The Most Natural Way to Sit
Ajahn Pasanno
Even if you are doing mettā as a meditation, you still need to have an anchor. You still need to be grounded in something and have someplace to keep returning to, which is mindfulness of the body. Become very familiar with returning to the body.
There are many ways of using mindfulness of the body, but in terms of the formal practice of meditation, become familiar with mindfulness of breathing and bring attention to the breathing process.
Sit and pay attention to the breath coming into the body: the sensation of the breath as it touches the tip of the nose, as it passes through the nasal passages, the back of the throat, down into the chest, the abdomen rising. Pay attention to breathing out: the abdomen falling, the sensation in the body, the chest area, throat, tip of the nose, the breath going out. Tune in to that rhythm of the breath. Not forcing the breath, not trying to regulate the breath, just attend to the breath as you are experiencing it.
There is a tendency for us to try to regulate, oversee, or maintain the breath in some way, but that’s adding an extra layer of complication. Unless you’re dead, you are going to be breathing, so it happens anyway. Just tune in to the breath: allow the sense of relaxing into the breathing.
Also recognize that the breathing takes place within the whole sphere of the body. You are sitting here and breathing, but it isn’t as if there’s just a nose suspended in space somewhere: you have the rest of your body sitting here. How are you holding it? What does it feel like? Is it comfortable? Is it uncomfortable? Does it feel spacious? Does it feel contracted? What does the body feel like? Is there some tension in the face, in the shoulders? Is it relaxed? Can you soften that? What does it feel like in the abdomen? Relax the abdomen.
It’s quite interesting; the more comfortable we are with breathing, relaxing, and settling, our posture gets better over time. It feels natural and balanced. You don’t need to strain to hold the posture upright and make yourself sit up straight.
It’s obviously necessary, to some degree, to try to keep an upright posture, but if there is too much force or straining, it gets uncomfortable to sit straight. But as you keep relaxing, softening, and releasing tension, you find that the body naturally lines up quite nicely because that’s the most comfortable way to sit for three-quarters of an hour, an hour, or however long one sits in meditation.
That’s the most natural way for the body to sit.
This reflection by Luang Por Pasanno is from the book, Abundant, Exalted, Immeasurable, (pdf) pp. 18-19.
