Reiki with Bryan Lester

Good, it's lovely to be here anyway. I've been really looking forward to this because I'd like to share with you some techniques that I have. Techniques that I've been using and that I've found really quite life transforming for me. Mostly taken from Reiki, but also Qigong has been a big influence. So I did Qigong and Tai Chi for about 15 years before doing any Reiki. And also Pranayama is a feature as well of the work we're going to be doing today.

Good, I can hear you Sarah, so I'm assuming that sounds lovely. That's very encouraging. I've never thought I had a fantastic voice, but in the rush there I've lost the notes, but I do know what I'm going to say fortunately.

Reiki means universal or spiritual energy, and the particular frequency of energy that we draw on is the energy of compassion and healing. It's an energy that is very subtle. It requires practice. We all do it, actually. All parents do Reiki. Every time you comfort a child, you're doing Reiki. And it's like wellness. It's unspectacular. It isn't spectacular. It seems that only the bad things are spectacular. So it's very quiet, is very gentle thing, Reiki.

Somebody asked me last year how do I know when I have, when I can feel this energy, how do I know that it's working when trying to help somebody or themselves? And the answer I gave, I think that they found rather disappointing, I found it disappointing actually, because I said well, as soon as you feel a sense of caring for yourself or for that person.

Anyway, I've called this session "The Space Between." This is my own working title because of the situation we're in. So it's the space between the polarities defining that space and the space that defines the polarities. All right. So we'll be doing a lot of that sort of thing.

But before we start, as I said, the energy is one to do with healing. In Buddhism there is a tradition of healing, and the Buddha himself used healing. He healed people and he recited this to heal. So there was a very strong perception of words being part of one's physiology. It wasn't like a charm really, it was based upon the knowledge that words and all sensory things of which words are made, really sensory fragments that are constructed into metaphors of meaning, but they're not aside from the physiology, they're part of it. So they're coming from a place of knowledge.

The bhojjhaṅgas are the seven factors of enlightenment. I'm going to read these actually because I know I probably forget them, but the first of course is mindfulness, and the second one is investigation into truth, and the third one is energy. And then you have, after the energy, you have rapture and tranquility. And then the last two are concentration and equanimity. There you go. I've done it without having to refer to my list. I'm very chuffed with myself.

Now, in Reiki, there's a thing called Reiju, which is a blessing. I can talk about that more tomorrow when I talk about the history of Reiki. I don't want to talk about the history of Reiki much today, I want to get on with doing things. But it's basically a blessing, but in a way the first blessing that was ever used, certainly within the Buddhist tradition, was the Bojjhaṅga Sutta. And Bhante has recorded this for us, so he's going to bless us all.

The long, the short, and the tall. And if I can get, I've got an MP3 here. And what I want you to do is just to breathe and listen. You don't need to put your hands in gasshō or anything unless you feel you want to. But I'd like you to assimilate the words, just the sounds. There's stories in the sutta that tell of healing, and these seven factors also are mentioned, but if we can just drink in the sounds.

Samsāri samsarātanaṃ sabbadukkhavināsane sattadhamme ca bojjhaṅge marāsena pamādane... [full chanting continues]

Thank you, Bhante.

With Reiki, we have three strands to the exercises. One is the breath, the other is the imagination, and the third is movement. Now, the movement, you can do virtual movement. It doesn't happen in too many exercises, but you do have movement in some. You can visualize the movement if it isn't possible for you to move. What I'm saying is that really you can do these exercises anywhere, even on a train. And I do this. I fully integrate these exercises into my life.

I'm a musician, so I practice the piano a lot. And when I'm not practicing the piano, I'm doing these sorts of things, the pranayama, Reiki, a few asanas. When I'm playing the piano, I do these sorts of things. In other words, I use an actual technique which applies these skills. They're not separate. And that's the exciting thing about them, because you're investigating all the time with these spiritual practices. And it's like being a child and wondering what you're going to discover next, because you do discover things. There may be very, very small insights, but a child only needs small insights to be delighted.

