We’ve all seen idealized images of meditation. Perhaps it’s a young woman on a deserted beach, hands in a meditation-friendly mudra, enjoying a sunset. Or maybe it’s an image like the one at the top of this post—a person with serene countenance, fingering mala beads in deep contemplation. It’s true that meditation can be peaceful. But sometimes, it’s marked by cascading thoughts and memories, raw emotions and/or physical discomfort. It’s important to remember that in mindfulness practice, the latter experience doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong. Those thoughts, memories, emotions and discomforts are simply what is present. They are, in a very real sense, what there is to be mindful of. But when these experiences become overwhelming, mindfulness has a solution: a breath awareness practice designed to calm the body and mind.

When I teach mindfulness courses, many new meditators doubt their ability to practice. They’ll say, “Every time I sit down to meditate, my mind goes crazy. My thinking amps up more than ever.” To that, I tell them that they’re not thinking more when they meditate; they’re instead observing for the first time what’s been happening in their minds all along. I explain that mindfulness is not about stopping your thoughts. It’s about dealing with your thoughts in a skillful way.

We can be mindful of the process of thinking, instead of getting caught up in the content of our stories, memories, worries and dramas. Mindfulness of thinking is actually one of the four foundations of mindfulness. But sometimes, we need to slow the process down so that we can be with the thinking process with more equanimity. That’s where the breath awareness practice I’m about to describe can be invaluable.

Breath Awareness to the Rescue

On an 18-day retreat at Spirit Rock Meditation Center a few years ago, this breath awareness technique helped me navigate what I can only describe as a “massive memory dump.” Starting in the wee hours of the morning one night, memories began flowing, completely uncontrolled, at a pace I didn’t think possible. Life events I hadn’t thought of in decades were flashing through my consciousness nonstop, and at warp speed. None of it was traumatic, but it became exhausting after a while.

After several hours of experiencing this memory dump, I remembered a breath awareness practice that I thought might be able to slow things down a bit. It’s a very simple practice that I’d heard on an instruction CD by author/Insight Meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein. After just a few minutes of practice, the whole rapid-fire movie slowed down, and I felt a deep sense of calm.

How to Practice Calming Breath Awareness

1. Gather your props: a Meditation Cushion and Zabuton. If you don’t have a Zabuton, you can place your Meditation Cushion on top of a couple folded Yoga Blankets for extra padding under your knees or ankles.
2. Relax into your sitting position and tune into your breathing. Notice where you feel your breath most clearly—nostrils, chest or abdomen—and let your attention rest there. Feel the process of breathing, noting each inhalation and exhalation.
3. Now, as you inhale, make a gentle suggestion to calm the body and calm the mind. Do the same on your next exhalation. When I practice this, I simply say to myself “calm” each time I inhale and “calm” each time I exhale.
4. Feel your body/mind receiving this suggestion with each inhalation and exhalation.
5. Practice this as long as you like. You can practice for a few rounds at the beginning of your meditation, or you can practice it for the entire duration.

This breath awareness practice may seem too simple to be effective, but I’ve found it to be an essential tool in my meditation toolbox. You can practice it any time—when you’re feeling impatient while sitting at a stoplight, when you’re in the midst of a challenging situation, when you’re feeling stress or anxiety, when you’re lying awake at night, and of course, when your mind is wandering during meditation. You can practice it at the beginning or end of your yoga practice. It’s an especially nice way to begin your Savasana (Final Relaxation).

A while back, I wrote a post on mindfulness of the body, centering the practice on breath awareness. In the Theravada tradition, breath awareness is the starting point, the foundation of beginning to stabilize the mind. Breath awareness gives us a continuous process on which to rest the mind. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the mind won’t wander off into its own worries, memories and reveries even as we intend to stabilize our minds on the breathing process. But it’s in the process of continually recognizing that the mind has wandered off, and redirecting it back to the breath, that we begin to cultivate a new habit of mind. In today’s post, I’d like to invite you to play with expanding awareness into the rest of the body, utilizing a body scan.

How Does a Body Scan Work?

Body scans are foundational in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Goenka-style Vipassana meditation. Moving awareness systematically through the body is integral to Yoga Nidra practice. I’m sure there are other methodologies that use a form of body scanning as a way to stabilize awareness as well. Practicing a body scan can help us connect with the body internally, and as a whole.

In body scan practice, we systematically move awareness through the body. This can include intentionally relaxing areas as we acknowledge them. It could also be simply visiting these areas without a particular agenda.

In some forms of the practice, we start with the feet and move up the body. In others, we start with the head and work our way down to the feet. It’s simply a matter of preference. In the practice I’ll introduce below, I start with the head. That’s because, at least for me, visiting the anatomy of the head seems to have a softening effect on everything below.

Breath Awareness vs. Open Awareness

Since breath awareness is usually where mindfulness practice begins, we may tend to think that it’s an “elementary” practice, and that open awareness of the body as a whole is more “advanced.” Joseph Goldstein addressed this at an Insight Meditation retreat I attended a few years ago. When asked which form of body mindfulness practice was preferable—breath awareness or open awareness—he paused for a moment, and then said “whatever works.”

