by Baxter
Learning to sit comfortably on the floor is as important for a basic asana practice as it is for seated meditation. Yet for many people this is not an easy task!
We have addressed some of the challenges associated with this in the past, and I suggest you read Shari Ser’s post (see Learning to Sit on the Floor), with special attention to the last half of the post that covered yoga poses to strengthen the supporting muscles of the spine and back, as well as ways to improve flexibility of the spine, especially in the area of the rib cage. But I have much more to say on the subject. So today I’m going to address a question I received from one of our readers regarding sitting with crossed legs:
Something missing for me here: I can’t sit cross-legged because my knees won’t go down and my ankles can’t stand the bend caused by knees less than halfway to the floor. I couldn’t do this even when I was young, flexible, and lean. Help?
This reader highlights a reality that many of my students encounter when trying to take a comfortable seat in yoga: their bodies don’t allow them to sit easily in cross-legged position, not due to lack of work on the poses that can open and strengthen them to improve their ability to sit but instead due to something much more basic, the structure of their bodies. It turns out some people’s skeletons and connective tissue just don’t permit enough movement—particularly in the hip joint—to allow the pelvis and femur bones (thigh bones) to take the ideal positions for sitting comfortably. This usually becomes apparent after a practitioner has spent a reasonable amount of time trying to improve his or her sitting position without seeing any changes in those joints.
So today I’m going to make some suggestions for these individuals, and I suspect many of you (or your students) fall into that category! Here are my four basic recommendations:
1. Support Your Sitting Bones
First, make sure you
have an adequate support under your sitting bones to elevate your hip
joints for sitting. Start by placing a folded blanket or the cushion
from a chair under your sitting bones and see if your hips are at or
above the level of your knees. If this support isn’t enough to bring
your knees to the same level as your hips, I suggest you try sitting on
two to three folded blankets, on a block, or on the edge of a firm
bolster. If your knees are typically very high, adding a blanket folded
on top of a bolster might be necessary to bring the knees in line with
hips.
You will have to experiment with how much height you need to bring your hips high even with or higher then your knees. An additional benefit—besides making you more comfortable and allowing you to maintain the natural curve of your lower back—is that sometimes when your support is high enough, you might feel a release in your pelvis and hip joints and your knees might release a bit more than expected.
2. Support Your Knees and Ankles
I suggest that you also experiment with using some support under your knees. Using a block on each side as shown in this photo may immediately resolve any pain in you knees or hips (and maybe even your ankles).
If you do all that and your ankles are still uncomfortable, try rolling a blanket and wrapping it around your ankles and under your knees. This alone may support and cushion your ankles and support your knees.
Another way to use the blanket for your ankles is to make a long, narrow roll and place it under your ankles where they cross, from your seated support forward. From my experience, this often brings an audible sigh of relief for those with sensitive ankles.
3. Create Your Inner Lift
As you build strength and flexibility in your spine with the poses we recommended in Shari’s post, add in an internal movement I call creating your “inner lift.” To do this, as you sit, focus on lengthening the center of your spine up from your sitting bones through the crown of your head.
Notice how long you can maintain this feeling of inner lift before you begin to sag and lose support. Then, try to re-establish the movement again for a while. If you start to tire and can no longer easily maintain your inner lift, stop for the day and note how long you sat. Try to gradually spend more time in your seated position, so that eventually you will be ready to sit for longer periods of time.
4. Rest Your Legs
If you find yourself in a situation where you need to spend a long time sitting on the floor and you realize that even in your preferred position your legs are starting to go numb or you are feeling pain, try switching to a different supported form Easy Sitting Pose to see if that helps give your legs a rest. (You can find our four variations of Easy Sitting Pose from the book Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being at Featured Pose: Easy Sitting Pose.)
Unfortunately, even with all of these propping options, some of my students are still unable to get comfortable Easy Sitting Pose. So if that’s true for you, I recommend you try my personal favorite way to sit: Hero Pose (Virasana). Nina will be addressing how to get comfortable in Hero Pose in a future post. And if you just can’t get comfortable on the floor for extended periods, it’s perfectly okay to sit on a chair instead, especially for breath practices or meditation.
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Greetings – Thank you for these helpful suggestions to sitting in this manner. However, I am still not sure why this is so important to my or my very senior students practice. I think I need some validation it is still OK to sit up in a chair and am not missing out on anything by not sitting on the floor. My contention is our society sits in chairs versus other cultures who grew up more accustomed to sitting on the floor, hence their bodies are more adapted to that position.
I also encourage practice at home and think people will be more inclined to remember simple stretching moves, breathing and mini mindful moments when sitting in a chair rather than think they have to get down to the floor.
Thank you for all the wonderful, clearly understandable information you provide. I am learning more now than I ever did. Happy thoughts & chuckles, Nancy LaPointe, Mount Dora, FL
Thanks for your comments! First of all, I'd like to say that this blog isn't really intended for very senior people, especially those who cannot get up and down from the floor. However, even for very senior people who CAN get down to and up from the floor–even with a little support–I think it's important for them to keep sitting on the floor as maintaining the physical skills (strength, balance, and agility) necessary to get down to and up from the floor as extremely beneficial! And I hate to think about what happens to people who fall and don't have the physical skills to get up again. So even though chair yoga is certainly very beneficial for the elderly, I actually think that for those who can spending part of the time standing up and/or doing floor poses (not just seated poses) is really important. And, of course, learning something new and challenging is valuable for brain health. I'm not saying that you as a teacher need to change what you are currently doing but I just want to encourage you to think outside the box a bit about this.
nice article, yoga is one of my favorite way to improve my flexibility and over all health, it also helps for relax our mind and give us the feeling of relaxation so thanks for sharing this article and always keep up the good work.