If you practice meditation, yoga breathing, or seated mindfulness practices, and the sitting,
meaning sitting on the floor, is really uncomfortable and you're wondering if a lotus
pose is going to be a magical unlock for you, this video is for you. Hey, my name is Lucas.
I'm a yoga teacher, I'm a teacher trainer. I did my first long meditation retreat when I was 23
years old. I did a vipassana, an SN Goenka style vipassana retreat, for 10 days in silence, in New
Jersey of all places. And I went into it thinking I was going to struggle with my monkey mind
only for 10 days, and I certainly did that, but at least half the time I was struggling with my
body. Maybe you've had this happen before. My knees hurt, my hips hurt, my lower back hurt,
by the end of it even my shoulders and my neck were really, really sore, and that was a surprise
to me. It was a silent retreat, but at the end we started talking and I came to find out, and I've
since learned in the years that have passed, that most people really struggle physically,
and when you open up your body and you learn how to sit better on the floor it
makes a big difference. Now the physical discomfort never goes away completely,
but it can be greatly diminished. At least for me it's helped me to enjoy my practice a lot more. In
this video we'll look at a few different postures you can experiment with on the floor. Lastly,
we'll look at some exercises you can do to improve your seated position, some stretching exercises.
When we'll look at these exercises we'll be talking about sitting in the middle of the room.
You can definitely meditate sitting in a chair, you can definitely meditate sitting against the
wall, you can even meditate lying down in bed. I don't want to be precious about postures, but
since you're watching this video I'll assume, like me, you prefer to practice in the middle of the
room because of the forced mindfulness that comes about when you do that. With that in mind, let me
show you some of the best postures I've found for sitting on the floor. The first and most obvious
is simply school style. You cross your shins and you sit. The problem here is my knees are
too high, so I would use a block to get my knees in line with my hips, this is the first thing.
The second thing I would make sure to do is place my hands on top of my knees or my shins and relax.
The third thing is my chin parallel to the floor. And then the fourth thing is I would stack my
bones and then soften. This would be school style. This works. It's not the best posture long term,
but it's pretty OK. The next pose that I'll show you is what I call flat school style.
This is my preferred posture. Here's how it looks. I'll flex one knee completely,
flex my second knee completely, I try to squish everything in close, which means no space between
my calves and my hamstrings. My shins are on the floor, the tops of my feet are on the floor, like
before my knees are in line with my hips, or i'll prop up, my hands around my legs, and from here,
chin parallel to the floor, I'll stack my bones and then soften. This is a really great posture,
flat school style. The next posture is called stacked school style. It's the same thing but
I'll pull this foot in a little closer and, like Legos, I'll click my one foot on top of the other
and everything will be really tight. This pose requires a great deal of hip mobility and very
often we need that block or prop so that my knees can be either in line or lower than
my hips, hands on my legs, chin parallel to the floor, I stack and soften, and here we go. The
last variations are probably the ones that you tuned in for, which are the lotus variations.
I have found that most advanced meditators, most experienced meditators, even though they can
do a full lotus, they don't. Let me show you why. A half lotus pose looks like this,
one foot tucked into your hip crease, one foot under. The problem here is I'm asymmetrical,
so I need some kind of block or prop underneath my knee. A full lotus looks like this,
and while this looks symmetrical, it still is lopsided, but more importantly I just have a lot
of leverage on my knees and a lot of leverage on my ankles, which usually isn't the best long term.
Can I sit like this for an hour? Yes. Do I? Not usually. I like that flat school style position.
Whatever pose variation you choose, always come back to these four things: knees in line with your
hips, hands on your legs relaxed, chin parallel to the floor, stack and then relax your spine. When
you're doing any kind of meditation you also need to be aware of numbness and tingling, or dead leg.
