Meditation Posture

Some people ask me about how they should sit in meditation, or complain about some pain and discomfort that they find in their neck, shoulders, back and legs when they meditate.

First of all, I want to say that I’m not an expert in body alignment and positioning, but I think I have something both important and interesting to share with you. However, feel free to look for more details elsewhere or consult an expert in body alignment should you require. I believe if you have no physical problem, this write-up suffices. (see the caution at the end)

Why Posture?

So to start, I would say that the importance of posture in meditation comes from three things which I'm going to list in a moment. However bear in mind that your posture is not supposed to make you rigid in your practice, which means it has no value beyond facilitating your practice. If you find yourself comfortable and successfully meditating with certain positioning of your body, then that could be a good posture for you. I sometimes meditate lying down on my bed or when riding in a car. As far as what my posture is in each of these scenarios can serve my practice, then it’s a good posture for me.

OK, here are the three important things which are your goals to achieve in your meditation practice, 1) preventing physical injury and serious pain, 2) allowing you to relax into your body, 3) and facilitating concentration and keeping you awake during your practice.

The Typical Elements of a Good Posture

I say ‘typical’ because the below coming elements are formally and traditionally considered in how one needs to sit in order to meditate correctly, plus they are known to best achieve the three goals mentioned above. Let’s have a look at them one by one in details.
1. Spine should be upright following its natural arch. However this natural arch can differ from person to person and between sitting down, standing up and some other positions. In martial arts, they teach you how to tuck it in and out as required. If you don’t know anything about that, no issue. Just sit with your back comfortably straight and avoid exaggerations whether by pushing your chest out or by trying to eliminate the arch. It helps the spine maintain its upright position if your hips are in a higher level than your knees.

2. Shoulders should be dropped down and relaxed. When we feel anxious, our shoulders may tend to go up. This can happen while you’re meditating, but whenever you notice it, drop your shoulders back down. That’s all what you need to do.

3. Head should be relaxed and sitting right over your torso. No slouching and no pushing the head forwards or backwards either. With maintaining you head nicely sitting above your torso, if you tuck your chin slightly in, it causes your neck to stretch slightly from the back and will help you breathe more easily and deeply, especially if you want to breathe into your belly.

4. Hands should be supported to help your shoulders to stay relaxed. Putting them in your lap is ideal in keeping your shoulders dropped down. The reason for this is that the natural distance between your shoulders and lap perfectly suites the length of your hands and the position of your elbows. This also allows your upper arms to keep a nice distance from your chest, which in turn allows room for the breath. You may also notice your shoulders open up and roll back as you create this room.

5. Facial muscles should be relaxed and jaw should be relaxed and slightly dropped. Dropping your jaw can help your facial muscles to ease and expand. And to keep your mouth closed, it helps to touch the back of your upper teeth or the ceiling of your mouth with your tongue, whatever feel comfortable to you.

I have got you these nice images from Google and made the lines in the left one. See how all what I mentioned above applies to them. Not all the images available out there are as good.

The Benefits of a Good Posture

If you follow these guidelines, you’ll have the ideal position for concentration and it will be almost impossible to fall asleep. This is first.

Second, sitting in this position allows you to relax your body around your subject of concentration. For instance, if you want to focus on the emotional body sensations (especially those with negative elements in them) such as anxiety and sadness, you want to have the rest of your body to be rested around those feelings no matter how intense they can get, so you can concentrate on them without having to be attached to them.

Third, these guidelines are generally about the best way in which your body can rest safely and productively. I say ‘safely’ in terms of preventing injuries like back or neck pain, and ‘productively’ because you can do productive practice such as meditating or training your back muscles be stronger and more relaxed holding you upright at the same time. If you feel uncomfortable and tired of keeping this posture for an extended period of time, it’s OK to move a little bit or change your posture by repositioning your hands or putting a cushion underneath, hopefully not at the cost of your practice :)

But remember that tolerating this kind of discomfort in the back, as much as possible, develops the strength of both your back muscles and concentration power, so you don’t want to give in very easily.

Flexibility

If you see how some people sit on the ground with those beautiful classical postures such as the full lotus posture but don’t find your body flexible enough to do them, you still have the choice of doing stretching exercises or classes. Will this help you in your meditation? Not necessarily. And be careful of doing hard stretching exercises by your own as you may injure yourself.

Of course, stretching in itself cannot not make you able to sit on a rock like this man :) but it can make you able to position your legs in this beautiful way.

Word of Caution

If you feel any pain which does not look like it is just a normal discomfort of sitting in a single position for an extended period of time, please consult a doctor or an expert in posture. He or she does not have to be a meditator. Having a serious pain in neck, back, shoulders … etc may indicate either a bad posture (not implementing the above guidelines properly) or some already-existing injury. I urge you to let someone examine your case in person.

