Sit comfortably

To practice sitting meditation, we can find a comfortable position for our body. You might like to have a cushion to put under your backside. 

One option is to sit with your legs crossed, folded underneath one another. This creates three points of stability: the back side and then the two knees. 

You may also like—if you’re more flexible—to sit in what we call the half lotus, which is with your foot up on your thigh. 

If you feel even more flexible, some people like to sit in the full lotus, which is with both feet on the thighs. That may be uncomfortable for most of us to do. 

If it’s difficult for you to sit in the cross legged position, you can also sit in a chair,or you might like to sit with the cushion between your legs so that you’re kneeling and the cushion supports you.

To find a stable position we can imagine that there’s a thread going up through our spine and coming out through the crown of our head. Imagine somebody pulling up gently on that thread. We relax our shoulders, letting them just hang, our chest is open and our back is upright.

In this way we’re stable; even if we feel a bit sleepy, we’re not going to fall over. You can put your hands either together on your lap or on your knees. 

The main thing is to feel comfortable. Sitting meditation is not something that needs to be too formal; we don’t need to feel rigid or tight in our body. That rigidity is actually a kind of tension that’s also present in our mind. The most important thing is to relax.

You might like to close our eyes or just leave them half open with a gentle gaze on a point in front of us.