Dear Friends,
In the Satipatthana Sutta, the Buddha mentions several postures for practice:
“Again, bhikkhus, when walking, a bhikkhu understands: ‘I am walking’; when standing, he understands: ‘I am standing’; when sitting, he understands: ‘I am sitting’; when lying down, he understands: ‘I am lying down’; or he understands accordingly however his body is disposed.
Thinking about lying down, I remember the following poem Susie read at the retreat I went to in May:
Lie down with your belly to the ground,
like an old dog in the sun. Smell
the greenness of the cloverleaf, feel the damp
earth through your clothes, let an ant
wander the uncharted territory
of your skin. …
Lie down with your belly
to the ground, flat out, on ground level.
Prostrate yourself before the soil
you will someday enter.
Stop doing.
Stop judging, fearing, trying.
This is not dying, but the way to live
in a world of change and gravity.
Let go. Let your burdens drop. …
Lie down with your belly to the ground
and then rise up
with the earth still in you.
I find lying down meditation can be challenging as my body says, “Oh good! Sleep time!”, so I tend to not do a lying down meditation first thing in the morning or last thing in the day. For me, it also helps to be on a less comfortable surface – like on a mat on the floor – but with supports, like a rolled up blanket under my knees. You can experiment with what posture works for you.
The beauty of a lying down meditation is that my body can really let go into the support of the earth – I can surrender to gravity. There is also a neat perspective of looking at the world from the ground – seeing things under a chair or table, or noticing the way the sunlight, reflecting off a shiny surface, dances on the ceiling.
So maybe you want to try Jeanne’s body scan meditation (~20 minutes) while lying down…
http://www.jeannecorrigal.com/guided-meditations.html
With best wishes,
Andrea G