by Rolf Sovik
meditation a basic practice
• still your body Stillness is the mark of deep meditation. To begin your meditation, sit erect in one of the seated postures.
• establish diaphragmatic breathing Focus on the flow of your exhalation and inhalation. Breathe through the nose, relaxing the sides of your lower rib cage and abdomen. Let the breath become deep and diaphragmatic.
• relax systematically Maintain your stillness and relaxed breathing. Systematically travel throughout your body, releasing tension and resting each area. Then breathe as if your whole body breathes.
• practice breath awareness in the nostrils This is the beginning of formal concentration practice. The sensation of the breath in the nostrils is a calming focus that will make your meditation stable and grounded.
• rest your awareness in the sound of a mantra A mantra is a word or sound that is used for concentration. Let your awareness rest in it. Eventually the sound will seem to come of its own accord and you can relax your effort.
When thoughts interrupt your meditation, let them come and go without giving them new attention. If you become distracted, gently lead your mind back to the calm center of your inner focus and rest there in peace.
Cultivating a Steady Posture
Cultivating a Steady Posture
To be consistent, meditation needs a stable foundation. The footing for it is a steady posture. This means arranging the arms, legs, and spinal column in a manner that can be maintained comfortably. Four postures are commonly practiced, and each is reviewed in the first chapter of this section, “Finding a Good Sitting Pose.”
As meditation deepens, every sitting pose must be fine-tuned—a process described in “Refining Your Posture.” This consists of bringing careful attention to each part of the spinal axis, from its base to the crown of the head. Along the way, the spine is aligned and strengthened so that sitting can proceed with minimal effort.
Sitting poses quiet sense activity. While this may seem a minor feature of sitting compared with the challenges encountered in constructing a comfortable posture, it is far from unimportant. “Calming the Senses” briefly overviews the simple but elegant manner in which sitting postures address the sense organs and calm their activity.
The floor of the pelvis—the root of the sitting posture—deserves a short chapter of its own. Strengthening muscles in the pelvic floor yields many health benefits and moderate contraction of these muscles during meditation firms the sitting posture. “The Root Lock,” the final chapter of this section, thus describes how to work with the pelvic floor.
Finding a Good Sitting Pose
Is not a temple made of flesh
superior to one made of stone?
—Allama Prabhu
For those with little meditation experience, the attention given to sitting postures must seem puzzling. Sitting, in one form or another, is an action each of us performs daily—one that requires little effort and even less thought. Why must we labor over something so relatively mindless? The answer is that it is just this absence of attention—the unconscious manner in which we sit—that leads us to examine sitting poses more carefully. Sitting, like every other aspect of meditation, provides the opportunity to bring what lies beneath the surface of the mind back to awareness, where it can be integrated.
In sitting postures, it is the body that garners our attention. Physical restlessness, discomfort and pain, rigid joints, and tight muscles are just some of what most of us learn to tolerate from day to day. These are a source of distraction in meditation, but they can also act as signals to help us discover something new—a physical self that is at ease with itself. In place of an increasingly distant relationship with the body, a comfortable sitting posture sharpens attention and promotes a feeling of physical and mental ease.
Creating a good sitting posture is much like creating a pleasant outer environment. Just as it feels invigorating to straighten up a cluttered living room or reorganize a forgotten garage space, tuning up a rusty sitting posture also brightens the mind. As the duration of meditation increases, a comfortable sitting pose becomes even more important. It frees the mind to engage with more subtle levels of personality. And among more experienced meditators, the act of settling into a sitting pose actually initiates the process of meditation.
In this chapter we’ll examine the most commonly practiced sitting poses, but before we become immersed in details, it is important to pause for a moment. We need to bring the right perspective to our approach and, in the process, relax the demanding expectations that so often accompany sitting poses. To do that, let’s look more generally at what it means to sit.
In yoga, the act of sitting is a marriage of form and function. Form is the structure and technical means by which we accomplish an aim, while function is the underlying intention or aim itself. An arched bridge (form) simultaneously provides safe passage (function) for pedestrians and boats. In meditation, the form of a pose is the particular style of arranging the limbs and aligning the spine. The function is to draw attention inward and facilitate concentration. Form and function are woven together.
In the early stages of practice, it is easy to become caught up in the details of form—in the technicalities of sitting. For some, this may mean struggling to sit “correctly,” but sitting with little pleasure or satisfaction. For others, it may mean reacting in just the opposite way—blindly ignoring useful suggestions about sitting because of the rigidity and discipline they seem to impose. To find a middle path, we need an approach that works for each individual body and yields the most centering effects.
