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The Role of Posture in Practice

Introduction

Welcome to IMC, and to those of you online, welcome to our Sunday morning program. Today, I would like to talk about the role of posture in this practice that we do.

The Role of Posture

I want to start with an analogy of driving a car. Some of you might have had this experience, or maybe didn't have some of what I'm going to describe. You're driving a car, maybe on the freeway, even fast, and there's lots of traffic around you. You remember that you forgot to return an important phone call while you're driving. So, of course, the thing to do then is go, "Oh," with both hands, "Oh no, when, how could I have done that?" We don't do that when we drive, do we?

"Oh no," you keep driving, right? You don't give up the posture for this tragic realization, because more tragedy will come if you do. You lose something if you go, "Oh no," and collapse on the steering wheel. You lose your attentiveness; you lose your care for everyone else. There's a lot that you lose in that process. If you're sitting there in your car and traffic's going along at a good clip but not fast enough for you, and you're kind of annoyed with it all, you don't just sit back and cross your arms. In that case, again, you maintain a certain posture when you're driving. You don't collapse, you don't pull back, you don't shrink. You maintain a posture. You might have little variations if you feel something, but you maintain a posture so you don't lose your attentiveness.

Now, outside of something as important as driving a car, people do all kinds of things with their posture. They do collapse, they do cross their arms and sit back, they do raise their fists. There are all kinds of things they do with their posture. People might feel, "Well, darn it, I should be free to do whatever I want. I feel free when I do these things." But we lose ourselves sometimes, and it represents our loss of ourselves, how we succumb to posture.

Sometimes we are so filled with desires that we are free to act on those desires, but we lose ourselves in the pursuit of them—addictions, for example, or intense, clawing neediness for the way we want something. We lose ourselves in that process, not just our attention when we get ahead of ourselves. If we get into a very angry situation, and we feel, "I should be damn free to be angry if I'm angry," there's also something we lose about ourselves if we give ourselves over to the anger. We lose the capacity to pay attention, to be present. Just like if you lose yourself to anger, to rage, when you're driving, this is usually not a good idea. Not a good idea for the other drivers, probably not a good idea for you.

So we lose ourselves all too easily in all kinds of emotional and motivational states that we have. Sometimes we lose ourselves because we freeze, we get all rigid and hard. Sometimes we lose ourselves in wanting to blame and fight, to criticize. Sometimes we lose ourselves in our restlessness. We get so activated and agitated that we don't even know what foot to stand on. You might feel that way when you're driving, but I suspect that when you're driving, you don't succumb to the restlessness. You kind of, within reason, maintain your posture because your life depends on it a little bit.

What I'm suggesting is that we lose ourselves to our emotions sometimes through our posture, by how we relate to it. We give ourselves away to it. It's not to deny that we are this way, but we don't have to give ourselves away to it. One of the ways not to give ourselves away is to maintain a balanced posture in the midst of it, in the flow of it all.

This is what I think the Buddha recommends. This is what I see in the statue we have here of the Buddha. For me, it represents that. The Buddha's posture is balanced and upright. He's not pulling away, folding his arms and saying, "Who are these people? You know, they're not monastics, so what good is this?" He's present. He's not pulling away, he's not leaning forward into the world. He's just fully there. I don't know if you can see, but he doesn't have his eyes closed, but he's not staring. He's seeing, but he's not caught in what he's seeing in the world. The Buddha is sitting in a strong, balanced way. He's available to the world, and he's available to himself for all that goes on.

Before the Buddha was enlightened, there's a story he tells that he was meditating in the forest jungles by himself. It seems that he would get scared of the sounds in the jungle—he says even the peacocks walking around, maybe at night, he didn't know what it was. He would be scared. So he decided that his practice was going to be that whatever posture he was in, he would continue the way he was. If he was doing walking meditation, he said he would keep doing walking meditation. If he was sitting, he would keep sitting. If he was standing, he would keep standing. If he was lying down, he'd keep laying down.

Recently, I was reminded of this story by a trauma therapist, and he loved the story. He said, "This is exposure therapy. Just expose yourself to something and then find your way until you get deactivated, until you can relax." I don't know if that's always the wisest thing to suggest, but this idea that he would stay in his posture—a dignified, balanced posture.

