Hi, let me help you find a comfortable way to sit in meditation.
And what I mean by that is comfortable enough, comfortable enough to sit for 10 minutes,
20 minutes, 30 minutes, and maybe longer.
Now there are a number of different meditation traditions and many of them use their own
cushions and different seating styles.
So I'm going to show you a range of options and then you can find the one that works best
for you.
If you've been to my channel before you know that I'm Barbara Heffernan and I'm a psychotherapist
who specializes in helping people recover from anxiety and trauma.
But I am also a Buddhist and I am also a certified mindfulness instructor and I've been meditating
for about 27 years.
I've been to more than six one week silent meditation retreats where we meditate pretty
much from the moment you wake up until you know 7:00 AM until nine o'clock at night.
The most intensive retreat that I've ever done was actually in Thailand where we woke
up at four in the morning, meditated for two hours, had breakfast at six, meditated, had
lunch at 11 and then meditated until close to 10 o'clock at night.
And while you were allowed to have liquids and some soy milk, no other food for the day.
So that was the most intensive meditation retreat I've ever been on.
And I have tried a number of different cushions and sitting styles and there was a period
of time where I would just get burning pain in my back, which I couldn't tolerate.
So I found a solution for that.
And I'm going to give you a number of different options of sitting styles and sitting in questions
so you can figure out how to sit without too much pain.
Now, before I move on, it would be really helpful to me if you would subscribe to my
channel and give me a, like if you like this video that helps me continue to produce them
and also get the word out to more people.
So let me start by explaining what I'm sitting on right now.
This large cushion on the floor is called a zabuton and it's a very useful cushion to
have actually, and they're sold on Amazon, they're sold all over the place and I will
actually include a link in the notes to this video.
And then I'm also sitting on a zafu.
And a zafu is typical in the Zen tradition and it helps you raise your hips above your
knees, which is very helpful, particularly for those of us from Western cultures where
we did not grow up sitting on the floor.
And by the way, I just got a little cramp in my toe, which does happen to me when I
sit this low to the ground.
So the zafu and zabuton would be a traditional setup for a Zen center if you go to a Zen
center.
And I'm going to run through the points of posture using this set up.
And then as I said, I'll show you a few others.
So with this set up, your hips are above your knees.
If you put your knees on the ground and you can cross your legs.
As you can actually see, one of my legs is crossed here and the other is crossed here.
And this triangle base gives you a very stable place to sit in meditation.
And then as you're sitting, the next thing to do is to pull up as if you have a string
pulling from your sitz bones all the way through the crown of your head and all the way up.
And it really lengthens your spine.
So imagine something polling the crown of your head up.
And what that does is it also tucks your chin down a little bit.
You don't want to be sitting in such a way where your chin is jetting out.
That will really hurt your back.
So you're on your cushion, on your sitz bones, on the little bones at the bottom of your
butt - really feel the stability of that.
And then the lengthening through your spine and up towards the ceiling.
And for your arms, shake them out a little bit for a moment and kind of feel where they
naturally fall and wherever they naturally fall from the shoulder down to the elbow,
keep that there and then move your hand to your knee.
Now some traditions will have you sit with your hands like this.
Other traditions we'll have you sit with your hands like this and other traditions we'll
have you hold a mudra - hand mudra
You can try all of these.
If you don't follow a particular tradition and you will get a different they give you
have a different feeling, actually this feels a little bit more inward maybe?
This feels a little bit more open and then that feels slightly different as well.
Now some people will say to put your tongue behind your teeth kind of on the roof of your
mouth.
I don't find that all that helpful, but many people do feel that that helps them relax
their jaw and relaxing your jaw is definitely helpful, so you can try that as well.
And then some traditions will have you meditate with your eyes closed and other traditions
actually have your eyes open.
So in a Vedic or Hindu tradition, you're probably using a hand mudra and your eyes are usually
closed.
Whereas in Tibetan traditions, your hands might be like this and your eyes might be
open gazing a few feet in front of you.
And again, you can experiment with what it feels like to do meditation with your eyes
closed and with your eyes open.
And sometimes people feel like with our eyes closed, they can relax more, they can center
more.
And other people feel that when they close their eyes, their thoughts race more so, experiment.
See what it's like for you.