The strategy employed in the Yoga Sutra (2:47) to accomplish this is remarkably versatile. Pantanjali advises us to develop a sitting pose that is both steady (sthira) and comfortable (sukham). These two complementary criteria resolve the many problems that sitting presents. A steady posture is one that is stable and firm—a posture that evokes stillness. In the scriptures, the word sthira also implies a posture that is well aligned—with head, neck, and trunk erect (see, for example, the Bhagavad Gita 6:13). The injunction to develop a comfortable posture reminds us that struggling with pain and tension is not the aim of sitting. A sitting pose is intended to please rather than aggravate. Thus, the details of sitting must be worked out with both stability and comfort in mind. Like two supporting pillars, these two criteria make it possible for each person to shape an effective meditation posture.
A sitting pose that is erect and self-supporting is the goal of practice. But in the beginning, it is wise to keep in mind that you may well find unsupported sitting poses challenging—even unpleasant. If this is the case, external support—the back of a chair or a wall—can save the day. Use the support in the early stages of practice, meanwhile working on stretching and strengthening in order to sit more comfortably without it.
Do not feel compelled, as some students do, to sit in postures that are too demanding. Keep in mind that the focus should be on the internal process of meditation rather than on its outer appearance. If you have been struggling to maintain a difficult pose, it might be helpful for you to practice meditation in a chair for a time, so that the effort of sitting can be minimized. This might also initiate a change in outlook and a new perspective on sitting.
Other life situations are even more demanding. If you are confined to a bed, for example, the bed itself will need to be the source of stability. Use pillows to make the posture more comfortable.
Fortunately for most practitioners, there are simple adjustments that make the commonly practiced sitting poses more comfortable. As we will see, these include supports for the pelvis and legs. With these adjustments, a satisfying posture will emerge.
Four Sitting Postures
When Swami Rama lectured to students about meditation, he would frequently remark that the arrangement of the four extremities (the two arms and two legs) is far less important than the placement of the spine. The essential element of any sitting pose, he would say, is its ability to align t
he head, neck, and trunk. The spinal axis rises from the base of the spine and ascends through the crown of the head. In sitting poses, two important themes underlie the management of this central column of energy: elongation and balance. When there is ample space between adjoining vertebrae and a sense of length in the spinal column, the natural energies of the spine lift it and give it a buoyancy that can be sustained easily. Just as important, when the spine is balanced, that alignment acts as a balm to relieve discomfort in every area of the spine.
A number of sitting poses can help accomplish these goals. The most celebrated in popular literature is the lotus pose, a posture in which the legs are folded and the feet are positioned on the tops of the opposite thighs. This well-known pose, however, is more commonly used in hatha yoga than in meditation. The demands it places on the ankles and knees can be far too extreme for meditation. Among the many sitting postures that are more suitable for meditation, four are commonly selected: easy pose, auspicious pose, chair pose, and bench pose.
A stable sitting posture depends upon the shape and breadth of its base. In the human body, the two sitting bones protrude at the bottom of the pelvis and act as the bony substructures on which we rest the weight of the torso. But it is virtually impossible to sit on those two bones alone. Without the benefit of a fleshy bottom it would be very difficult (and painful) to balance.
Support for an erect torso requires at least three resting points (consider the three-legged stool), and when it comes to sitting for meditation, a cross-legged pose serves the purpose best. Bending the knees and crossing the ankles creates the triangular shape we desire and partially redistributes the weight of the torso from the sitting bones onto the legs.
The Easy Pose (Sukhasana)
The cross-legged pose that is most comfortable for the majority of students is called the easy pose (sukhasana). It is the posture that you may have used even as a child to sit on the floor. In this pose, the legs are crossed simply, somewhere near mid-shin, and the hands rest on the thighs (either leg may be drawn in first).
Despite its appearance, however, the easy pose is not “easy,” and if it is to be used to sit in meditation for any length of time, cushioning will be needed. The problem is that, without cushioning, this pose leaves the knees suspended above the floor, making the inside of the thighs and knees vulnerable to overstretching, and contorting the hip joints. The lower back is likely to round and collapse as well. This leads to the familiar experience of sitting erect for a short time, then slumping, then making an effort to sit erect once more, then slumping—an unsettling process at best.
Cushions are the answer. Support both your legs as well as the base of your pelvis with cushions or blankets, thus relieving the strain on the hips and knees while stabilizing the pelvis and upper legs. Only the feet rest on the floor. Be sure to raise the pelvis high enough. Keep raising the hips, a little at a time, until any more cushioning actually feels counterproductive. This will eliminate strain in the lower back. Don’t be concerned about overdoing the support, and don’t worry that you will look like the Queen of Sheba floating on a pile of cushions or blankets. The truth is, these blankets simply replace the support that the floor provides in any of the other cross-legged poses.
