Posture

Saturday: 25 minutes sitting
Sunday: 25 minutes sitting
Monday: 25 minutes sitting

I dove into the index of my meditation book this morning to read everything it had on legs falling asleep, because that has suddenly become a major issue. The topic comes up a bunch of times, and it seems I have several options:

1. Just meditate in a chair or lying down; it doesn’t matter
2. Wait for the body to adapt; it will eventually get used to sitting for long periods
3. Ignore any harmless sensation; it is practice for dealing with distraction
4. If it’s too distracting, turn the focus to the sensation itself and meditate on that instead of the breath; I can then mindfully decide to change position if I want

I’m trying to get over the silly notion that sitting in a chair is not how the cool meditators do it. At any rate, #1 and #2 are mutually exclusive, so for now I’ll just try #2 and #3, resorting to #4 when I have to. Oh, and great idea* that just occurred to me: I’ll also raise my cushion a little higher off the ground for the time being.

I think I heard somewhere once that the whole original purpose of yoga was to make the body more comfortable in meditation. I really like that concept (which is why I’m not even Googling it to find out if it’s accurate), and I do enjoy some yoga before I meditate. It definitely makes sitting afterward feel that much more relaxing.

* As I was flipping around the book, I noticed that one of my earlier observations is addressed as well. I called it “The challenge of ideas”; he calls it “The Problem of Discursive Brilliance.” :)