What's the advantage of doing that until the fear passes? One is that a balanced posture is one of the best places from which to monitor yourself, to see what's going on, to not lose yourself, but to gain yourself. To increase your capacity to know, to be aware, and to hold whatever is happening for us without succumbing, without giving up to it, losing ourselves to it, and also not running away from it or distracting ourselves from it. There's this wonderful combination of benefits from a posture which is, in your way, the equivalent of what the Buddha is doing. It doesn't have to look as nice as his. After all, it's a metal statue; it's just an artist who made that one. But that you would sit and not lose yourself, monitor yourself well, and keep noticing the tendencies to lose yourself.

Notice the tendencies to start tapping your fingers because you're impatient. The Buddha doesn't tap his fingers. Not because it's wrong to do that, but that is a way of losing ourselves, distracting ourselves, or getting caught up in the impatience, perhaps. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but is it the best way to process? Is it the best way to really be present for what's here and have a certain sense of being in the driver's seat of your life, rather than the passenger seat, or rather than just giving up and losing yourself? There's something very powerful about being careful with our posture. The posture can reveal better to us what's really going on.

If you're sitting meditating this way—and I'm primarily talking about meditation, but it transfers to daily life as well—you're sitting this way, and you remember that you didn't make that important phone call. In meditation, you can feel the power of the arms, the power of the collapse that wants to happen. The arms want to go like this, they collapse. But you're committed to not doing it. Not as a repression, but as a way to feel the energy, to feel the sensations, to feel the motivations to collapse. "Wow, my collapsibility is huge right now. I had no idea collapse could be so powerful, convincing, and authoritative. I had no idea the collapse could come with all its lawyers arguing its case that this is why you should collapse. Wow, this is quite something." But I'm not going to collapse, not in meditation. But I am going to be present for this. I'm going to know this, see it, until I see it through, until I get to the other side.

Many years ago, I loved this story that someone told me about what he had learned to do. I think he had a serious addiction, maybe alcoholism. Someone told him that when he got the urge to drink, he should go find a nice, comfortable chair to sit in and not move. Don't leave the chair, no matter what. He said it was hard. The power of addiction can be overwhelming for people, very convincing, and very hard to resist. But he had this practice he was told: don't leave the chair. He discovered that it would be like a rodeo, riding a wild bronco. He would stay there. The analogy he used was that of a wave cresting. The wave would get bigger and bigger, more and more powerful, and at some point, it would crash, and he'd find himself on the backside of the wave, and everything would settle down. He said, "That was a turning point for me. I felt so empowered, I felt so capable. I felt like, oh, I can do this at least." That was a real turning point for him and his addiction when he learned to not move from the chair.

To learn to feel fear—you know, if a mountain lion is coming, don't just stand there—but in meditation, to learn to feel fear, anger, depression, sadness, all kinds of things that can come that normally we would sink into or give ourselves away to. We do it in our posture unconsciously. But here, to keep a posture that's dignified and balanced and see it through to the other side, if possible.

What does it take to do that? It's not an easy thing sometimes, what I'm describing. But we have all these instructions in mindfulness about how to bring careful, mindful attention to the body, to the feelings that we have, to the impulses, the mind states that are operating, the desires, and the aversions that are operating. As we start teasing apart the package, looking at the component pieces of it rather than one big wave, it becomes easier and easier to sit there. That which can relax has a chance to relax and soften, and something can begin shifting. There can be a sense of empowerment or inner strength that can arise from being able to maintain a posture through the difficulties we have.

The Five Hindrances

We have in this tradition the teaching on the Five Hindrances^[1], and this is the place to practice this with. The Five Hindrances are divided into three different areas. The first area has to do with our relationship to what's external to us. We're looking outward to the world of desires and the world of hostility, of ill will—what we don't like in the world and what we want in the world. The intense way in which we want things, we lose ourselves in that wanting. Some people lose themselves carrying the banner of freedom, "I should have this." Some people lose themselves in hostility to the world, blaming others. Some people live in the world of externalizing their life: desires, what I like, what I don't like, blame, not blame, praise. And then some people externally live in this world of hostility, where everything out there has to fit the way they want it to be. It's sad to lose yourself in this way. But to sit, to learn to hold a posture and see that movement, to feel it within us, is really powerful.

The first hint I had about this—you know, it's not that big of a deal, I suppose, but the first hint I had of myself doing this was when I was practicing in Thailand. We didn't eat much food there; we had no food in the afternoon, so lunch was a big deal. Lunch was down a hill and through the jungle, you had to walk there for a five-minute walk or something. I'd be ravenous. I noticed that my center of gravity would be about a foot in front of me because all my concerns were up ahead. I could say, "Oh wow, Gil, what are you doing out there?" I would take a deep breath and bring myself back to myself. Then within a few seconds, I found myself leaning forward again. It was like a seesaw, reclaiming myself and losing myself just because of lunch.