Which practice you choose on a given day depends on the state of your body/mind. If your mind seems scattered and unfocused—aka “monkey mind”—breath awareness can help you stabilize it. If you’re practicing breath awareness and find that your body and mind are feeling tense and stuck, you might want to invite the rest of your body into awareness. The practice that’s best for you on a given day will be the one that allows you to be most mindful.

There’s More than One Way to Practice a Body Scan

Before I suggest the practice below, I want to reiterate that this is not the only way to practice a body scan. This is simply what I’ve used that has seemed to work with my mindfulness students. The practice below attempts to tune us into some of our internal anatomy, as well as general categories such as arms, legs, torso, etc.

You might want to record a voice memo on your phone so that you don’t have to look at the text. Or, if you’re like me, and hearing your own recorded voice is distracting, you can have a friend record the body scan instead.

Head-to-Toe Body Scan

You can practice this body scan sitting on a Meditation Cushion, lying down or in Tadasana (Mountain Pose). If you’re feeling tired, sitting or standing may help you stay more alert. If you’re feeling tense or stressed, lying down might work best.

Here’s how to practice. Remember that you can intentionally relax these areas, or simply be aware of the sensations you’re feeling as you touch into them:

• Be aware of your facial muscles and scalp.
• Your skull
• Your brain inside the skull
• Eyes
• Cheeks
• Inner ears
• Outer ears
• Jaw
• Upper palate
• Upper row of teeth
• Inner cheeks
• Lower row of teeth
• Throat
• Tops of the shoulders
• Upper arms
• Forearms
• Hands
• Fingers
• Ribcage
• Muscles between and around the ribs
• Contents of the ribcage: heart and lungs
• The diaphragm: Feel the diaphragmatic movement as the muscle flattens downward on the inhalation, making room for the lungs to expand, and pressing on the abdominal organs, causing the abdomen to expand. Then as you exhale, feel the diaphragm doming upward to help push air out of your lungs, allowing the abdominal organs to settle back into place. (You can practice this awareness for several breaths if you like.)
• Abdominal muscles
• Low back
• Pelvis
• Abdominal organs
• Perineum
• Thighs
• Knees
• Feet
• Toes

Feel free to reverse the process and make your way back up, from the feet to the head, or proceed to the next instruction.

Open Awareness of the Body

Once you’ve finished your body scan, you can settle back and invite the entire body into awareness. Here, you can simply feel all the sensations arising—sensations of contact, temperature, tension, hardness, softness, pulsing, vibration—whatever is arising. If a particular sensation becomes predominant, you can rest your attention there, feeling its process. Does it intensify and then wane? Does it come and go? If nothing in particular feels predominant, rest your awareness in the whole body, feeling the breath arising within this larger frame.

As Joseph said, there’s no hierarchy between breath awareness and open awareness. Use your own meditation practice as a guide to which practice works better for you at a given moment.

The Buddha said: “There is one thing that, when cultivated and regularly practiced, leads to deep spiritual intention, to peace, to mindfulness, and clear comprehension to vision and knowledge, to a happy life here and now, and to the culmination of wisdom. And what is that one thing? Mindfulness centered on the body.”

Most spiritual systems consider concerns of the body to be subservient to those of the mind and heart. But in the practice of mindfulness, awareness of the body is the most crucial foundation. If you want to be truly present, mindfulness of the body is essential. The body is always in the present. It can’t be otherwise. When we are awake in our bodies, we are truly in the here and now.

In the Satipatthana Sutta, the sutta on the practice of mindfulness, there are considered to be four foundations of mindfulness. I introduced these in a previous post. I consider mindfulness of the body to be the “foundation of the foundations.” This is because everything we experience in this life is experienced as sensation in the body. At any given moment, there are six things we can be aware of: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling or touching, and thinking. All these are experienced as sensations in our bodies.

Breath Awareness: Anchoring Mindfulness of the Body

How do we practice mindfulness of the body? The foundational practice of mindfulness of the body is breath awareness. Humans breathe an average of 23,000 times a day. Our bodies do this all on their own, without our guidance or awareness. However, we can use our breathing as an anchor for our awareness.

Often, when we sit down to practice mindfulness, it can be tempting to resolve to be mindful for the entire period of practice—10, 20, 30 minutes or more. When our minds inevitably slip off into thinking, often within seconds of sitting down to practice, we can feel like giving up. Instead of committing to something that’s likely unattainable, I suggest practicing this simple, and powerful, technique:

At the beginning of each inhalation and exhalation, commit to being aware of just this inhalation, and just this exhalation. That’s it. You simply recommit to being aware of each part of the breath as it arises.

I feel fortunate to have learned this instruction early on in my practice, more than 30 years ago. I still use it, pretty much every day.