Now the first strand then is the breathing. So we're going to go straight into the breathing, and I suspect that most of you probably know how to do yogic breathing and it may vary from the technique I use. But what I use is the three-stage breath, so expanding the stomach and then expanding outward horizontally the chest. If you imagine it, if you think it rather than try to do anything, it will work better. And then a very slight, very, very slight lift at the end with the breath, not in a muscular way, you see.

And this brings me to what I want to offer. Whether it's any use to you, I don't know, but give it a try. And what I want to offer is the idea of breath sculpting the posture. When we think, oh, I'll pull myself up, and of course, the movements are all muscular. But if you think what pneumatic power can have on the body, it's considerably greater. And we pull ourselves up and we're breathing. We're probably breathing in the wrong way. So breath needs to be coordinated with action, you see. So the breath is sculpting the posture.

Now, there are things that happen anyway. With the in-breath, there are two things that have been discovered in research. And anatomists, some would argue about this, but the sutures of the skull, when you breathe in, they actually expand. This is what they've found with technology, that this happens in recent research. And I've researched this, and not all medics do describe the sutures as immovable joints. In fact, they actually say it would be unhealthy to have completely immovable joints, which makes sense to me. So they move on the in-breath.

And at the same time, the sacrum, the triangular bit at the bottom of the spine, slightly tilts back. And this is a wonderful thing. And on the out-breath, you have a more internal sort of activity going with the vagus nerve. So the tone of the vagus nerve increases. So the out-breath triggers the chill-out system, the parasympathetic. So at the end of the day, when you flop down in a chair, you're absolutely washed out. That's what you're doing.

You may know this anyway, but I'm just saying that the breath works with the body all the time in ways we're not really aware. We just think of this exchange of oxygen, carbon dioxide, but there's all kinds of things going on. It's amazing. I mean, the eyes, the cornea of the eye has no circulation. It only has the air. The epidermis of the skin, as I'm sure you know, there's no circulation there. It has the air around it. You see all these molecules of air, the sea of air. I like to think of it as, but I mean, that's my language. That's the language I like. But it's all right to think in purely physical terms, of course it is with all of this actually.

So it's tremendously important. Breathing is a living document of our reaction to the outside world. I do an exercise with fingers like this. I get distracted because there's a visual display. Like this, you see. You hold your hand up like this if you can be patient with me and try it. And you go one, two, three. I have to look away because I get distracted by the delay.

Right, so we've got a metric cycle of four there. We're going back to school. We're learning something. Now in this hand you do the same thing but you miss off the little finger, you go one, two, three. So this is your first exercise, we have to put them together at the same time and keep them going. Are you ready? After two I want you to get it wrong actually, and maybe I will get it wrong too, and that's okay, and you'll see why. Now watch yourself while you're doing it as well, I'm afraid you've got to do that too. Watch your breath.

One, two. So after 12 synchronized movements, we realized that the body understands arithmetic, but does your breath? Did you notice you were holding your breath? Did I? I mean, I can't see, but when I did it with a class, this was including Bhante, oh I loved it because everybody including, it was terrific, it was like a chorus line of breath holders, it was wonderful.

Why? It's counterproductive. If you have a problem, isolate the smallest part of that problem that you can and breathe out. Why, if it's to do with the body and coordination and doing a sequence of movements? The reason is that if you're stiff, if you lock your knees for instance and try to jump in there, you won't get anywhere at all, you see. You need to be supple, and the out breath is the way to do it.

So with sculpting, we've already got a head start with all the things that the breath does anyway. So we expand with the stomach, then we expand with the stomach. But as you expand, right, the stomach's expanding out just slightly, very slightly, even if you only think it without doing anything, tilt as though you've got a tail, still got a tail. You've devolved, with a tail like that. And then you will feel in the lumbar region a lovely sense of, it's a very wonderful sensual feeling, actually, of the curve of the spine.