This is a normal part of practice. Sometimes it's your mind trying to get you to do anything except
sit still. The way to know if you've pushed too far is to utilize something we call the 30 second
rule. If you're seated like this for 20 minutes or 30 minutes and your legs start to fall asleep,
you finish your practice, when you come out of the pose punch out your leg and if all those
numbness and tingling sensations pass within 30 seconds all is good. If it lingers longer
you know you've pushed too far. What's the risk of pushing too far? There's a condition that's known
as meditator's leg and you'll see meditation instructors and leaders they limp around. In
many cases my theory is they've actually done some nerve damage and their legs don't respond
as well now. For people like you and me, casual meditators, it's very unlikely that we're going
to get meditator's leg, but I'd still encourage you to utilize the 30 second rule to make sure
that you don't push too far. When you are learning to sit on the floor, of course simply sitting more
will help you to gain mobility, but when you use targeted stretching exercises you can accelerate
your progress. Let's take a look at some poses that will work on lateral rotation of your hips,
hip flexion, and lastly, often overlooked, plantar flexion of your ankles. These three
ranges of motion are very, very helpful, for a more comfortable seated practice. This first pose
is called the seated pigeon pose. From a seated position with my ankles underneath my knees,
I'll lift my right leg up and I'll stack my ankle on top of my knee. If possible,
click where your ankle bone meets your heel, right into the top of your knee like a Lego piece, and
rest one hand on your knee and one hand on your ankle. You stay where you are, let me start our
timer, we'll spend two minutes here. Now, if this pose is not accessible for you, the modification
is to straighten your legs, straighten your legs, straighten your legs, to find a place where you
can balance. If need be, you could always put one hand behind your back, that's also perfectly
fine. If your knee is way up here, that's also perfectly fine. If you feel comfortable you might
drift forward and place your elbow on your ankle, and your elbow on your knee, and drop your head.
This seated pigeon pose is one that you can sneak in throughout your day,
meaning taking a break from work or even continuing with your work and getting
in a really great lateral hip-opening stretch. When we're seated on the floor,
whether we're taking a school style variation or a lotus pose variation, this lateral rotation hip
movement is really crucial. It involves our adductors on the insides of our legs
and this is a really great pose to develop that. You don't need to push or anything like that,
just relax into the pose. But it is helpful, if you can, to incorporate some relaxing breathing.
We call it breathe to relax and here's how it works: you inhale through your nose for four,
and then exhale through your mouth with a ha sound for eight.
We'll set a timer for two minutes per side, and the most important thing you remember when you're
doing these poses to improve your seated practice is to clock at least two minutes.
What we're looking to do here is accelerate our mobility gains. As I mentioned before, sitting on
the floor is a great way to improve your gains, but these extra stretches will accelerate your
progress provided that you use a timer. This will help you to make breakthroughs at a quicker pace.
Good. We're at two minutes. We'll release this leg and you can punch out the stretch. We'll switch
sides promptly. Same thing as before, take your ankle bone and click it right on top of your knee.
I have my left leg, my right leg again if I'm here that's fine, if I'm here that's OK. If I need to
straighten my leg, also OK. But if you can, one hand on your ankle, one hand on your knee, and
if it's comfortable you could slide, slide, slide forward, don't press but just relax over your leg.
When we're working on flexibility training we apply three principles to practice
and this is for actually changing your body and creating more space. The first principle is called
wet noodle. What this principle states is that my muscles will stretch fast when they're relaxed, so
I do my best just to let it go in the pose, rather than push or strain. Number two, we looked at on
the right side, is we use this breathe to relax pattern to tell our nervous system that it doesn't
need to fight the stretch, that we're OK. We do that with an inhale through the nose for four,
and an exhale through your mouth for eight.
Then the third principle is that timer down there. We hold poses for at least two minutes
when we're trying to actually create more space in our bodies. When you start working on this,
the natural doubt that comes up is "Can I actually do this? Will I ever be able to sit
on the floor with my knees in line with my hips? Will I ever be able to sit in a full lotus pose,
cross my legs comfortably?" and the answer is yes, for sure. If you've spent time in ashrams
or meditation centers, the people who've been there for years, they can all sit on the floor.
