(Nimue)
The most common advice out there is that to meditate, you should sit in an upright position with your back straight, and avoid any positions where you might fall asleep.
First up, if you try to meditate and fall asleep then clearly what your body needed most was sleep – so that's fine. Sleep.
The question to ask is – why are you meditating? If it's all about discipline for you, and you want to be all firm and rigid about it, then by all means sit in a way that supports your intentions.
For a lot of us, meditation is about relaxation more than anything else. It's about easing the body and soothing the mind, and that has spiritual dimensions too. If this is you, then what you do with your body during meditation should involve the following considerations.
What makes you feel comfortable? What position is best for your body and allows you to relax most effectively? What's the best position for avoiding or minimising pain? What makes you feel safe and at ease? What makes you happiest? Whatever best answers those questions will give you your best meditation positions – and it could well be plural. You may find that sitting or lying in one position for any length of time doesn't work for you. Be led by what your body needs.
It's all too easy with spiritual practices to get caught up in other people's ideas of 'doing it right'. There's no one right way of doing any of this. What matters is figuring out what you need from meditation – or any other practice – and then working out what gives you that. People who suggest you have to do things a certain way often have very specific things they want to get out of a practice and that they think everyone else should want too. It's worth being alert to this, because your needs may well be different.
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