And as the rib cage expands out, you'll feel it. But it isn't a stretching of the spine like that, you see. It would stretch how it needs to, how it wants to. And then the last bit, like a sniff. Yeah, not like that, like a sniff.

So the breath is breathing you. We don't breathe, the breath breathes us. This is the idea. So let's try a cycle, and when we get to the top, in, down, you let go, you see, down, coat hanger style, and then if it's comfortable, not if you've got any hernias or anything, but if it's comfortable, an abdominal, lower abdominal contraction. Gentle.

Not all teachers teach that, but quite a lot of yoga teachers do teach that. And I am talking about it now because it's crucial to the way up, this breath ends, you see. So just let's try getting that far. After two, so go one, two, expand, out, lift, in, let go, drop, coat hanger style and contract.

Now the words are good, you can use your own words if you like, but say you have expand, out, lift, in, drop, contract. Let's try it one more time. I have to do, one, two, expand, out, lift, in, drop, contract.

Now if you can, I wonder if you could stand up. I haven't got enough room here to organise the perspective that would be required for me to do this with you. I usually, I never teach like this. I'm one of these guys that walks around all the time. I don't know whether that irritates people or not, but it's just, I suppose, a way of directing nervous energy. I don't know. So I'm having to sit here. I've been super glued to a spot against my will.

So could you stand up? If you can stand up, if not, don't worry. You can do this lying down, but really standing up for this last bit, even if it's just for one breath to get the thing that I'm getting at, you see, is when you contract the lower abdominals or don't contract them. But at that point also do a buttocks clench.

It's a bit like a mūlabandha only it isn't, because with a mūlabandha you'll be raising your chest, but anyway do a buttocks clench. So if you're standing, you stand shoulder width apart, toes pointing forward, and don't fuss and worry about oh why should my toes be turning out or turning, don't worry about that.

What is important? You look, you watch animals, how they get their posture right. They go around in a circle until they've got exactly the right spot. I'm not suggesting you do that. But what I am suggesting is that you rock it. If you rock from one foot to another, do you get that feeling of rocking from one foot to another? You will find your comfort, your comfort zone within that little area. You get a sense of being anchored.

Now we're going to do that breath again and at the end clench your buttocks. So after two, one, two, expand, out, lift, in, drop, clench. Now hold it. You can carry on breathing if you like, but hold that clench.

Now what you'll notice is that all the muscles right down to the floor flex just slightly. And don't you feel rooted? I'm confident you do. I'm confident you all feel rooted. If you have a problem, I'm sorry, obviously you can't help that. Then you can sit down and think this.

So it's that sense of rootedness, and already you've got a wonderful social tool there because if you're in a group, you say you're in a group, you know that situation where you're in a group and you don't feel very confident, you don't feel like a very strong member of the group, a bit of an outsider maybe, always stand on two feet.

I mean this is just simple body language that most people know anyway, but I'm going to say it. Don't put your weight on one leg because what you're doing, the message that goes out is that you have a weakness. Now if you stand on two legs, on two feet, you will look confident. If you stand on two feet like this, you will look super confident, you see. You feel that no one can knock you over. They can, of course, but the point is you're giving out the right message. So it's good. It's good to feel confident. So if you've never done this before, then it would really please me if you find that a good thing to do, that you find it a useful thing and you're enjoying doing it.

Right? So relax now. Now we're going to change the focus of our attention a bit now. We're going to think, stay standing, and we're going to think about space between. I am going to read this because I don't quite know it from memory confidently. Relax into that posture. You don't need to keep your buttocks clenched, by the way.

Standing alone in stillness, one can observe every mystery present at every moment and ceaselessly continuing. This is the gateway to indescribable marvels." Lao Tzu. And it's used sometimes in describing a series of exercises in qigong called Zhan Zhuang, and you probably all know them because it's the holding the imaginary balls and that kind of thing. They're tremendous exercises. I've done a lot in the past and I've started revising them again actually recently.