Beginning to see how this operates and see it clearly—because we're not giving in to the impulses, because we're staying here, keeping the posture we're in. Again, not to repress it, so we can see it really clearly. We see it with the kind of clarity we can't see if we give in to it. Come back here, come back here. A balanced posture is not only a posture where you can be balanced, but also a posture where the tension that's building up has a better chance to relax and soften. I think the "lawyers of the mind" get their commission based on attention. The more you pay them attention, the more they work for you. But the lawyers of the mind, if you're relaxed, they tend to relax too.

So, beginning to see how we get involved with the external world—the first two hindrances being caught in desires, caught in ill will. The next category of the hindrances has to do with getting caught in our internal world. The next one is usually called "sloth and torpor" (thīna-middha)^[2]. It turns out the word that's translated as sloth in Pali means becoming stiff and rigid. I think it's a much more valuable understanding, because we freeze. We get numb, we get stuck in our inner life in all kinds of ways. What is torpor? I think it's also a kind of numbness, a lethargy that comes from resistance. We pull in and collapse into ourselves. That's easy to succumb to with a nap. "Isn't that the absolutely right thing to do?" Or do we want to stay frozen and stiff? Take a balanced posture where your breathing doesn't freeze, your breathing doesn't get tight. The breathing has a chance to notice if it does get tight, and maybe you can adjust it, work with it, and keep it soft. So some of the stiffness, the rigidity, the freeze doesn't get too locked in.

Then the second one that is internally focused is restlessness, agitation, excessive activation (uddhacca-kukkucca)^[3]. We're running around excited, or filled with regrets, remorse, self-criticism. "I did the wrong thing, something is terrible here." This also is something where people lose themselves in this inner world of agitation. One of the best, really fun meditations I've had is being really restless in meditation and just sitting still, imagining my body is like a big room with walls, and the restlessness is like ping-pong balls bouncing around inside. When I used that analogy, it was fun to sit there and feel the restlessness. It was certainly better than the alternative, which was to believe the restlessness, or be a victim of it, or feel this is wrong or bad, or feel the authority of the restlessness, as opposed to, "Oh, this means that ping-pong balls are going wild in there." That was fascinating to sit there and just watch them all move. Having that analogy was the first time in my meditation where I had the experience of not being caught by the authority of the restlessness, but just allowing it freely without losing myself to it.

And then there's doubt (vicikicchā)^[4], the fifth hindrance. But I think doubt is too tame of a word. It's a little bit too intellectual and cognitive. I think it can be being bewildered, perplexed, lost, not understanding what's going on. That can be really hard for people. And sometimes maybe it's even reasonable—things are so confusing. But is that a reason to collapse? Is that a reason to pick up the other hindrances and blame, or want something—want some food that's going to solve it for me or comfort me?

The Four Dignified Postures

To sit, or to stand, or to lie down, or to walk in a posture that's balanced is really powerful and difficult. I've found what's useful is to go walking. The walking, the movement, is like massaging everything. I've done walking meditation really fast when I was really pissed off, and it was only the fast walking that allowed me to hold it and gave me the capacity to be with it without getting all bottled up. To do walking meditation in this balanced way, and from a posture of a balanced walk—walking fast if you need to—monitor yourself, notice what's going on, and be with what's going on. Maintain that and let that be the place where you look for balance, rather than collapse.

There's lying down. I think it's called one of the Four Dignified Postures^[5] in Buddhism. So sometimes the wisest thing to do to get balance is to lie down. But don't lie down in the fetal position. Nothing wrong with it—I do the fetal position when I have a migraine. I have no shame about doing so; it seems like the best thing I can do. I put my head under the covers, get in the fetal position, and I have my practice then—I practice with the migraine. But if you were talking about this kind of emotional stuff, maybe a fetal position is really good sometimes, maybe it's the best option. But the idea with this kind of balanced approach I'm suggesting today is to find a posture that allows you the middle way, the balanced way to be with it all. Not for, not against, not losing yourself, not collapsing. Sometimes lying down is the way you can track and be with things and discover how powerful these forces are, discover how to relax with them, see them more carefully for what they are, discover what's underneath them, what's driving them, or simply discover how to have a larger capacity to hold them, to be aware of them.

