- Your physical problems with sitting
- if you are a teacher, problems you've noticed students having
- questions you have about sitting
- solutions you've found for all of the above.
with best wishes
Swami Saradananda
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Replies
my name is Heiner, I'm 59 years old and a yoga teacher since one year. I'm practising as an average about 2 hours everyday and try to meditate for 1/2 hour. I have had a lot of problems with sitting in a crossed leg position. I encountered mainly pain on my left side in particular in my knee and my thigh muscles next to my hip. For a long time I did not know the source of the problem. Just in a the last few weeks I made great progress. I visited with an "Osteopat" who found out that my sacral bone was blocked. As a cause he determined that my intestins were very hard and immobile. As a consequence of the blocked sacral bone and a blocked sacroiliac joint on my left side my spine had developed over the years scoliosis.
Now my body is changing in a dramatic way and it feels like a chain reaction. I feel like I am in a new body. I can now sit in a crossed leg position for half an hour without almost any pain.
Patient practice of meditation without expectation enables the person to resist the efforts of the ego to mire them in the dense consciousness of these lower chakras.
One of the initial goals of hatha yoga is to make joints flexible and muscles pliable so that prana is not obstructed and can flow more easily upward to the chakras above the Muladhara where spiritual wisdom does indeed lie. In addition, each asana focuses the consciousness on one of the higher chakras. Meditation and righteous living can pull prana upward to these higher chakras.
One of the major obstacles in meditation is our expectation. We spend so much time focused on what could be or what seems to be holding us back that we stop meditating and are instead focusing on imagined problems rather than just sitting and meditating. This is raga/dvesha, asmita and avidya in action.
Please do not be in a hurry. There have been many people who have pushed themselves too far and too fast in meditation and accessed chakras, even talas, before they were ready to deal with the spiritual wisdom of the chakras or the demonic influences of the talas. Patience is a virtue - and a safeguard.
Your description of someone holding inside or blocking energy flow is an excellent one and attests to your good level of awareness. That "someone" is you. There are two solutions: relax deeply so that you are not blocking yourself and have a regular hatha yoga practice encourage prana flow and change in consciousness.
Sometimes people are reluctant to relax in meditation because they are not ready or think they are not ready to go where the meditation will lead them. So, relaxation is another way of saying that you should be open to whatever meditation brings (provided prana is flowing upward to the chakras above the Muladhara).
The second suggestion of hatha yoga is because the initial aims of hatha yoga are to bring flexibility to the joints and to make muscles more pliable. Both of these facilitate the upward flow of prana (and results in a significant change in consciousness so that you would not have to feel wary of going where your meditation leads you.
Om and Prem
Sankar
you know we have 2 kinds of pillows at Voga Vidya Bad Meinberg.
When i sit on a pillow just on the edge to make my spine straight up the pillow is moving back under me.
So i wrap the pillow into a blanket just one time like an U laying on the side and the pillow in it.
So the pillow i prevented to move and i can sit a long time like i want to sit.
Jaya mata Kali - Eduardo
My wife and myself faces following problems in sitting =
1) My wife can not sit in sukh aasan as she is not able to do cross legging.
2) when i sit in sukh aasan posture, i feel numbness in my feet/leg. I sretch my legs and get rid of this problem.
Dhanyawad,
OM
Ramesh
Fw_ [amrohappl] Are you aware of your own breath ___.eml
OM
I'm glad that stretching your legs gets rid of the problem temporarily, but mind cannot be calm enough to enter a state of meditation if body is moving - how to get rid of the problem so that you can sit and not be interrupted by pain.
OM
Sitting on a thick cushion doesn't actually help to correct a stiff upper back and rounded shoulders. I'm planning to include simple specific exercises that can help problems such as this. The book is not designed specifically for yogis, but for anyone that would like to start a medtation practice - including practitioners and newcomers to Vipasana, Zen and other meditation techniques, who aren't so interested in a having a regular asana practice, but want to focus on the meditation..
OM
I'm really looking for specific physical problems and what you have found to overcome them. "Keeping a straight back" can mean many things - is your problem in the lower back because of tight hip flexors? Or is in the upper back because you have spent too many hours hunched over your computer.
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