How to Practice Mindfulness of the Body and Breath

1. Sit comfortably on a meditation cushion or chair.
2. Close your eyes, or leave them slightly open and look at the ground a foot or two in front of you.
3. Tune into your breathing, feeling it in your body.
4. As you become aware of your breathing, note if there’s an area in the breathing passage where the breath feels most clear for you. This could be your nostrils, chest or abdomen. Settle your awareness there and simply feel the sensations of breathing in that area.
5. Commit to staying aware of just this inhalation, and then just this exhalation.
6. When your mind wanders off, which it most likely will, when you notice it, simply redirect your awareness back to your breath. You may need to do this many, many times in your practice. Each time you notice your mind has become lost, and you bring yourself back to the breath, you are slowly but surely developing a habit of being present. So don’t despair if you find your mind wandering off many times during a practice. In many ways, the practice is about noticing that your mind has become distracted, and continually corralling it back to your breath.

Refining Breath Awareness

There are several other traditional techniques that can help you refine your awareness of the breath. You can add these to your breath awareness as a way of framing your practice:

• Notice whether your inhalations and exhalations are relatively short or relatively long.
• Be aware of the beginning, middle and end of each inhalation and exhalation.
• As you inhale and exhale, make the suggestion to calm the body and calm the mind. For example you can note: inhaling-calm, exhaling-calm.

Mindfulness of the Body: A Big Subject

When I began writing this post, I intended to include all the different ways of practicing mindfulness of the body. But when I got into the weeds of it, I realized that it’s too big a subject for a single post. In future posts, we’ll explore other ways of practicing mindfulness of the body. For now, let the simple breath be your mindfulness anchor.

This post explains one of the 4 Foundations of Mindfulness. Normally, I might have chosen to write this after the first foundation (mindfulness of the body). But mindfulness of change has been at the forefront of my mind recently, so I’m offering this now, while it’s most alive for me.

Labor Day marked the first dusting of snow in the Wasatch Mountains here in Utah. I’ve lived in Salt Lake City since the early ’80s. I don’t remember a time when the mountains saw snow anywhere near this early. Just a week before, I was hiking in these same mountains enjoying the profusion of wildflowers. In a few weeks, the aspens will begin to turn golden. Transition is not only a part of life; it is the nature of life itself. Practicing mindfulness of change can help us learn how to navigate this truth.

Many years ago, a longtime student asked Suzuki Roshi (author of the seminal book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind) to sum up Zen practice in a single sentence. His answer was, “Everything changes.” But change does not happen simply in the transitions from season to season.

We can easily see the truth of change if we reflect on our lives. I recently saw the Barbie film. It was a fun romp to watch, but it also reminded me of how important my Barbies (and my trolls) were in my early life. Where are they now? I barely batted an eye when my mother told me she’d given them away. In college, an active social life (read: partying) was super important to me. Sometimes I wonder who that person was who inhabited this body during that time. It’s not that I regret those years; it’s just that it’s so far from where my priorities lie these days.

Mindfulness of Change at the Micro Level

We can all reflect on the many phases in our lives to help us understand the truth of change at a macro level. But practicing mindfulness of change can give us an intimate view of the process of change that is happening literally all the time. When we look closely, we can see that everything is changing constantly. There is not a single moment that passes that is the same as the previous one, or the next one.

Tuning into the flow of change can help us understand one of the late Vietnamese Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh’s, most profound teachings: “Birth and death are only notions. They are not real. The Buddha taught that there is no birth; there is no death; there is no coming; there is no going; there is no same; there is no different; there is no permanent self; there is no annihilation. We only think there is.”

I won’t pretend to be able to explain this teaching. It’s something I’ve been trying to understand for many years—the continuity of life within the flow of change. But understanding this concept, I believe, is key to living our lives with equanimity amidst the inevitable changes we will go through in our lives. Practicing mindfulness of change can help us navigate transitions—pleasant and unpleasant—we all experience.

How to Practice

1. Sit in a comfortable position. You can sit on a Meditation Cushion, or if sitting on the floor is not comfortable, feel free to sit in a chair.
2. Settle back in your body. Close your eyes gently and allow them to relax back into their sockets.
3. Now open your sense of hearing. Be aware of the sounds arising in your environment, and perhaps, within your body. Relax back and allow sound to come to you. There’s no need to reach out for it; it’s coming to you anyway. Be aware of how the sounds arise, change and pass away. Continue this practice for a few minutes.
4. Now become aware of bodily sensations—sensations of contact with what you’re sitting on, sensations of temperature, sensations of pulsing or vibration, sensations of breathing. Feel your body as a whole, tuning into the flow of sensations—seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. When thoughts arise, are there physical sensations that accompany them?
5. Become aware of how these sensations are changing moment to moment. So rather than simply labeling the sensations you’re feeling, relax into the flow of change from one moment to the next.
6. Thoughts will come. That’s okay. When you notice that you’re lost in a thought, redirect your awareness back to the flow of sensation. What do you feel when you let go of the thought?

