Exploring Meditation Postures

Discover how different body postures can shape your meditative experience in this guided exploration. With a special emphasis on hand postures, this practice invites you to observe the subtle effects of alignment, positioning, and gestures on your state of mind and body. Through mindful experimentation, you’ll gain insight into how posture influences focus, energy, and stillness, cultivating a more intentional and embodied meditation practice.

Transcript

Take a moment to just settle in and what we mean by settle in is to take a moment to feel this moment and feeling this moment means just becoming aware of all the sensations that make it up without getting lost in content we're noticing what's there through doing this through doing that we are bringing awareness to the body sense sensations in the head sensations in the upper body and sensations in the lower body now in meditation we want to aim for a posture that's not only comfortable but also a posture that promotes certain qualities of mind what we want to aim for is a state of energized calm during our day there might be periods while while we feel energized but not calm maybe we are running about with lots of energy which we're not really calm whereas there are other states where the body might feel calm but there's no energy just like when we go to bed so when sitting for meditation we want to aim for the optimal balance between these two poles and today in this guided sit we'll simply explore how finally tuning the posture can influence these mental qualities and what we'll see is that even though some postures might appear at first to be more comfortable or pleasurable sometimes they're not the most useful for meditation practice first we'll just bring attention to our body sense again opening it up so that we feel the full body at once feel the edges of the body the full body sense so the ideal posture is going to differ between each person so here we're not going to aim to teach a posture that applies across the board rather we're going to explore each in our own experience the effect of different postures and only you can know what posture fits best for a meditation practice and this can vary between one sit and the other so as you keep the full body sense open feeling the full body adjust your back so that it's a bit straighter the natural straight back and as we do those adjustments watch how it affects the body sense does it feel more open or more closed does it feel more energized or more drowsy does it feel calmer or more agitated there's no right or wrong we're just exploring we're getting to know our body and mind better so that we can navigate with them in meditation so now we're going to experiment with hands placement and notice how the subtle ways of adjusting the hands might have different effects first we're going to take both hands lift them up and put them in prayer just in front of our heart notice how that feels keep observing how the body and mind feels we're just comparing how different postures affect the body and mind monitoring energy levels calmness levels overall mental clarity comfort discomfort we're exploring these things now you can separate both hands take the left hand and rest it below your navel palm facing up and then take the right hand and place it also palm facing up on your left hand then once the hands are on top of each other the left hand below palm facing up the right hand on top palm facing up as well just right below the navel press both thumbs together gently notice how that feels might feel different sensations in the hands and the arms or elsewhere in the body make sure to keep opening your full body sense that you feel your whole body at once now let's experiment with another hand posture let's separate both hands and place them on the thighs or knees palm facing down just gently rest the hands on the thighs or knees feeling the full body now keep the same posture but adjust it slightly turn your hands so that your palms are facing up notice how that feels in the hands and in the full body so that's where we will leave our exploration for today but I would encourage you in your spare time in some other sit to experiment with other aspects of the posture you can experiment notably with different leg postures sitting on a cushion on a chair and in kneeling bench different leg placements another way in which you can experiment is with having blankets on you or not an experiment with the level of hot or cold that is most suitable for meditation practice maybe you can also adjust depending how the mind feels I find that when the mind is a bit drowsier I like to be a bit more cold even if slightly uncomfortable or as when the mind is more agitated having a soothing blanket on top of me really helps the body cool down calm down so as I ring the bell and as the sit ends keep noticing how postures affect mental states and just how it generally it affects the energy in the body and the calmness of the body and you can do this throughout the day it doesn't need to be in a formal sit