But the one I love is the first. And that's what you do now. You're just standing. I love it. And you stand on a railway station and you miss your train. Great. That gives me a chance to practice the first one, which is called Wuji.

Now, we're not exactly going to practice Wuji, but what I want you to do is it's just inspired by Wuji because Wuji instructors of Zhan Zhuang would not, I don't think, ask you to do this. But I want you to do it because it's to do with polarities and it's to do with the space between. Now, just calmness.

Now, if you place your eyes just a few feet ahead on the floor, or just half close your eyes, you're making, by doing that, a physiological change. You're moving towards, by doing that, you're telling the brain that you're thinking of sleeping, basically towards an alpha state and then a theta state. So basically it's another way of relaxing and being receptive.

So lift your eyes and I want you to look at the wall in front of you. Put your attention on the wall in front of you. Nothing strenuous, just look at it. Now put your attention on your own body. In fact, I think you can do this with your eyes closed, probably. Just think of the wall in front of you. Now your own body. One more time. The wall. Your body.

Now the wall behind you. And your body. The wall behind. Now your body. Now the wall to the left. And your body. To the left and your body. To the right and your body. To the right and your body. The ceiling. If you're outside, just as high as you can think. And your body. The ceiling. And your body.

Now the earth, deep in the earth. And your body. Deep in the earth and your body. And now the whole room in your body, the space in the room. Sense the qi, the sea of qi. Well, we all know it's air molecules colliding. But some of us know that it's chi, the dance of chi. It's a dance. And I want you to imagine that you picked up a seashell. Imagine putting it to your ear. That is the amplification, of course, as you know, of the air molecules colliding. That is the amplification of the song of chi.

And now take a breath, a good breath, and sigh. Now with the sigh, if you open your mouth, it's approaching the Reiki breath. With the Reiki breath they don't talk about any of this stuff in Reiki, by the way. I haven't heard of it spoken of anyway, the pranayama, the classical yogic breath. But what they do do is specify breathing through the nose on the inhale and out through the mouth on the exhalation, but the tongue resting on the roof of the mouth on the inhale and dropping down just behind the bottom teeth on the exhalation.

So you can try that. Just try that for a bit. Just on your own. It's rather nice actually. Still trying to let the air scope to the body. Maybe I'm throwing a lot at you. I don't know. I mean, I know you will know a lot that I've spoken about, so it helps. And I suspect you've all done spiritual work before, and that counts for a lot in this because you don't need sort of visual aid, so to speak.

Now, if you want to, you can sit down just in front of your computer and I'm still here as you can see. I hope you could hear me okay. My voice was sufficiently clear for you whilst we were doing all that.

And what I want you to do now is just hold your hands like this. You hold your hands like this. In fact it might be a good idea before we start this to just give them a bit of rub, get a bit of heat going, a bit of heat. This is all very physical, you see. It's magic without magic. That's what it is. It's all in the physics. The friction creates the heat.

Now open your hands. Now you may know this one as well. You imagine you've got a ball in your hand. You've got a ball in your hand and play with it. Roll it around. Now let it get bigger. It's getting bigger. It's a bigger ball now. It's moving towards football status. Yeah. It's a great feeling. And now it's moving towards beach ball status. Yeah. There it goes.

Now just blow it away. Keep your hands here. Now I want you to think of these polarities. Left palm, right palm. Left palm, right palm. Carry on doing that. Don't do anything strenuously. You can make it move a bit, gradually faster, and you can feel energy moving between the two hands, and it's very palpable. If you don't, it doesn't matter. We're not into sensation. We're actually into investigation. Yeah, you might find something different.

