the skin in contact with the warm steam, the skin in contact with the tiles I’m sitting on.

As I relax deeper, I can no longer tell what my skin is feeling. Am I now feeling the embodied energy of the meditation in my skin? Or am I feeling the sensation of the skin slow sliding over the tiles of the seat? My relaxed perceptions of the sensations leave me not knowing if I am moving or not.

The more I relax, the more I think I’m subtly sliding on my arse, but maybe it is Ekchart Tolle’s feeling of being. Am I still in my body?

15 October 2022 Saigon

Today was hot and the Ho Chi Minh traffic is crazy, but I was walking around with that swollen heart feeling. I was happy like I was on mdma. My palms were slightly sweaty. There was a feeling of connectedness when I put my hands on my face. Drug free and high in Siagon.

12 October 2022 Phnom Penh, Cambodia

From conversation with a Japanese traveller in Phnom Penh.

“I meditate all the time – walking around looking at things being present. It is meditation.”

“When I’m looking for a food stall, I look at the people that run them and choose the person I am drawn to.”

2 October 2022 Siam Reap

Text from D in Thailand after I had led him on a guided session of Cradle Meditation, then continued my travels to Cambodia.

“I led myself into your method of tantric meditation last evening, had a series of orgasms, what an extraordinary experience!! 😘🙏
You know my strongest chakra is my heart chakra. I first led myself into the space of my heart – concentrated on the feeling of love – self love. I then visualised the love energy moving through nadis into the lower Swadhishtana Chakra. I didn’t smoke, I predominantly focused on and embodied the love energy…. and the sex chakra, interplay between shiva and shakti started, that’s when I started to have orgasm. So basically I connected the love and sex chakra together to create the play.”

September in Pai

I’ve stumbled on a new thing – open eye meditation.

I’m sitting up, legs crossed like traditional silent meditation. My hands are resting on my knees. I sinking into relaxation as per my normal Cradle Meditation routine. I feel the tingling, the being, in my hands and I get a tingling in my shoulders and belly.

To add stimulation to the meditation, external energy if you like, instead of a twitch of the hand, I open my eyes and look out in front of me. I’m sitting of the edge of a rice paddy. The field is a bright vivid green, the brightest, most vivid green ever. There is a very slight breeze. The blades of grass dance and their coordination means that I see waves travelling the green and reaching me with the slightest cooling breath.

Bringing awareness only to my eyes, I let my body inwardly slump further without externally slumping. Looking into the void in Cradle Meditation has trained my eye to see without engaging muscles to interrupt the relaxation. My retinas are stimulating my brain, I’m seeing rather than feeling, I focus on the visuals without letting words into my head. It’s a different input into the same meditation.

My present is the dancing colours in my eyes, feeding into the receptors in the body. I visualise the green filling me. “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” I am in the moment.

18 September 2022 Pai

Someone I met at a hostel gave me a coy of Eckhart Tolle’s book “A New Earth” published in 2009. I’m only reading it slowly because line after line of the book rings true and familiar to me.

In one particular passage, Eckhart describes bringing your awareness to the feeling in the hands – not to what they are doing or what they are touching, but to bring the mind’s eye to the feeling of “being” of the hands. I was astounded because I know exactly what he means. That feeling of being aware of the space that your hands occupy, of the position that your hands take. That feeling of the hands existing, when you relax it is almost a feeling of tingling.

This is the feeling I get every time I meditate. It starts with a feeling of “being” of the hands, then it seems to become a feeling of disconnection, although not disownership. Deeper into the Cradle Meditation, I can focus on getting that feeling in my feet and then next in my entire body – the feeling of “being in the body” from crown to sole and then the feeling of observing me occupying my body.

There is something about feeling the being that is so literally being in the present moment and silencing thoughts of the past or the future.

Back in 2020, when I realised that I had enough scribbled down thoughts and ideas to bring them together to be a book, I made the decision not to read or watch videos on meditation or body-mind philosophies. I wanted to base my writing on my experiences. This magnifies my wonder when I read or hear “my” ideas and practices from someone else. Mine may not be the original, but my journey brought me there independently.

Eckhart also talks about the ego wanting to be right. I already heard about that at the Landmark Forum back in 1999.

16 September 2022 Pai, Thailand.

Today I was riding a motor-scooter on an open road heading into the town of Pai. I was surrounded by blue sky, green forested hills and warm 30-degree air. I had that feeling where my heart feels full, as if swollen in my chest. I used to get that feeling riding my bicycle around the urban streets of Montreal past all those external staircases. I realise now, that this is the feeling of Happiness.

12 September 2022 Bangkok.

My meditation has become routine – in a good way. When I set myself up in the cradled position, I cover my eyes and settle into a stillness to relax. Virtually immediately I can feel my chest slump, there is a change in how my hands feel, that fuzziness, and I am aware of the tingling energy in my back and shoulders.

27 August 2022, Goreme

Today I met a Polish woman whom I had seen meditating early that morning. We got talking about meditation and as usual I told the story about my book. After explaining my methods to her, I offered to lead her on a tantric meditation although it morphed into a meditation where we steps through her chakras raising and enjoying the energy in each one, from her base to her crown.

At the end of the session I wasn’t sure that she had felt much but then she described how at each step, through the hips, belly, heart and throat, the feeling of energy got stronger that by the time we reached the forehead (the Third Eye chakra) energy was almost overwhelming. She experienced a buzzing from head to toe. I feel like I have something to offer people.

25 August 2022

Ordinary meditation this morning – nothing happened, the earth didn’t move – but still I feel marvellous. Still in Cappadocia

24 August 2022 Goreme Turkiye

I’m constantly meeting fellow travellers on their own meditation and spiritual journeys.

Nobody has a destination.