There are many ways to meditate. If you have ever been in your garden or walking quietly in nature, that is a form of meditation. If you enjoy knitting or crocheting, that is a form of meditation. Quiet times are meditative. You may feel like you are in a trance and actually, you are. You don’t have to sit cross-legged on the floor without back support and be miserable to be able to meditate. Ever since I began the study of the therapeutic applications of yoga, I now understand that there are always alternative approaches in our lives. So if you prefer to sit in a chair, or if you have to lie in a bed due to illness or injury, then do so. I would like to note that it may be more challenging for those of you who find it necessary to lie down because the temptation to fall asleep is greater than if you are sitting. Do what you can and be comfortable. It is important that you try to align your head, neck, and spine if at all possible.
When I was a new graduate of yoga teacher training, I chose to continue my studies with therapeutic yoga. I assisted with a teacher who taught yoga to students with a wide variety of physical challenges. Most of them were confined to wheelchairs. You can imagine what it meant to these students to be able to get out of their wheelchairs for an hour and allow their fragile bodies to be moved into a series of gentle stretches on the floor. The lessons that I learned there were priceless and invaluable, and the students taught me as much as the teacher.
At the end of each yoga session with these students was a pose that is called savasana in yoga or corpse pose. This is the quiet time when most yoga students lie flat on their backs with eye covers/pillows to block the light and allow the mind to be still and quiet. However, with the students from this therapeutic class, we had to improvise so that they could derive the benefits of this most important yoga pose. Even though their bodies were in sometimes odd positions (a few of them had severe scoliosis or had to have their legs elevated, or their torsos elevated, while one student did all of her poses from the support of a bean bag chair and some other props) do you think that they got anything less from this meditative time of their class? No! They extracted every bit as much as much as you or I would and I will even go out on a limb to say that they received much more than we would. So just be aware that you don’t have to sit in a position that your body would not be comfortable in.
For the purpose of this web/blog site I will be covering a few of the main introductory forms of meditation. You may wish to experiment with all of them and find the one that feels the most comfortable to you. Once you find the one that resonates with you, stick with it. Develop your practice with this one. You will soon be on your way to reaping the many physical, emotional, mental and spiritual benefits of this ancient and profound practice. Enjoy the journey!