Now raise the hands like this, just above the head, and carry on doing that. So left hand, right hand, or whichever way you want to think. All right. Now this is called the Reiki shower. Now I want you to take a good breath in, turn their hands so they're facing like that, and bring them down the body and imagine energy like rain. Imagine it dripping off every part of you, every nook and cranny, your elbows, your shoulders, the tip of your nose, right down. And then shake your hands. Yeah. And then come up again, turn your hands. And exhale as you go down. I forgot to say that. And imagine going down. And then up again. And down. Then up.

And always finish an exercise with gassho. It honours the skill. I knew a woman, she's a very high-flying pianist and academic in music, and her daughter, who's ridiculously talented, you know the kind. And when her daughter played the piano, she used to get her to sing a song to the piano to thank the piano afterwards. And it's wonderful. I think it's a great idea, actually. It's showing respect and it's showing, here's a key, here's a buzzword, it's being used more and more in modern spiritual teaching, it's showing gratitude, which by some teachers is described as the emotional signature of receivership.

And there's one researcher, a guy called I think he's called Greg Braden. You probably know what I'm talking about, I'm quite remembered his name. There's research back to the apocryphal writing Saint Thomas, and apparently they practiced this thanking before receiving, you see. It's very powerful and it's to do with frequencies, it's to do with energy of course, but it's good anyway. It's a good feeling. It has rewards.

So there we have the Reiki shower. Now the use of this is terrific because, you know, when you've got a long day, I'm fortunate I can do more or less what I like now. I'm sort of retired, or not retired. I write a bit of music for the media and that kind of thing occasionally, but basically I don't have to turn for work in the morning because I'm a dinosaur, a retired dinosaur. Well, that would be the day. I don't want to retire at all. But I used to remember having several hours still today and I was absolutely worn out, and I used to do that. I'd do, when no one was looking at, just this is the other version of it where you don't bother with starting there but you scoop energy up, you see, up to the crown and then down. And even if you imagine yourself doing that, if you're low in energy, it works. It does work.

I don't like to think of you having to do it. I didn't like being like that. I still do get like that sometimes. I get tired, of course I do. But I've considerably more energy then, well, 20 years ago I had less energy than now. Why? Because I practice pranayama and these energy exercises.

Now I'm looking at the time, so that's one exercise. I'm just going to show you one other one quickly, and this is called Joshin Kokyū-hō, which is inner cleansing, and this is a terrific exercise. Well, I do some of these exercises walking around. You feel good. And there's two versions of this exercise. I'm going to give you the version that's in the pack. I'll be sending you a pack tonight. And I didn't want you to get it too early because I wanted you to digest what Bhante had sent you. But I'm going to send you this tonight. And there are two versions. I'll do the version that is in there. And then I'll talk about the other version.

You breathe in, draw energy in from the crown. Imagine doing that. Or if you find that difficult, you see, it's really to do with polarities. It's focusing on one point and then another point, and it can be more than one point, and then the energy will find its way. So basically you draw energy through the crown down to the hara or the dantian if you know tai chi, using tai chi terminology. Just about an inch and a half below the navel. But don't think in a precise way like that. Think of your gut. You draw it down to your belly. You draw it down to your belly.

So draw the energy down or just think of your belly when you inhale, and before you exhale, just imagine it sort of spreading a little. And then as you exhale, out through every part of the skin system, every part of the surface of your body so that it's making a kind of oval balloon and you're inside that balloon.

Now this is used as a meditation actually. I don't use it as a meditation. I will use either, you know what I do with what Bhante does. I don't do a lot of meditation, but in a way all of these things are. And I think that if you're into vipassanā, which is wonderful, it's the king really of exercises really, this will help you help you with your posture and who knows maybe with your concentration. I don't know. But just try it. And so this is a continuous thing, so you can do it for a period of time rather than so many times. So we imagine drawing energy in and then the balloon begins to creep out of you. It's great, isn't it? Quite extraordinary because I can feel your energy. You're a very good class. I can feel it's strong. It's strong. It's good.

