Sitting Comfortably: Preparing the Mind and Body for Peaceful Meditation

Sitting Comfortably is a guide to setting up your long-term healthy and enjoyable meditation practice. This is the only book offering a comprehensive approach to the preparation for sitting meditation without aches and pains. Meditation practice can be blocked by aches and pains felt while sitting. This allows the jittery mind to take up residence, and leads to the feeling of "not being good at meditation". Sitting Comfortably explores the physical issues that may arise while sitting, from painful knees to tight hamstrings. Swami Saradananda shows how yoga preparation, breathing and adapting postures can help to strengthen the body to be able to maintain a sitting meditation. She invites us to understand how the mind can easily be distracted, like a puppy, and that physical discomfort can often be this distraction in disguise. This is the only book to focus on the physicality of a formal meditation practice. Helping prepare the body for the mindful practice of meditation, so that mind and body are in synchronicity. It will be an invaluable reference guide for students of mindfulness, yoga, Buddhism, as well as New Age traditions. The book is broken down into 8 chapters, including: Overcoming obstacles to meditation; The art of sitting for meditation; Stretches/yoga poses that can help you sit comfortably; Breathing exercises (pranayama); Diet and lifestyle; Off your cushion and into the world. Beautifully illustrated throughout, this is the ultimate guide to preparing to meditate.