Let Go of the Past, the Future and the Present

Several years ago while I was on retreat, author/mindfulness teacher Joseph Goldstein offered a practice I found to be a profound doorway to the awareness of mindfulness of change. In mindfulness practice, we’re often reminded that there really is only this moment. Past is past; future has not yet happened. Neither exist in reality. Past and future exist only as thoughts in this moment.

So we’re invited to let go of the past and the future. But Joseph took it a bit further and suggested that we explore letting go of the present as well. So while you’re practicing meditation, set an intention to let go of each moment as it arises.

Feel free to leave a comment. I’d love to hear about your experience.

My introduction to Tingsha Bells was on the first five-day silent mindfulness retreat I attended in 1988. The bells announced the entire schedule of the day—wakeup time, each sitting and each walking meditation, yoga practice, meals and bedtime. When we heard the clear, dulcet tones of the bells, we knew it was time to move on to the next thing.

Also known as Tibetan chimes, Tibetan cymbals, or Kartals, Tingsha Bells are small, cymbal-shaped bells connected by a leather cord. Like cymbals, they sound when they strike each other. But unlike cymbals, they sound when the rims, rather than the flat surfaces, make contact. Tingsha Bells are also much thicker than percussion cymbals, giving the rims a rich sonority. The sound is a clear, high-pitched, long-ringing tone.

How to Use Tingsha Bells

Tingsha Bells originally come from Tibet. Often paired with variously pitched singing bowls, the bells are traditionally used in Buddhist meditation rituals. These days, yoga and meditation practitioners use them in a variety of ways. Following are some ways you can use these bells to enhance your yoga practice and teaching

Using Bells in Yoga and Meditation

• Beginnings and endings in yoga classes: Some yoga teachers like to begin and end their classes with the sound of bells. It’s a lovely way to settle students onto their mats, and to set an intention to turn awareness inward. The bells can gently bring people out of Savasana (Relaxation Pose) as well.
• Home practice: You need not be in a class setting to use Tingsha Bells to bookend your practice. Use them to mark the beginning and end of your own home yoga and meditation practice.
• Sound healing: Sound is vibration. You’ve probably experienced, more than once, how a thumping bass line in music can vibrate in areas of the body other than your ears. The ability of sound to vibrate within the body is one of the reason most of us love listening to music. In the yoga system, different pitches are said to resonate with each of our chakras (energy centers). Because of their higher pitch, Tingsha Bells tend to vibrate the upper chakras. Yogic sound healing rituals combine Tingsha Bells with singing bowls of various pitches to “tune” the chakras.
• Outdoor yoga and meditation: In the summer, I teach an outdoor mindfulness class at the local arboretum. In the class, we practice sitting and walking meditation. People often spread out during the walking period because there are so many beautiful places to practice. I use Tingsha Bells to notify people that walking meditation is over and it’s time to come back to our meeting place. Their high pitch cuts through other sounds and makes it easy to gather everyone together.

A wise yoga teacher once told me: “The earth is the guru of the body. The sky is the guru of the mind.” I remember this quote often when I’m hiking in the mountains where I live. Our environment is rich with learning opportunities. Outdoor meditation can tune us into our surroundings and reawaken gratitude.

Outdoor meditation gives us a direct experience of the guru nature of earth and sky. The earth is unpredictable, and rich with sensory experiences. But like the sky, awareness can take it all in without losing its clarity and vastness.

We usually think of meditation as synonymous with sitting. But especially when we practice outdoors, we can enjoy the alternative meditation postures. These include walking, standing and lying down.

How to Practice Outdoor Meditation

Outdoor meditation is similar to outdoor yoga practice in one essential way. When we meditate outdoors, it’s important to open our senses to what’s around us. Similar to the practice of “forest bathing,” outdoor meditation invites us to drink in all that’s coming in through our senses—and it’s a lot when you’re outside. Here are some ways to explore outdoor meditation:

Sitting:  Find a piece of level ground. Using a meditation cushion can help you maintain a sustainable posture. The Sukasana Cushion is a lightweight, compact option for practicing outdoors. Zafuko cushions are also ideal for outdoor practice.

1. Begin by settling into your seat. You can keep your eyes open or closed. Feel the contact points in your body.
2. Open your sense of hearing, allowing sounds to come and go as they naturally do. Take care not to reach out for the sound. Simply allow it to come to you.
3. Notice if there are sensations of the sun or a breeze on your skin. Let the breezes come and go as well.
4. Notice any smells or tastes that arise as well.
5. Imagine all these sensations coming and going like clouds in the sky, in the vast space of awareness.

Alternative Poses for Meditating Outdoors

Walking: Walking meditation allows us to pay attention to the dynamics of movement and balance. When we practice walking meditation, it’s important to keep the eyes open. It’s easy to lose balance with the eyes closed, not to mention that it’s easy to trip over or run into an unexpected obstacle on our path. In walking meditation, we slow down our movements so that we can tune into the more subtle aspects of walking. Here’s a post that explains walking meditation in detail. Practice steps 2 through 5 above while you walk.

