Seiza Meditation

UPDATED on 6th May 2026 
 
At the end of September 2023 my friend, dharma-friend, and Seiza meditation teacher, Miki Nakura-sensei, visited Cambridge both to lead a Seiza (静坐 — literally, “quiet sitting”) meditation session at the Cambridge Unitarian Church and to conduct my Kikyoshiki service. For those who are puzzled about why this style of meditation was being taught in a Unitarian setting, it’s helpful to know that Seiza meditation was the preferred form of meditation practised by the Japanese Unitarian movement thanks to the great twentieth-century advocate of a creative, inquiring, free and liberative spirituality or religion (自由宗教 jiyū shūkyō), Imaoka Shin’ichirō-sensei (1881-1988). Imaoka-sensei personally knew and studied with the founder of Seiza meditation, Okada Torajiro-sensei (1872-1920), and he continued to practise Seiza meditation for the remainder of his life. Indeed, as he often said, it was his own primary religious/spiritual practice.

Anyway, we both thought it would be a good thing to record the teaching sections of the session and put them up on YouTube to give as many people as possible the opportunity to benefit from them. That’s now been done and so, at the end of this page, you’ll find an embedded video. However, before you get to that, here are a few other Seiza-related links you might find helpful. 

The first few links are to various PDF documents about Seiza by Miki Nakura-sensei and also to American and British formats of a new translation of Kobayashi Nobuko-sensei’s booklet called “Seiza — Quiet-sitting for Beginners”: 

Miki and me in the Cambridge Unitarian Church, Sept. 2023
An introduction by Miki Nakura called “Now, just sit quietly! — Seiza Quiet-sitting meditation” 
 

Additionally, here are three links to three important pieces by the influential Seiza practitioner, Yanagida Seijiro [柳⽥誠⼆郎]:

 “Seiza is a lifelong practice,” from the book,  “The Heart of Okada Style Seiza” [岡⽥式 静坐のここ ろ]

“A Recommendation of Okada-style Seiza” [岡田式静坐のすすめ]

“The Life Found Through Seiza [静坐] (1983): An interview with Yanagida Seijirō [柳田誠二郎]” 

And now, as promised above, here’s a short video of Miki Nakura-sensei teaching the basics of Seiza Meditation (both the traditional posture and using a chair) in the Cambridge Unitarian Church:

 
And here is another video by Miki Nakura-sensei specifically about practising Seiza on a chair:
 

Miki Nakura holds weekly Seiza sessions on ZOOM (link below) every month, mostly Tuesdays, from Noon to 1 PM (New York Time) and Saturdays, from 8 AM to 9 AM (New York Time), but to check the current schedule, please contact him at:

Passcode: 552956

These are free virtual live sessions which anyone in the world can join.
 
Imaoka-sensei (on right) practising Seiza in 1985 before a Tokto Kiitsu Kyōkai meeting

 

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