Which one influences the other, mind or body?

You might have heard or read before about the mind-body interactive relationship or the relationship between psychology and physiology. It is said that certain chemicals that enter our body do not only affect our physical health, but our mood and state of mind too. According to the BBC, scientists at the University of Bristol have found that carbon dioxide can raise our stress level measured by the rise in heartbeat and blood pressure. The same can be said about the different diseases that attack us.

On the other hand, psychologists often mention that our modern social system and work environments turn on the same acute stress response with all the hormones secretion that our primitive ancestors needed to be prepared for fight and flight when faced with a physical threat to their life. Nevertheless, this type of response is often useless to the type of problems we have in our modern life. When you get trapped in a bad traffic jam, or when your boss keeps piling up files on your desk and does not appreciate you enough, or maybe yells at you sometimes, you’re not likely to need those hormones, and yet you get them. And because you won’t use them they become poisonous to your body.

My guess is that what I have said so far is familiar to you in general. And I’ll go further in my guess and assume that when I tell you that meditation helps you in finding back your peace of mind and tranquillity, you will say “yes, I know”.

It has been studied a lot this interactive relationship between body and mind/physiology and psychology by scientists and other authors, and yet it looks to me that the influence of the body on the mind is almost non-arguable and more (easily) acceptable than the influence of the mind on the body, at least in some aspects of it. I don’t know if you have heard some people talk about curing physical diseases by mental exercises and practices. Neither I want to claim something like that now, but I have tried out something interesting and would like to share it with you.

One day I overate at lunch and felt extremely full. Then I sat at my computer for a little less than an hour doing some work, and then I decided to go out. I felt the pressure of the food still in my stomach bothering me when I move a lot, and as I did not have a car, I had to walk for 15 minutes to the nearest bus stop to where I was. “What can I do?”, I asked myself.

One thing came in mind, mindfulness meditation. Sounds strange, doesn’t it?

I sat on my chair, settled into my posture and started focusing on and keeping track of the physical sensations in my stomach in particular, and in general, I kept an eye on any other physical sensations that could arise elsewhere. With full acceptance and non-interference with whatever I was feeling, in the first 5 minutes, I felt like if the tissues behind and around my belly button were getting cut with a knife. Gradually, this feeling disappeared and, instead,  I had a feeling of slow clockwise rotation, from up to left to down to right, covering a circle of 1 inch radius almost around my belly button too. This feeling also lasted for around 5 minutes from the start till it completely disappeared. After that, I only had the normal feeling of pressure which was due to the big amount of food which had been lying there. And on the top of the 15 minutes, I was feeling more than 90% fine.

I got up, put my cloths on and left. I kept some attention to the sensations in my stomach and walked the 15 minutes to the bus stop. And because I was feeling even better, I decided to keep walking as far as I keep feeling good, and guess what, I did not stop till I reached my destination feeling 100% good. It took me an hour to do so. Isn’t it interesting?

Now, I am neither suggesting you to overeat or harm your health by any way, nor encouraging you to avoid seeking professional help when you have a physiological problem. This is my own experiment which happens to be a success. But I strongly believe that our mind has that great positive influence on our body if we learn how to nurture it the right way.

Till later, goodbye,

Hello world!

You have found my page. That means you’ve been in a journey .. of improving yourself and you life. Perhaps you have had an emotional issue or a social concern .. perhaps a career struggle, family trouble or financial difficulty .. perhaps something about learning new skills or about unleaning unwanted habits .. or maybe a health concern.

Me too .. I’ve had what you have, but my journey has never ended, and never seems to end any time soon. There is a lot to learn, a lot to do and a lot to yet discover about myself, people and the world around me.

I discovered meditation several years ago on my quest for being a better person. I did not leave any big title that I came across in this self improvement world without having a bite of it. Nothing could do better than me .. when I had insight into my own being in both my mind and body. From here, I came across mindfulness meditation and mindfulness practice a few years ago.

I have found that in order to have the kind of profound change that I’m looking for, first I need to know and find out (aka “to be mindful of”) the thoughts and feelings that, at any given moment, construct and maintain my current reality and habitual ways of thinking, feeling, believing and conducting myself in life. These thoughts and feelings can rage broadly between the obvious things in the surface of my awareness and the deep stuff inside the unconscious mind. Then I need to be in peace with them and with my whole being. After that, they either change by themselves in the way that serves my purpose or I will need to see how to approach them in the most optimum way.

I am not sure how much in common you find we have had already. I hope this interest you and you find it useful. And I’ll be posting more interesting stuff, so come again.

Till later, goodbye,