Make sure the cushions or blankets you sit on are firm enough. Firmness at the base of the spine is important not only for long-term support, but also because it facilitates the inward movement of energy at the floor of the pelvis. Use cushions under both legs, even if only one leg seems to be problematic. Do not disturb the symmetry of the pose by propping one leg higher than the other. Over time, as your hips and legs become more flexible and your back is strengthened, you may decide to lower the cushioning under your hips and reduce the support under the legs as well. But there is no need to hurry. It is better to spend time becoming familiar with the pose before reducing the height of the cushions.
The Auspicious Pose (Svastikasana)
The auspicious pose (svastikasana) is more stable and more collected than the easy pose because it draws the feet and legs more tightly together and closer to the torso. It also allows the thighs and the knees to rest on the floor, with the feet positioned nearer the groins. The tighter placement of the legs, however, requires more hip, ankle, and knee flexibility than the easy pose.
Like the easy pose, this pose can be performed with either foot drawn in first. It is a matter of personal preference. To assume the pose with the left foot drawn in first:• Place the sole of the left foot against the right thigh, with the heel of the left foot positioned a few inches to the right of center (see illustration).
• Place the right foot against the left thigh, tucking it into the crease formed by the fold in the left leg. The two feet are symmetrical and the two heals rest equidistant from the center of the pubic bones. However, the left foot lies below the right leg—inserted into the crease from below—while the right foot lies above the crease in the left leg.
• Do not let the knobby ankle bone of the upper foot press on the lower ankle. If possible, draw the upper ankle closer to the inside of your thigh.
You will need a cushion for the pelvis and perhaps a thin support for the knees. To ease strain in your lower back, you may wish to place your sitting bones entirely on the cushion, raising the lower back and relieving tension in the legs. If the pose is relatively comfortable and there is no strain in the knees, then you can place the sitting bones at the edge of the cushion or on the floor and simply use the cushion as a wedge to support the base of the spine.
In both the easy pose and the auspicious pose, cushions help to achieve a neutral alignment of the pelvis, which supports the lower back. The bowl of the pelvis is not tilted so far forward that the lower back overarches. Nor is the pelvis tucked, resulting in flattening or rounding of the natural inward curve in the lower back.
The Chair Pose (Maitryasana)
If your knee, hip, or lower back flexibility is compromised in some way, you may find that sitting on a chair is the best way to establish a steady and comfortable posture that keeps the spine straight. This pose makes no unusual demands on the knees or hips.
• Find a chair with a firm, flat surface. Sit on the front of the seat, with your knees straight out from the hips, feet flat on the floor and pointed forward. The height of the chair is an important consideration. It helps in all seated postures to have the hips slightly higher than the knees. Then the thighs slope gently downward, and the feeling of having to “hold” the legs is minimized. A cushion can be used to raise the height of the seat if necessary. If your feet aren’t solidly on the floor, place a flat support underneath them.
• Bend your elbows naturally and rest your hands on your thighs.
The Bench Pose
Sitting on a sloped bench provides an alternative for those who would like to sit on the floor but have problems that prevent them from sitting cross-legged. Here, the shins rest on the floor, which makes the pose more stable than sitting on a chair. And while the bench pose is not as effective as the cross-legged poses in drawing energy inward to the base of the spine, it does provide good support and elevation for the spinal column.
• First kneel, then place the bench over your calves with the seat slanting downward toward your knees.
• Sit back on the seat, keeping your thighs parallel and straight out from the hips. Turn the toes inward, with the heels slightly farther apart.
• The height of the seat can be raised by placing a cushion under your buttocks. A folded towel or thin cushion under each ankle will relieve pressure there, if necessary.
• Once you are comfortable, the hands may be rested on the upper thighs or nested together.
As we have seen, it’s not necessary to have an “advanced” sitting posture in order to meditate. In fact, the point of focusing on sitting is to address your body as it is right now. We all can use some improvements in muscle tone or alignment. But simply bringing awareness to postural difficulties is often enough to set in motion a whol
e new approach to practice. Return briefly to your posture work each day as you meditate, and watch your pose become more and more conducive to a relaxed state of mind. Whichever sitting posture you choose, keep in mind that the outer form of meditation is less important than the quieting process occurring within. Once you have established a meditation posture that suits your body, it will become a gateway—a safe passage to the rooms within rooms, within you.
Refining Your Posture
Sit with the trunk, head, and
neck aligned, unmoving and still.
—Bhagavad Gita
After selecting a posture for meditation, the next step is to begin the process of refining it. We can use the core of the body, the spinal axis, to orient our work. We’ll divide the spinal axis into three separate areas—the head, the neck, and the trunk—a division suggested even in ancient times. Then, let’s further subdivide the trunk into three parts: the pelvis (including the legs and hip joints), the lower back (the lumbar spine), and the upper torso (the thoracic spine). In this way, problems such as muscle tension or poor alignment can be carefully isolated.