I walk down the street sometimes doing this and you feel protected, but I sometimes combine it with mettā. It's a wonderful technique, mettā. And when we do these things, we have to think that it is for our highest and greatest good and for the highest and greatest good of those whose lives we touch. You can't separate it. There is no, not anymore. I mean, we've come to a precipice now anyway, and I think big things are happening spiritually. I mean, horrible things are happening of course, yeah, but spiritually there's a lot happening. And I don't think it's the kind of thing that is anticipated by the great powers, those builders of empires. I don't think they understand that, but there is a lot happening, and it's wonderful to be part of it.

Now with self-treatment, because of the time as it is, what I'm going to do now is just to show you the positions of the hands. Before you start you do the precepts, the Gokai, which is five precepts: to be thankful, that's your gratitude, and to be free from anger, to be free from fear, be honest, which doesn't mean telling the truth, it simply means treating people fairly, not trying to cheat them, and to be kind, compassionate. So I've reduced that down to three statements, which is: just for today I'll be thankful, just for today I'll be free from anger and fear, just for today I'll be honest and kind. And that's a powerful tool as well. It's real. It's in our physiology. The words are inside us. They're part of us. And you say that two or three times, it prepares you. And then you sit quietly, find the calm centre of yourself, and raise your hands and go gassho and ask for the Reiki to flow.

Who do we ask? Who are we asking? The first thing I thought when I was shown this, we have to give everything a persona, don't we? We can't accept that intelligence doesn't need a persona all the time. A persona is like a suit of clothes, that's all. So what I'm saying is that Reiki is the intelligence of compassion. It's the intelligence of compassion. That is the energy. And it's not unthinking. How could it be? It wouldn't make sense. It wouldn't make sense at all. So you asked for it to flow. And this is the trusting, isn't it?

And how can you feel safe? This is why we had a blessing from Bhante to make us feel, to create a safe place for us to practice. But we can create it ourselves, and you create it with this. Reiki's heart driven, and when we can breathe from the heart, breathe from the heart, you think of something in your past that makes you happy and breathe it. I think Bhante's hinted at this before, his teachings in the evenings. Breathe from the heart. Imagine the breath entering there and going out of there, and you think of a good thing that you've experienced.

Yeah, like an old man who was absolutely crippled, with his spine had more or less gone, leaning over so near to the floor, old guy. And somebody said, "How are you? How are you feeling today?" And he said, and this was his present to that guy and his present to me and his present to you, he said, "The tears of my laughter flow like a stream into a dry desert." That's a gift. That's a gem. That's a gem he's given us all. And other people will quote that. So he's left a legacy just in his response to "how are you today?" You know, so breathing from the heart is important in Reiki.

And when we do the positions, I'll just go through the positions because you warm your hands. We're not actually doing self-treatment at the moment, but we can go through the different positions. We start here over the eyes. So that covers the frontal lobes where all those crazy loops go on incessantly in a tangled sort of horrific, unceasing movement when you can't get to sleep. It covers those, soothes them. When if you've got a headache, I'll tell you, that's the one thing Reiki, for me anyway, takes it away. Strangely, it didn't at first. It did other things, really great things. But yeah, don't give up. If it doesn't work at first, don't give up.

And the eyes, the eyes, which is supposed to bring in about, I think, about 90% of sensory data. So they're very important with sighted people, of course, but there are other things that happen. So that's the first. And then the temporal, the auditory areas, yeah, to do with the ears, you can put your hands over the ears.

and keep your fingers together. Make sure your hands are warm and as you come, I will instruct you in this when we do it. If you imagine your hands rising from the surface of the skin and you relax, if you relax and imagine that, what will happen is that the hands—I'm doing it now, I'm not making any conscious movement, I'm just thinking—I'm just thinking of hands, right, and then you can feel, you can feel the heat and something else.