Now if you don't want it to take years, which sometimes it will, it's very helpful if you do
these supplemental practices and you can get there a lot quicker. How quick is really individual,
but usually somewhere between three and twelve months you can achieve a really
comfortable seated position on the floor. We're at two minutes on the left side, let's release.
We'll switch our setup for the next pose. The next pose we'll do is a passive squat. Take a yoga mat
rolled up like this, step your feet about as wide as the mat, so it's always wider than you think,
turn your feet out just a little bit and we'll squat down, down, with your elbows on the inside
all the way down, weight into your heels. Timer for two minutes and relax here. Turn the palms
of your hands up, let your head drop, and just breathe. Hip flexion, knee towards your chest,
Initially when you look at it it doesn't look like a range of motion that's so important for
a seated meditation position, but if you're seated in meditation and you feel your spine
curling up, meaning when you sit down, very often that's because of a lack of ability to flex your
hips. This pose will really, really help to open you up. In fact, a passive squat like this can
be a great way to prepare for a seated meditation practice. If you take two fingers and poke around
underneath your bum here you might feel a stretch in your hamstrings, you might feel a stretch in
your glutes, you might even feel a little bit of a stretch in your deep six lateral rotators.
All of these areas can really help to free up your hip flexion range of motion. Now some of you say
"I don't feel anything except my ankles". I'm feeling that dorsiflexion of my ankles,
not so relevant for meditation, but it's an extra bonus stretch that you're getting along the way.
Like with all of our poses let's relax our hands, relax your head, and breathe here in for four,
and out for eight.
In for four
and out for eight.
One more time.
Good. And then slowly making your way up, take a seat down on your mat and punch out
that stretch. We've got one more. For this final pose we'll work on plantar flexion of our ankle.
Many people don't realize this, but for all our seated positions it's really important that we
have great range of motion here in our ankles. Let me show you the best pose to develop it.
On your knees, with your knees together and your feet apart, knees together, feet apart, I'll
sit down on a couple of blocks to start off with, place my hands on my knees, drop my head and neck,
start my timer and then I'll talk you through exactly what's happening here.
When you point your toes like this we're stretching our ankles, which is really, really
important for all of our cross-legged seated positions. If this pose is not intense enough
you can drop down a little bit lower. If it's not intense enough you could drop down
even lower. If it's too intense, prop up more. And one more variation that can be helpful is if it's
too intense, the pressure and the intensity, try practicing on top of your bed. When you're on top
of a mattress oftentimes it can be very, very forgiving, and allow you to get a better point
in your toes. Here in this pose, of course you'll feel a big stretch in your quads as well, which is
also important. Let's place our hands down, relax your head, and we'll breathe together. In for four
and out for
eight.
So all three of these poses that we've looked at you could do them in sequence like we just did.
You could also integrate them into your day. You could do that seated pigeon while you're at your
desk, you could do this hero pose for example while you're answering messages on your phone.
You could break up the poses. Any way you can slip them into your day can be really helpful.
If possible, if you're able to do each of these stretches for two minutes each day,
you'll see progress within a couple of weeks, within a month. Within about three months,
most people have seen really, really significant gains, that should translate into your seated
meditation practice. Just remember to come back to these three principles. Number one,
wet noodle, so I relax my body as much as possible. Number two, breathe to relax. In
for four, out for eight. And number three is I use time under passive tension. I'm using two
minute timers, which is a great place to start. I hope you found that helpful and I hope these
stretching exercises give you more freedom and a little bit more comfort in your meditation
practice. If you have questions or comments please feel free to drop them down below.
If you'd like more science-based yoga videos, hit subscribe down below. There's also a PDF
of these poses in the description down below. And lastly, to find my teaching
calendar please go to yogabody.com. Thanks for watching, we'll see you in the next video.