Back Support - Meditation
Meditationtime Forum Post
Date: Posted 6 years before Feb 14, 2017
MiBeloved 6 years ago
Sitting up to meditate can be a chore and literally, it can be a pain. Many teachers advocate a straight spine and that is the ideal advice. However one should work with one’s back and negotiate its curvature.
According to ethnicity spines vary and no amount of yoga is going to permanently change that. Still one can come to an agreement with a faulty back by learning how and where to brace it during meditation.
In the two diagrams below I try to show a method for bracing the lower spine and the upper spine. Both areas need support usually. When the upper back is comfortably against a wall, the lower back is usually not touching the wall. That lower back is usually in need of support, since the chest cavity, the head, neck and so on, are bearing down on it.
Nature’s solution to this problem is to kink the back, to curve it so that the weight which bears down is transferred to the lower wall. To help nature in this effort one should use some type of wedge support which prevents the spine from curving backwards as shown in the diagram.
If one sits in lotus usually at least one knee will float off the ground. If this knee is not supported at the onset of meditation, it will cause the mind to be distracted. Thus I have shown also a soft knee support.
Bhagiratha 6 years ago
What about the middle portion of the back that is curved from your diagram, shouldn't that be straight also?
MiBeloved 6 years ago
If that is straight then something is wrong with your back. Nature never invented a straight back, the back is curved naturally. What you want to achieve is balance of the weight of the back, not straightness of it because the spine is not straight. To make it straight and to keep it in that form would require tremendous concentration which would circumvent the meditation as your mind would remain focused on keeping it in that position.
There should be a space between the central back and the wall if the back is in a balanced position. Look at the diagram below and see how the weight travels down the spine. What happens is that it flows through the neck and then it shifts forward and then to counterbalance itself and follow the skeletal frame of the body, it shifts back. When it makes that backward shift, it should be given some support as shown by the wedge shape.
To understand the forward shift study a pregnant woman. In her body with the weight of the fetus off-centered from the pelvic region, the spine pulls forward but the tail piece of it stays backward. A pregnant woman finds it necessary to pull her shoulders back to counter balance the growing fetus and pull it back over the pelvic region.
The place that is stressed in that case is the lower spine, as all the weight of the fetus has to be supported there.
In any case rid yourself of the idea of a perfectly straight spine and substitute that with a balanced spine with support where needed so that while you are meditating the mind does not have to constantly take into account any imbalance.
neil 6 years ago
I am often told by other yoga teachers that it is necessary to sit with the buttocks a little higher than the knees. I don't find this to help me very much. Also, what about lying down in supine position if one doesn't go to sleep?
MiBeloved 6 years ago
Lying down in a supine position is great.
The idea about the knees being lower than the buttocks would apply to persons whose body shape causes discomfort and mental distraction during meditation.
