Advice?

[Anonymous]

I have several things that I’ve always wondered about when I’m meditating.

1) Proper posture
– When I’m sitting I don’t feel totally comfortable. I’m wondering what the best position is to sit and meditate (lotus, half-lotus, etc.). I also tend to have my limbs fall asleep if I mediate to long in any position. Comments, suggestions?
– When I’m standing my body isn’t totally relaxed. I seem to always need my calf muscles to be tense in order to hold my position. Is this normal? If not what can I do to fix it?

2) Breathing
– I start out meditation with the 80% breathing – as has been recommended. Once I “get into it” so to speak, I find my breathing trails off and I breathe less in total. I wouldn’t be surprised if the amount of oxygen I consume is less than half than I use in a normal waking state. Is this normal?
– I’ve noticed that when I meditate in the morning (right after waking up) I can’t breathe as deeply. I think this is because I sleep on my stomach in some periods of the night and my breathing becomes shallow. I’ve wanted to change the way I sleep because I feel that it isn’t as energy recovering as it could be (as I’ve read). Does anyone have suggestions or comments on this?

I’m a bit of a perfectionist and a strong believer in establishing good habits. I’ll appreciate any advice/commentary I receive on these questions. thanks!

[Anonymous]

Hi, Travis and welcome to the Circle.

Bruce has a lot of instruction dealing with both posture (standing and sitting) and the breath. Rather than try to condense all that here for you, I think if you stick with the program you’ll get a lot of your questions answered in great detail and at great depth. If you want to get into it now rather than wait for the topics to come up in the Circle, you could pick up his books on meditation, The Great Stillness and Relaxing Into Your Being. They cover these topics extensively.

[Anonymous]

Hi, Travis! I think it’s very common in the beginning to experience discomfort while sitting. Some things will just get better with time. I sit in a chair, as do some others, and it is a perfectly acceptable way to sit. Sitting in a lotus or half-lotus is harder, but what I’ve found is that if I sit in these positions on a regular basis, the discomforts and the numbness works itself out eventually. If you have continued or unusual discomfort, it would probably be a good idea to have an instructor check your posture.

Again, on the standing, it’s good to give it some time, and see if these things work themselves out with continued practice. If you are mainly having tension in the calves, it doesn’t sound like anything that will cause damage, so give it a little time. You might need to reasses your alignments, if it continues. Make sure your weight is roughly in the middle of your feet, your knees are not forward too far, and allow the tailbone to tuck under slightly. Matthew is right – there are a lot more details in Bruce’s books, and it would be a good idea to check them out. I am on Month 3 of the meditation circle, and we are starting to work with some alignments, and making sure parts of your body are not collapsed. But once you are sure your alignments are reasonably in check, some of it just takes time to get the kinks and glitches out of your body, Everybody starts out meditating for short periods of time, and slowly increases that time as the body adjusts.

I also think it is natural for breathing to be more shallow when we sleep. You could try adjusting some things about how you sleep, but my approach would be to start working on some of the breathing exercises (perhaps separate from your Meditation Circle work), and when good breathing becomes a habit, it will work itself naturally into your other activities and your sleep. Someone else mentioned more shallow breathing in their morning meditation, and that taking a few minutes to do breathing exercises beforehand helped.

I hope this helps some, and I’d be interested to know how this progresses for you!

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your advice guys! Ill try these things out and let you know the results.

[Anonymous]

In the Great Stillness, Appendices A and B cover sitting in a chair for meditation and sitting on the floor for meditation. Bruce explains how to alleviate pain.

[Anonymous]

Travis, your post reminds me of a time I wanted to sit absolutely right on my zafu, because I kept collapsing the posture. The session I tried my best to sit as good as possible was my worst meditation session ever!!!! After that I went to sit on the sofa, supported by cushions under my knees, and I could meditate well after a few days of dreadful sessions. The lesson for me was that trying to sit perfectly was worse than sitting to the best of my already poor ability. I’d say sit as good as you can without strain, which, by your account of being a perfectionist, probably means sitting a little bit “looser” than how you sit now. Sometimes, less is more.

As for the breath, when your body relaxes oxygen consumption goes down and the breath can become thinner. Actually, the “breath of no breath” is a benchmark of good meditation, which could be understood as the act of breathing so naturally and so softly that it does not look like you’re breathing. So breathing less is not necessarily a bad thing, because oxygen demand depends on several factors, being bodily tension a big one.

My 2 cents.

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