And then the next position is you could put it either over here. So over here you've got, of course, you're in the area of movement, the motor cortex and fine movement with the fingers, very fine movement. I usually go for the back rather than that, but you can—there's no reason why we shouldn't do both. So you put your hands like that, and then at the back as if you're resting on them but not over each other, although we do that at one point. So at the back like that.

So at the back we've again got movement of a different kind, the kind of movement where we have to adjust—it's a bigger kind of movements like when you kick a ball or you're navigating your way across the street and adjusting where you are to avoid things, which would be the cerebellum I suppose. But also, of course, back there you've got the "tiger, tiger burning bright," haven't you? You've got the raw emotion.

You know, in body language—they're probably on to it now—but the guy trying to work a scam, typical in body language, they say, "Well I don't know, the trouble is the deal runs out and oh my god, yeah, it runs out tonight but I may be able to, I just might be..." The hand goes right back there because back there does not understand lies.

It doesn't understand lies. It doesn't have morality. It's not to do with morality. It just does not understand this peculiar human trait of lying to each other and getting into all kinds of problems. It doesn't understand it. So it hurts. It hurts because it's being presented with nonsense. So the hand goes.

So that's one position. And then down around the throat here, so stimulating the lymph nodes around there. And this, of course, is the chakra—I say chakra, some people say chakra. I don't know what you say, but one of those tomato things. It's the one to do with expression, isn't it, in communication around here.

So on the face then we've got one, two, three, and then four. And then we go to the body and if you have the fingers touching, we go to the heart, the heart.

And what they found—it was a guy researching called Amor, strangely enough. He had the French word for love, yes, and he's called, this researcher, and he discovered that in the heart you have 40,000 neurons, I think, which isn't great as neurons go, is it? But it's what it does. The heart sends far more messages to the brain than the brain does the heart. This is what he discovered. It dictates to the brain. We didn't think that, did we? We didn't think that, that the heart dictates to the brain.

And there's actually—for people with broken hearts, it is an actual medical condition. I think I can remember—it's something like takotsubo cardiomyopathy. Takotsubo is an octopus trap. You know, I'm laughing, but it's not funny because we've all been, most of us have been dumped at some time and your world ends, the sun goes out. Nothing is beautiful in your world anymore. You've got takotsubo cardiomyopathy. I don't know whether it's when it's very, very extreme or something that people get. That's what happens. The actual shape of the heart is affected.

Love your heart, give it lots of love, give it lots of love. I mean, often no one else will anyway, so you might as well. You might as well have an affair with yourself, be your own lover, your own partner. And then it doesn't matter as much what happens in the outside world.

So that's there, so the heart, and then here at the lower part you're over the thymus. Now the thymus, of course, no longer exists because it goes, doesn't it, when we reach out, but it's left a lifelong legacy of immune functions, you see, so that's very important.

And there's a guy in Daoist medicine—see if I can remember his name—Master Manta Cheer, I think Manta Cheer it is. Wonderful to watch because he does this thing—he presses on the thymus, see there, and he laughs. He laughs and laughs. I've got neighbours so I can't. So you laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh, and this is what you—and he does the same down with the gut as well, down with the gut in the belly, you see, and you sort of massage first. He's a great guy to watch. I can recommend. I don't know enough about Daoist health systems or medicine to know—he seems to be high ranking, but perhaps you can tell me. I'm sure some of you will know more of this than I do.

Okay, so we've got the heart, then the lower, and then the stomach, right? The stomach, just below the navel basically, and then the hands just slot them into the inguinal fold. So that's the position. So we go one, two, and then three, four like that. And then we go the heart, the thymus, then down in the tummy and then the inguinal fold. And tomorrow night we'll do a longer, an actual self-treatment thing.

All right, now it's about time I released you. And you've been—I can feel that you've been a very good, engaging class that's been with me. Maybe it's in my imagination. Well, leave me with that delusion, please.

So breathe well. Many, many blessings. Many blessings. Mettā. Thank you.