Standing: I truly love standing meditation for its grounding qualities. Sometimes walking meditation can seem overly stimulating. And some of us get drowsy in sitting meditation. Standing meditation strikes the perfect balance. It allows us to stop and listen with openness and receptivity. The energy it takes to maintain a standing posture can help clear the fog of drowsiness. Practice in Tadasana (Mountain Pose), and use steps 2 through 5 above to guide your awareness.

Lying Down: As with outdoor yoga practice, meditating in a lying-down position takes a bit of setup. But what’s lovely about lying down on the ground is that it allows you to tune into the energy of the earth beneath you. If you’re on grass, feel free to lie down directly on the ground. If you’re not worried about dirt, you can lie down directly onto the forest floor or a sandy beach. But feel free to place a Yoga Mat underneath you. Then allow yourself to sink into the earth. Imagine being completely supported by the earth as you then open your senses to all the other wonders around you.

A number of years ago, I was listening to “The Diane Rehm Show” on NPR while driving to work. Diane’s guest was a woman who had recently published a book on happiness. When Diane asked about simple everyday ways for listeners to be happy, the author’s first response was, “Stay off social media.” It’s true that social media can be a tremendous waste of time. Political discussions on social media can be frustrating and pointless. But these were not the reasons for the author’s recommendation. Instead, she claimed that seeing our friends enjoying exotic vacations; celebrating friendships, kids and grandkids; and listing accomplishments can make us feel bad. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I’ll admit that her assessment disturbed me. After decades of practicing mudita, my understanding of happiness was 180 degrees from the author’s.

Mudita is the third of the four brahma viharas (divine abodes). The brahma viharas are qualities of the heart that bring happiness to ourselves and others. We can practice these qualities so that over time, they become a part of who we are. They become our “abodes,” the places where we come from in our relationships with ourselves and with others. The other three brahma viharas are metta (kindness), karuna (compassion) and upekha (equanimity).

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali mention the brahma viharas in sutra 1.33. Here’s Alistair Shearer’s translation of the sutra. “The mind becomes clear and serene when the qualities of the heart are cultivated: friendliness towards the joyful, compassion towards their suffering, happiness towards the pure, and impartiality towards the impure.”

What Is Mudita?

Mudita is empathetic joy, or happiness, in response to the success and happiness of others. Not surprisingly, there is no word for this concept in our language. In hyper-competitive Western culture, the concept of being happy for someone else’s success is quite foreign. Feeling mudita goes against the grain of our concept of success and happiness.

It’s as if we think there’s a little cache of happiness available, and when someone else partakes of it, there’s less for us. But that’s not how it works. In decades of mudita practice, I’ve realized that the more happiness I feel for another person’s success, the happier I am. In contrast to the dank, claustrophobic feeling that envy engenders, empathetic joy feels bright and boundless.

The Buddha called mudita a “rare and beautiful state.” It is a boundless state that responds to others’ successes not with withdrawal or envy, but with active delight. Cultivating the quality of mudita helps uproot the unhappy states of envy, judgment and comparison.

Why is Empathetic Joy So Hard?

The Buddha also claimed that mudita is the hardest to develop of all the brahma viharas. Hindrances to empathetic joy are many and powerful—comparing, judgment, envy and avarice. These qualities spring from a lack of understanding of our interdependence with the world around us. The truth is, the joy we cultivate contributes to the well of joy available to all of us.

Mudita can be especially challenging to feel for people who have harmed us or others we love. It can also be challenging to offer to those who have made life choices different from our own. For example, can you be happy for a person who chooses to live lavishly when you’ve chosen to live simply—or vice versa? Cultivating mudita for others with whom we have difficulty can help uproot resentment, and can lead us to deeper happiness.

Practicing Mudita

There are several ways to practice mudita. The first, and simplest, is to reflect on your own blessings. We’ve all been recipients of countless acts of generosity and kindness in our lives. We all have dear friends and family members—human and otherwise. We can feel grateful for simple pleasures in our lives. Taking time to reflect on the blessings we enjoy can help to lessen feelings of envy or comparing.

You can also do a formal mudita practice. In this post, I’ll offer simple instructions. But if you want to explore mudita and the other brahma viharas further, check out Sharon Salzberg’s classic book, Lovingkindess: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness.

A Simple Practice

1. Find a comfortable seat. Feel free to use a meditation cushion, or sit in a comfortable chair.
2. Let your awareness rest in the area around your heart. You can place your right palm over your heart if you like.
3. Invite into your heart space a friend or family member whose life seems relatively happy. This can be a person who enjoys a generally easeful life. Or you can invite someone who has recently enjoyed a moment of success or happiness.
4. Reflect on what you appreciate about this person. This might be a particular beautiful quality, or perhaps an act of generosity or kindness for which you feel grateful.
5. Now pick a phrase or two among these choices to send from your heart to theirs. Or feel free to make up your own phrases. Here are a few examples:
   1. May your good fortune continue. May it continue to grow.
   2. I’m happy that you’re happy.
   3. May your happiness and success continue.
   4. May your happiness grow.
6. As you repeat a phrase or phrases, picture the person and imagine them being happy. Note any feelings that arise.
7. Continue for 5 minutes or longer.

