bao bao

I had a lovely day today, I woke up early and rode out to the countryside with a couple friends from Chicago, to have a massage with a medicine man named Maw Taw (sp?). He lives out in the countryside, near rice paddies and coconut trees. Before I got there, one of the healers suggested I make an offering of 39 Baht (Thai currency) to the Buddha. They had a separate room for meditation, with buddha statues and pictures of teachers and monks. I lit my incense and made my offering, and then we stepped into the warm sauna, and I felt comforted by the familiar smell of a Thai sauna. Once we were good and warmed up, we changed into really funny comfortable clothes and got massaged in the same open-air space. Each therapist started with quiet centering time, and an opening prayer or chant, and then started the massage. Maw Taw was not shy about jumping right in, and without warming me up, jumped right into my my tight muscles and tendons. He was using a technique called "nerve touch" and did a lot of "plucking", similar to playing to guitar, along my nerves and tendons. This is not my favorite technique, and I ended up doing a lot of laughing and saying, "bao bao" (gentle!) and he laughed right with me! I can still feel the strange electric energy flowing down my arms... very strange. But he did find my tight spots, and spent some time getting the energy flowing better in those areas. After our massages, we had fresh papaya and banana and tea, and hopped back into the sauna for another round.

We went out for a lovely lunch under a huge banyan tree where I ate a new leafy green that was like little baby ferns, and delicious. After lunch, I wandered over to the flower festival where I saw more orchids than you could possibly imagine, plus floats covered in flowers and seeds, in the shapes of elephants and deities, and all kinds of animals.

So, I had an amazing two weeks studying Thai Massage with Pichest. Tomorrow I will head back to the Lahu Hill Tribe village where I studied Thai Massage six years ago with a man named Asokananda. I am looking forward to getting out of the city, living the simple village life, in more of a retreat setting, where we all eat together and stay in simple bamboo bungalos, skattered throughout the village. I am also looking forward to learning more about meditation, and I can hopefully get myself up and out of bed before the sun rises to participate in the group meditation on the mountain. So I will not have email access until the 19th, which will probably be a nice "fast" from technology.

Peace!