Preparing for Meditation: Posture, Stretching, and Sitting Still

Perhaps you know a few meditation techniques, but you haven’t really begun to practice them because you can’t sit still for more than a few minutes, let alone 5, 10, or even 15.

Maybe your back or your knees start hurting, and you worry you may be doing yourself irreparable harm. Or your body starts itching in the oddest places, and you can’t resist the urge to scratch. Or every sound reaches your ears magnified a thousandfold — in Dolby stereo, no less — and you start imagining burglars or leaky faucets behind every door.

Perhaps you had a teacher (or a mother or father!) who made you sit at your desk until you finished your schoolwork, and now even the thought of having to sit without moving makes you squirm uncomfortably.

Yes, the simple act of sitting still is guaranteed to flush out every ounce of restlessness you never knew you had. And, yes, meditation works best when you can keep your body relatively motionless and your back relatively straight. So what to do?

In my next posting, you will explore the topography of meditation and find out what sitting still has to teach you. You discover some great techniques for straightening your spine without hurting your back. And you have an opportunity to practice some dynamite yoga poses for lengthening and relaxing the muscles most involved in sitting — so you can sit still longer, and enjoy it more!