Happiness is Available

Practicing the brahma viharas is a wonderful way to cultivate happiness. You can do a specific practice dedicated to mudita, or you can weave it into your regular meditation practice. Thich Nhat Hanh said, “Happiness is available. Please help yourself to it.” We will all live through happy times and difficult times, but we can cultivate the ability to live with a higher baseline of ease. Practicing mudita is a wonderful way to grow our happiness.

People sometimes chuckle when I tell them that sitting on a meditation cushion is physically rigorous. But it’s true. When you sit still and tune into your body for any length of time, you’re likely to become uncomfortable. And sitting for long periods in the same position will at some point start to make you antsy.

Even in my hour-long meditation class, people sometimes experience physical difficulties. That’s when I work with them to find the best sitting position. How comfortable you are when you’re practicing sitting meditation is largely determined by what you choose to sit on. Each person’s body is different, so I also help them find the right support for their individual body..

It’s All About Your Skeleton

Comfortable sitting depends on your spine’s ability to maintain its natural curves (see illustration). The human spine holds itself up naturally when its curves are in integrity. The position of your sacrum determines your spinal curves. The optimum position for the sacrum is an approximately 30-degree forward tilt. When the sacrum is in that position, the rest of the curves more easily fall into place.

In sitting meditation, because of the shape and structure of our hip joints, or because of inflexibility, the sacrum often ends up in a vertical position, instead of the 30-degree forward tilt. In some cases, the sacrum can even tilt backward instead of forward. When this happens, our lumbar curve has to straighten or even flex forward, causing us to have to use a whole lot of core strength to sit upright. When we spend a lot of energy just to sit upright, we get tired pretty quickly.

How You Sit Matters

While Sukhasana (Easy Cross-Legged Pose) is the traditional sitting position, not everyone can sit this way. Some people’s hip joints easily rotate externally, while others’ more easily rotate internally. If your knees are lower than your hip bones when you sit cross-legged on a meditation cushion, that means your hip joints rotate externally with ease. When your knees are lower than the hip bones, your sacrum will tilt forward, keeping your spinal curves intact. If your hip joints internally rotate more easily, your knees will rise to the level of the hip bones or higher. When your knees are higher than your hip bones, your sacrum will naturally tilt backward, making sitting for long periods uncomfortable.

We need to sit high enough on a meditation cushion or bench so that our sacrum, and therefore our pelvis, can tilt forward so that the spinal curves can fall into place. That is why meditation cushions are designed to give us extra height. Here are some tips on how to choose the best support for your body and your practice:

Zafu and Zen Meditation Cushions

Zafus are the traditional, round meditation cushion. At about five inches high, Zafus will be more than sufficient for comfortable sitting for most people.

Our Zen Cushions are similar in height to our Zafus, but rectangular and wider in shape. Whether you choose the Zafu or Zen is a matter of personal preference. Sitting on the wide side of the Zen Pillow will support the tops of your thighs more than the Zafu will. Some people prefer more thigh support, while others prefer that their upper thighs extend off the edge of their cushion. All in all, the support is very similar between the two of them.

If you’re thinking of trying a Zafu or Zen Cushion for cross-legged sitting, first try sitting on a 5-inch-high stack of firm blankets with your ankles on the floor in front of your blanket stack. Check where your knees land, and if you find that your knees are at hip bone level or higher, Sukhasana might not be your best meditation position.

The good news is that the Zafu and Zen are adaptable. If cross-legged sitting doesn’t work for you, you can turn your Zafu or Zen Cushion on its side. Place it between your thighs and sit on it with your knees bent, shins on the floor on either side of the cushion.

V-Shaped Meditation Cushion

Our V-Shaped Cushion is similar in height and purpose to the Zafu. But here’s what makes me love the V-Shaped Cushion: Because my hip joints externally rotate easily, my legs need more support than traditional cushions can give. The V-Shaped Cushion slants downward so that it supports your entire leg and encourages your pelvis to tilt forward—provided your hips externally rotate as described above.

As with the Zafus, you can check whether a V-Shaped Meditation Cushion is appropriate for you by sitting on a 5-inch stack of firm blankets and observing whether your legs are higher or lower than your pelvis. If your legs can’t rest on the “legs” of the cushion because they are high in the air, the V-Shaped Cushion won’t be comfortable. If you can use a Zafu in a cross-legged position, you will probably also find the V-Shaped Cushion to be comfortable.

All of Hugger Mugger’s meditation cushions are filled with organic buckwheat hulls. The zippered covers allow you to add or subtract filling as you like. Here’s an overview of all the choices.

Zabuton

A Zabuton is like a mini-futon. It’s a wide, rectangular, cotton-filled cushion with a removable cotton cover.