This is an undervalued part of this practice. Many people come to this practice to fix themselves, to make something better, and to solve their problems. But sometimes our problems don't get solved; rather, our capacity to be balanced and open and free becomes so big that the so-called problem just becomes a little detail. "I have all this anger I have to deal with... Oh, the anger is still here, but it's like a book on the bookshelf in a big room, as opposed to the book just being the whole thing." Letting the awareness, the body, become larger. The felt body, the experiential body that can hold it and be with it, the mind becomes bigger, the heart becomes bigger.

I would encourage you to practice this within reason. You don't have to go around all the time, but look for opportunities where you can take a balanced, upright, aligned posture that works for you, given your body and your situation. A posture where you feel, "This is a posture of not giving in, and I'm not pulling away, and I'm not succumbing, and I'm not resisting. I'm just there." That will look very different for everyone because of all kinds of issues. But find it for you, and then breathe with it, be with it. Meditate in that, see what goes on, what you learn, what unfolds, and how maybe you'll learn the difference between being in the driver's seat and losing it, giving yourself up to your emotions, putting your emotions in the driver's seat, which is what happens when we collapse or act out and react.

Be present with it. You might discover all kinds of interesting things. You might discover that some of the things that you're troubled by emotionally, for example, are maybe not so strong if you don't give in to it with your posture. I saw that many years ago when I was in college. I had some kind of... you know, I don't think it was a serious degree of depression, so I want to preface it with that so I don't think anyone else thinks it has to be exactly like what happened to me. But I had college student depression, whatever that is. For me, one day I was just kind of miserable and depressed. I came home to this barren house—we had hardly any furniture, and it wasn't a particularly inspiring place to be—but there was a couch. So I sat down on the couch, and I don't think it was possible to be more of a slouch on the couch than I was. I think my shoulders were in the crack between the backrest and the seat. [Laughter] They were so dramatic.

I was so dramatic that I noticed, "Wow Gil, this is quite something." It occurred to me out of the blue, "Gil, why don't you sit up straight?" So I sat up straight, and 90 percent of the depression just vanished, instead of taking that posture. It's seldom that easy. Who knows, maybe I'd asked someone for a date and she said no, maybe it was more than that, I don't know what it was. But I was so impressed by the role of posture, that a posture can make that kind of difference. I'm not saying it's that easy, but posture is a very important part of mindfulness practice. The Buddha, when he taught mindfulness, taught mindfulness of posture, specifically these four postures: walking, standing, sitting, and lying down. Later in the tradition, they're called the Four Dignified Postures.

Practice in those, and when the time seems right, do the same thing that the Buddha did. If you're afraid or angry or something, don't change your balanced posture. Stay with it and see what happens if you stay with it without giving in to it, but respecting it. Respect everything about yourself, respect these feelings and the difficulties, but stay in the posture until the wave crests, which someday it will.

Q&A

Speaker 1: I have a question. My reaction to things has improved. I feel like there is space. Before, I was always reacting, and I would think, "I have something smarter to say," or, "I'm mad, I have to tell them that." That has slowed down, and I have become more patient. I feel like there is no rush, I don't have to really tell the mean things I feel. Previously, I would be saying mean stuff, but feeling like it was the greatest thing I had to say. Later on, it's like, "Why did I say it?" Why is it that when we are in the thick of the action, the mind is so numb, and we say stuff, and then we're like, "Oh God, I didn't mean it. I do like them. I was mean." There is a rush of emotions, but afterwards, you realize it. Why do we do stupid stuff?

Gil Fronsdal: Well, I probably don't have a good answer. It's a good question. But one of the reasons is because we lose ourselves in our emotions. We lose ourselves in our desires and get pulled into it. One Buddhist answer to that question is because of the intensity of our desires, our cravings. Those take over. What I was trying to teach today is a way of beginning to learn how that operates in us. If you take a posture that you're not going to succumb to things, but rather watch it and find your freedom with it, over time you'll notice that tendency from the inside before you do it, and then you have the capacity not to give in.

Speaker 2: I have heard that in Zen, posture is extremely important. Can you please talk a little bit about that?

Gil Fronsdal: Zen posture is really important. There are a number of reasons. One is that this kind of posture you see here with the Buddha is a yogic posture, and so you get yogic benefits, especially if you can sit in full lotus. It's also a kind of crutch. I used to use full lotus as a crutch because I would get concentrated quicker, and I wouldn't fall asleep as much because you get really good energy going; the qi goes much more easily. But to rely on that rather than building it up from the inside out, I don't think it's really so wise for what we're doing in mindfulness practice, where we want to really meet ourselves and see what's going on, not just rely on a yogic effect that makes us concentrated.