Particularly if you're a beginning, use a method that helps you stay on the cushion
for the amount of time you want to meditate.
And one reason some traditions will have you keep your eyes open is that we're not meditating
to retreat from the world.
We're not trying to go inside.
We're trying to learn to be here exactly where we are with exactly what's happening.
And so having our eyes open, it's one of our sense Gates.
You have our eyes open, we have our nose open, we can smell, we can hear, we can feel breeze
on our skin and we can see.
And it's not to concentrate on any of that sensory information, but it's also not to
block it.
So as you meditate and focus on your breathing, you can also bring in awareness that comes
in from your senses.
So just to run through, once again, the points of sitting posture, your knees below your
hips will be very helpful for most people, your sits bones sitting right on your sitz
bones, holding up through your spine, crown of the head.
Your chin is tucked and your jaw is relaxed, your arms are comfortably placed on your knees,
and your eyes are either gazing open or closed.
And sometimes it's helpful to make a decision about these different points prior to sitting
in meditation.
So if you say, okay, today I'm going to sit with my hands open and my eyes closed, then
that's how you sit.
And that way you're not spending your sitting time saying, Oh, I've got to try this, I'm
gonna try this - and getting into all of that.
So try as much as you can to pick what you want to do and then sit and stay in that for
the designated amount of time that you have chosen.
And now I'm gonna review a couple of cushion options.
So I explained that the zafu on this zabuton.
If I take the zafu away and I am just completely sitting flat, this again would be a more Hindu
tradition, Vedic tradition.
And very often people will sit in a full Lotus, which is where you pull one leg up on your
thigh and the other foot on this thigh.
And I cannot sit in this position for more than about two minutes.
So coming out of that, you can also sit in a half Lotus position where you pull one foot
up.
Again, this position would give me an enormous amount of foot pain after a little while.
So unless you are a practicing Hindu or practicing in the Vedic tradition or you've done a lot
of yoga, sitting completely on the floor, particularly with your legs up, probably will
hurt your legs.
So you can also sit without elevating your hips completely flat with your legs like this.
This position again would give me a lot of back pain.
So I don't choose to sit this way.
Now for people who have a lot of knee and ankle pain, I'm going to show you a Gomden.
So this is a Gomden and when I sit on the Gomden,
I put my knees on the ground and there's a curve in my back, which really helps.
Other people will sit more in the center of the Gomden and then just have their legs crossed
with their knees open.
Oh, and I should mention that the Gomden was actually invented for Westerners who do not
grow up sitting on the floor.
So it was to be helpful to people so they could stay in meditation position.
Now one nice thing about Gomden's is that you also can stack them.
Down.
So you can put one on top of the other.
And I know my head is getting cut off here a little bit, but this makes it a little bit
more like a chair.
You're going to want to make sure you're right in the center of the cushions.
But many people do find this alternative to be very comfortable.
But now I'm going to show you my favorite.
So this is a bench.
This is a bench.
It's used in Zen tradition sometimes and a handful of other Buddhist traditions.
I don't see a lot of people sitting in this, but I find this to be definitely the most
comfortable for me.
So to sit on the bench, you've just kind of tuck your, I shouldn't have had colored pants
on, shouldn't I?
You just tuck your legs under you like that, put the bench and then sit like that.
And if you can see, I have a little bit of a curve in my spine when I sit on this bench
and that has really helped to eliminate the burning back pain that I used to have.
So it's really nice if you have a center nearby and you can go to the center and you can try
a couple of different cushions.
You are definitely allowed to do that.
And if you would like to try to order one or two, I will include links below for that
as well.
And the last thing I want to demonstrate is sitting in a chair.
So if you have hip, knee, ankle problems, you can absolutely a hundred percent meditate
in a chair.
So if you're more comfortable sitting in a chair to meditate, it's really not a problem.
The important thing is to meditate.
The important thing is to learn to stay present and to gain all the many, many benefits that
there are from meditation.
So how you sit is not as important as sitting and chairs are fine.
Most of the centers that I go to now have a number of chairs in the meditation room.
So let me know in the comments below what your favorite meditation posture is and whether
you learned anything from this video.
And if you liked this video, please give me a thumbs up and I look forward to seeing you
the next time.