Explore the possibilities for sitting alert, relaxed, and naturally. You don’t need to try to sit straight or hold a rigid position — in fact concepts of straight lines and correct positions don’t help at all.

You can use a cushion, a stool, or a chair. Adjust the height of your seat so that your hips are slightly higher than your knees. If you feel that you’re slumping forward, or if you feel tension in your lower back from holding yourself up by arching, it may help to play with the height and angle of your seat.

Try gently tilting your pelvis forward and back, and side to side.

Find your sit bones and pivot on them until it feels right.

Try swaying a little forward and back, and side to side, until you find your center of gravity.

Gently bend your head, shoulders, spine, and ribcage side to side, and then return to what feels neutral.

Slowly rotate your shoulders and collar bones and head to one side and then to the other side.

Let your arms hang naturally at your sides, with your hands resting in your lap or on your thighs. Experiment until you can rest without straining your shoulders or neck or arms.

Adjust your legs so they are stable but relaxed.

These are a just a few of the ways to explore sitting with ease, stability, and alertness. Move gently, slowly, with sensitivity to what you are feeling in your body. Take the time to discover what feels right. Explore anew in each session, because each session will be different.

The ground and your bones will hold you up, so you can let go of using muscles to hold up your back, your shoulders, your torso, arms, and legs. Drop your jaw, drop your shoulders, drop your belly.

Let your eyes be slightly open. Don’t focus or stare; just gaze softly into space. Whenever your sight collapses down to a particular object, gently let your peripheral vision widen again to include the whole visual field.

Feel your body breathing naturally. Ribcage expands and contracts. Abdomen rises and falls. Diaphragm massages internal organs. Spine undulates and head rolls to maintain balance. This all happens on its own if you let it.

Feel the whole body breathing. Pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral sensations and feelings— tingling, pressure, numbness, buoyancy, sinking, cold, warmth — arise and pass through the body.

As you settle into your body, layers of muscular tension and holding will release themselves from time to time. Without fidgeting, feel free to keep making whatever subtle adjustments you need to rebalance and relax.

Rest attention in the body as it breathes. Whenever you discover you’ve been distracted, simply return to what is already there: your alert and relaxed body naturally breathing.

Open to whatever arises. Don’t try to exclude sensations, feelings, emotions, thoughts, memories, or images from awareness. Don’t be distracted by them either. Don’t cling to pleasant experiences or push away unpleasant experiences; just include everything in awareness. Use the breathing body as an anchor to experience sensations, feelings, emotions, and thoughts as they arise and pass away on their own.

When you are agitated by physical restlessness or mental busyness, relax and return to resting attention in the breathing body. When you sink into dullness, renew your alert and energetic attention to the sensations of the body.

Don’t try to generate a certain state of mind. Simply return to what is already there: breathing, sensations, feelings, thoughts and emotions, coming and going.

The Posture of Meditation by Will Johnson