Also, some schools of Zen have a very different philosophy and worldview about meditation and Buddhism than Indian Buddhism has. In Zen, sometimes it's a ritual—it's a ritual of being a Buddha. So you take the posture of a Buddha, and then over time, you grow into it. It's more like a ritual enactment of Buddhahood rather than a path to Buddhahood.

Speaker 2: Is that unique to Zen, or is it today concerned with...?

Gil Fronsdal: Well, it depends where you practice Zen. If you practice Chan in China, they have a whole different attitude towards it. In Japan, some schools of Zen have a very strict attitude towards it. Zen practitioners in the United States have learned that not everyone who practices Zen is a 22-year-old man. In training monasteries in Japan, most of them are in their early to mid-20s. What we're capable of doing with this body changes over time and circumstances.

Classically, in Zen, there's very little tolerance for people who have disabilities. If you can't sit full lotus, you can't be here—it's very strict. When I was in a Japanese monastery, they gave me some tolerance. They didn't expect me to be in full lotus, but if you go into full lotus, it's expected. I don't know if I can do it anymore, but the Japanese did full lotus, and there was a kind of hazing to go into the monastery. You had to sit there for hours in full lotus, and they would come with a stick. They'd put the stick underneath your hips. If you're sitting in full lotus, you won't hit anything, but if you bring your foot down, the stick would hit. So it was a little bit strict. I think some of the strictness wasn't exactly the essence of Zen; it was something else. So it depends. Zen does rely a lot on posture, and I learned a lot of the benefits of a good posture through Zen. I think it's one of the strengths of Zen, but it can be overdone.

Speaker 3: I have two questions on movement. First, during meditation itself, I know some people are very strict on not moving at all. How important is it to be completely still, even if you sense some discomfort? The second question: outside of meditation, if you find yourself getting frustrated, drumming your fingers or something like that, I imagine you'd want to approach it with curiosity and relax, but should you try to stop the drumming, or how would you deal with that?

Gil Fronsdal: You should do whatever feels right to you. But what feels right sometimes has to do with what your practice is and what you want to see happen. If you want to really get to the bottom of what's happening for you when you're drumming your fingers and you want to study it, maybe make it an object of mindfulness, sometimes it's good to keep doing it. You're doing it anyway, so keep doing it and that gives you access to what's happening. Another day you might decide, "I can feel the impulse now, let's see what's going on without doing it." So what's right depends on what you want to do. If you're trying to send a clear message to people that you're annoyed, then keep doing it! There are no "shoulds" here, but in terms of practice, sometimes it's good.

In terms of not moving during meditation, there are advantages to not moving. Sometimes it allows the mind to get calmer and quieter. The more we move in meditation, the more we activate the mind. So a lot of movement keeps the mind activated. It can get quieter and more concentrated for some people when they don't move. It can feel really nice as we get stiller and stiller to keep that stillness of the body; it feels more natural.

But sometimes it's the wrong thing to do. If we start having pain, it could be that you say, "I keep having pain, I'm always avoiding it. I think what I'm interested in doing today is staying with the pain for a while to see what I can learn. Maybe I need to learn a little bit about my reactivity to pain. That feels right today." But after a while, if you feel the pain is getting grueling, you might say, "I don't think I need to do this now. I don't want to meditate ever again, I think I overdid it. I won't stay with the pain that long; I'll move sooner." So there are all these choices you can make, but you do it out of what feels right, with a criteria that is appropriate for the occasion.

Speaker 3: Very good, thanks. And that's where you have to use your intelligence. It's a matter of bringing the right attitude to it, basically mindfulness, curiosity, and relaxing into it.

Gil Fronsdal: Yes. And also the criteria, the intention, the motivation you have. What's the purpose of this? What's the purpose of being still? I know I've done this, and I'm not saying it's you, but for me, sometimes the purpose of sitting still was to look really good. "Look at everybody, I'm the last person sitting still. I'm that good." [Laughter]

Thank you. So today is tea day! We'll have some snacks and tea, and we can hang out in the parking lot and chat. The hot water urn is here on the counter in the kitchen. Make your tea, and outside we can take the masks off—they're optional. Thank you all very much.