VIDEO: Sitting Meditation Practice
In her interview with PsychAlive Senior Editor Lisa Firestone, Dr. Donna Rockwell talks about the significance and effect of the posture assumed during sitting meditation practice.
The other thing that’s interesting in sitting practice is, you know, when we’re sitting on the cushion, we find that we’re either shlumping this way or this way and I know when I would sit and still do I always end up leaning forward because that’s how I relate to life. I’m pushing forward and we can learn so much about ourselves with our posture on the cushion when we’re doing formal practice or on the chair, wherever you happen to be sitting, because that’s how we are in life.
And what’s so interesting, I’ve found, working with people and myself is the more you sit and the more you assume a correct and upright posture and care about those things – the spine of the back – they say is like a stack of golden coins. And, you know, we sit and our head goes up to heaven and our feet are grounded on earth. The more we sit like that, the more we can actually naturally start emulating that in our life. So we are more upright in life. We’re standing with better posture and with better posture, we’re more present, we’re happier.
And if we’re shlumping, we’re going to shlump through life and there’s no remedy for that. But mindfulness and formal sitting practice does that to us, this new posture. And I found even with myself, I’ll sit more upright or I’ll, you know, it opens up our heart, it opens up our chest area and we’re not like this. And life can get like this. But so sitting practice trains us how to stay open to all that.
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