Placing a Zabuton under your meditation cushion or bench increases your comfort. Ankle bones, feet or knees pressing against a hard floor may feel okay at first. But over time, even 20 to 30 minutes, it’s likely to get pretty uncomfortable.

A Zabuton is a worthwhile investment if you’re going to commit to a meditation practice.

Sukasana Meditation Cushion

Hugger Mugger’s Sukasana Cushion is a much smaller, portable meditation cushion. While it doesn’t give as much hip support as our other meditation cushions, this small cushion is great for traveling or for taking with you to a yoga studio.

Comfort is Key

Whether you decide to use a Zafu, Zen Cushion, or V-Shaped Cushion is a matter of personal preference. Remember that whatever you choose should allow you to sit comfortably with all your spinal curves intact.

Check out our Meditation Cushion Guide for more info.

If you want to read in more detail about how to sit comfortably, or how to structure a yoga practice to support your sitting, pick up my book Yoga for Meditators. In it I devote several chapters to choosing the right sitting support and finding the optimum sitting position.

Zafuko® Cushions: A Lightweight Alternative

In the last few years, we added another alternative to our meditation cushion collection. Our Zafuko® Cushions are extremely light weight, a great alternative to the heavier meditation cushions and benches we offer. Here’s an article that explains all the options.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the benefits of setting up a home retreat. In this post, I’d like to explore ways you can create your own retreat at home. There’s no single “correct” way to set up a home retreat. What’s most important is to figure out what benefits you hope to gain from your retreat. Then you can create a format that fits your needs.

Inquire Within: What to Consider in Creating a Home Retreat

One of the keys to creating a relaxing home retreat is to plan ahead. Here are some questions to ask yourself that can help you identify how to put it together:

• How long would you like to retreat? If you’ve never done it before, you might want to start with a half day or full day.
• Would you like your retreat to be centered around yoga or meditation or both? Yoga practice can be a wonderful companion in a meditation retreat. It helps unwind the tension we often experience when we’re spending more time than usual in sitting meditation. If you’re going to include yoga practice, you’ll want to consider how to schedule meals so that you’re not practicing yoga within two hours after eating a full meal.
• Do you want to include recorded guided meditations or dharma talks? If so, you’ll want to choose these beforehand and cue them up so that you don’t have to fuss with setting them up during your retreat.
• In a full-day home retreat, you’ll probably want to include at least one meal during your retreat and another after you’re finished.
• What do you need to set up your space? Get out your yoga and meditation props so that they’re easily accessible.
• Do you want to practice on your own or invite a friend? If you invite a friend, meet beforehand to decide on the schedule, how you’re going to handle meals and recorded instructions or talks. Divvy up the retreat responsibilities so that you are both contributing.

How to Honor Your Intentions and Create a Home Retreat

• Once you’ve decided on the length of your retreat, you can work out a schedule. Decide when you’d like your retreat to start and end. Then decide how long you’d like each practice to last. For example, if you’re doing both sitting and walking meditation, decide if you’d like those periods to last, say, 20, 30 or 45 minutes each, or a combination of times. Then decide how long you’d like to practice yoga—60 minutes, 90 minutes, etc. In a day-long retreat, you can schedule an active morning yoga practice and Restorative afternoon practice, for example. Then set up your meditation periods, break periods, etc. Write out your schedule ahead of time, so that you don’t have to think about it once you begin your home retreat.

• Schedule a break or two, depending on the length of your retreat. We all need time to tend to daily responsibilities such as caring for our animal companions, washing dishes, etc. You may want to allot a longer-than-usual amount of time for meals or snacks, so that you can practice mindful eating. A home retreat gives you the opportunity to tend to your daily tasks with mindful care.

• If you’re including a meal in a full-day retreat, make it ahead of time, so that you can simply heat it up when you’re ready to eat. A pot of soup or stew is ideal in cooler weather. In the summertime, you can assemble a salad. Then give your attention to the process of eating. Mindful eating can be immensely pleasurable.
• If you’d like to include a dharma talk or meditation instructions, decide where you’d like to plug these into your schedule. You may already have a favorite source for instructions or dharma talks. My favorite is dharmaseed.org. The free Insight Timer app also has lots of guided meditations and shorter talks.

Unplug Your Devices

It seems odd to say this after I just suggested a few online sources for instructions and talks. But it’s really important to give your devices a rest during your home retreat, unless you’re connecting to talks or instructions. Our devices, useful as they are, can be a major distraction.

On our recent home retreat, my spouse and I agreed not to play our daily New York Times Spelling Bee. We knew it would be too easy to spend entire meditation sessions trying to come up with words.

On multi-day retreats, we agreed that we could look at email every few days in order to clear out spam. We both set up vacation messages so that we wouldn’t have to answer emails until after our retreat.

Full-Day Home Retreat: A Sample Schedule

Here’s one way you might structure a full-day retreat:

1. 7:00 am: Wake up, enjoy tea or coffee
2. 7:45 am: Sitting meditation
3. 8:15 am: Walking meditation
4. 8:45 am: Yoga practice
5. 10:00 am: Breakfast (make it simple!)
6. 10:30 am: Rest and/or mindful daily tasks
7. 11:30 am: Sitting meditation with optional instructions
8. 12:00 noon: Walking meditation
9. 12:30 pm: Sitting meditation
10. 1:00 pm: Walking meditation with optional mindful snack
11. 1:30 pm: Restorative Yoga
12. 3:15 pm: Sitting meditation with optional dharma talk (Feel free to sit with your back supported when you listen to a talk.)
13. 4:15 pm: Retreat ends or further sitting

This is just a sample, to give you an idea as to how you might set up your own home retreat. You can tweak it in any way that suits your needs. You may want to start and/or end earlier or later. Or you might want to increase your yoga practice time and decrease your meditation time, or vice versa. Remember, this is your retreat.
If you find your home retreat to be valuable, you may want to do it once a month, once a quarter or once a year. You can always tweak your schedule before each retreat to suit your needs. But once you’ve decided on a schedule, it’s helpful to stick with it.

Prepare to Turn Inward

Preparation is key. The more detailed and thoughtful your preparations, the easier it will be to let go of logistics. This will free your mind to turn inward. You’re committing a day to invest in your wellbeing. You can make the most of it by doing all your planning beforehand.

Once you start, relax into it. One of the most profound benefits of practice is the development of equanimity. Equanimity is a state of resilience and ease no matter what is happening. At times, your home retreat may feel like a slog. At other times, it may feel relaxed and easeful. Let go of expectations. There’s no “right” or “wrong” way to retreat at home. Remember, home retreat is a time to restore your energies. Relax into the process.

Going away on retreat gives you time to separate from your daily cares. But you can retreat at home and make your daily life a meditation. When you retreat at home, you become responsible for the things that others take care of on residential retreats—meals, laundry, etc.

To celebrate the turning of the new year, my spouse and I decided to buck tradition. Instead of partying until midnight and beyond, we fashioned a five-day meditation retreat for ourselves. From December 28th to January 2nd, we practiced mindfulness from morning 6:00 am to 9:30 pm each day. The decision to retreat at home was a perfect way to begin the new year.

To be honest, it’s not as if my spouse and I have made a habit of heavy reveling on New Year’s Eve. We have, over the years, attended gatherings and managed to stay up until midnight many times. But those parties have been very tame. Also, this is not the first time I’ve spent New Year’s Eve in retreat. Way back in the 1980s, I sat several 10-day silent retreats spanning from Boxing Day until January 6th.

Residential Retreats vs. Retreating at Home

Since my first silent Insight meditation retreat in 1988, I’ve attended many, many more. I love the opportunity that a longer intensive residential retreat provides. The change of scenery at the retreat center gives you the opportunity to let go of daily concerns and focus entirely on practice. Over days and/or weeks of practice, it’s easier to develop continuity. On a residential retreat, outside of a small “karma yoga” job you perform each day, all your time is devoted to practice. Corralling the mind in sitting and walking meditation all day long naturally begins to extend into other daily activities such as eating, showering and brushing your teeth.

When you retreat at home, you become responsible for the things that others take care of on residential retreats—meals, laundry, etc. This requires some forethought, both before and during your retreat. For example, I plan meals that will provide easily reheated leftovers the next day. That way, I only have to coordinate meal prep every other day. My spouse is in charge of the tech stuff. He sets up the talks and instructions we listen to three times a day. We choose them from among the wealth of inspiring recordings of our favorite teachers on dharmaseed.org.

Why Retreat at Home?

While I love residential retreats, and plan on attending many more, home retreats do have some advantages:

• You don’t have to spend the weeks preceding the retreat preparing to be away. There’s no need for a cat sitter or someone to keep an eye on your home and garden. Especially if you’re going on a longer retreat of several weeks, there’s a LOT you have to take care of ahead of time. Retreating at home eliminates a whole lot of planning and anxiety.
• The cost. Retreats are wonderful, and totally worth the expense, but they have become expensive in terms of tuition, travel costs, missed work, and the above-mentioned people that you have to hire to take care of your home and pets while you’re away.
• On home retreats, boundaries between formal practice and your daily tasks begin to blur. This happens on residential retreats as well. But intensive mindfulness practice at home brings new life to your familiar, mundane chores.

Bringing Mindfulness to Life

In recent retreats at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, author and longtime teacher Joseph Goldstein has suggested that we invert the usual retreat priorities. Usually, retreatants give priority to sitting, walking and all our other activities in that order. He proposed that we put our daily activities first and sitting meditation last. When you retreat at home, this seems to happen more naturally.

The purpose of mindfulness practice is not to get “good” at sitting. Ultimately, the practice is meant to lead to greater mindfulness as you move through your life. With practice, mindfulness begins to integrate. It becomes the ground from which you act. Home practice is key to this transformation.

In a future post, I’ll share tips on how to set up a retreat at home.