I cannot find an Asana that doesn't hurt my weak back.
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A thing to keep in mind is that the weight of your upper body should be supported by your shoulders, with little to no pressure being placed on your lower back. I find it helpful to concentrate on keeping my shoulders 'rounded back,' while also 'leaning' back.
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Try sitting in a chair with the back straight.
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@atlantis said
"Try sitting in a chair with the back straight."
Well, he already said he tried the God Posture. If so, then that means he was sitting in a straight-backed chair.
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I have, yes.
I also frowned upon it, because I kept thinking "How am I supposed to bring and work with a chair in my ritual space?"
But more than that, it was causing me some slightly embarrassing problems sexually.
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@ThreeDayMonk said
"I also frowned upon it, because I kept thinking "How am I supposed to bring and work with a chair in my ritual space?""
I dunno what your space looks like. I usually have had a chair permanently in my ritual space.
"But more than that, it was causing me some slightly embarrassing problems sexually.
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If you mean an erection arising from your meditation, that's not really embarrassing (though it might tempt you to break asana 
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The posture was applying a lot of pressure to my perineum, and was causing my orgasms to become weak and unsatisfying.
I mean, I'm pretty sure that's what was causing it... Never happened before I started practicing the Asana.
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@RifRaf said
"Sitting on a chair gets you hot? Does it vibrate? (EDIT: I must have been typing this at the same time you were responding.)
Anyway, on topic, I ditched the "Liber E" Asana's. I tried them all, I only liked the Dragon but I stopped doing Yoga work for a bit and then returned and decided to switch it up. Half-Lotus is my sitting posture for Asana. I also have a laying posture that resembles the Hanged Man for contemplation, pratyahara, etc."
Is there a particular reason why one couldn't use a prone position like the Hanged Man all the time?
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Do streching exercises to help your back. That's the only way - you must start using your back muscles you didn't use all your life so, yes, it is not easy. Work.
I use the Burmese position culminating into siddhasana. -
I do meditation in the half-lotus. On occasion, my back will flare up and I will have to sit in a chair. This has worked fine for me. But I really had to focus on getting my back healthy, and that meant spending time and money to figure it out.
For me, sitting in soft chairs and letting my stomach distend instead of holding a good posture through out the day really contributed to the problem which was originally caused by an injury. (Incidentally, figuring out how to hold a good posture all day really has helped my meditation by forcing me to increase my mindfulness. It is the same principle as cutting ones arm except in this case, the punishment for a slip in mindfulness is a sore back!)
I work on my posture and do pilates as well as other activities. I think you need to invest the time and find out what works for you.
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I have a similar problem using the "God" asana. It seems like my lower back always slumps just a bit. Unfortunately it's hard for me to tell whether this is the natural position or not. It usually feels fine but then I realize it could be straighter and it starts to ache just a bit. Still trying to figure out the optimal position for breathing and so forth... I think the best thing is to keep trying and experimenting as to what feels best. I do intend, however, to get some advice sooner or later. Ever consider visiting a meditation center of some kind for direct advice?
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One thing that you could try is to not focus on the back so much, instead, imagine that there is a button at the Crown of your head and reach up to try and press it. Or a Hook that enters the base of your Skull and lifts you up. Then relax all the muscles of the back as you press upwards. The spine should set into alignment. The chest should be rounded and the belly very full. Pulling the shoulders back will also help neck strain. If there are sharp pains...you have a back problem that needs to be identified.
www.ehow.com/how_2279058_do-yoga-spinal-stretches-back.html
The body is silent unless in disease.
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@PainMeridian said
"One thing that you could try is to not focus on the back so much, instead, imagine that there is a button at the Crown of your head and reach up to try and press it. Or a Hook that enters the base of your Skull and lifts you up. Then relax all the muscles of the back as you press upwards. The spine should set into alignment. The chest should be rounded and the belly very full. Pulling the shoulders back will also help neck strain. If there are sharp pains...you have a back problem that needs to be identified.
www.ehow.com/how_2279058_do-yoga-spinal-stretches-back.html
The body is silent unless in disease."
Good advice here for the OP. The crucial thing about good posture for meditation is that the back be straight. Structurally, what this means is that the spine is correctly aligned so that the (very heavy) weight of the skull goes directly down through the spine to the pelvis and thence the ground, without any muscles having to compensate for mis-alignment. The best way to get it is to ever so slightly elongate the spine, and the visualisation of a thread pulling up the skull is really useful in this. The correct body alignment for standing and sitting meditation is pretty similar to the correct sitting/standing postures for Taijiquan and for Alexander technique.
To facilitate this straightness of the spine, the pelvis has to be ever so slightly "cupping up", as if it's a bowl containing the weight of the contents of the abdomen. (Another way of putting this, in a standing context, would be "tail tuck", but most people do this wrong and injure themselves).
To facilitate this, what you need (seemingly paradoxically - you'd think it would be the other way round) is to have the thighs to be apart and pointing *downwards *a bit - so, if seated in a chair, you need to put cushions at the back of your ass, and also if doing a seated cross-legged posture, you should use a cushion to raise the ass a bit.
For the beginner, if you've got the spine elongation right (from the thread pulling visualisation) and if you've got the pelvic tilt right, you should feel, at first, like you're actually leaning ever so slightly forward (i.e that one's straight back is a tad like the leaning tower of pisa). If you look in a mirror, you'll seee that your back is absolutely straight, but at first it does feel like you're leaning forward a tiny bit.
Also, it should feel like the whole weight of all the flesh and bones of your torso is basically hanging from the straight spine, which feels internally (phenomenologically) like a sort of "iron bar" (but this is attained without any strain to attain it - it's a byproduct of getting the alignment right).
This is all worked out pretty well in some of the Zen traditions and in some Chinese Daoism (at least the Dragon Gate Sect that I know of, which is a Zennish sort of Daoism). Best advice on meditation posture in any book I know of is in Zen Training by Katsuki Sekida.
The absolutely crucial thing about these methods, as opposed to Crowley's (where he talks about sustaining *tension *in Asana) is that there should be no felt muscular tension whatsoever - everything should feel totally relaxed, hanging from the spine.
I think the Asanas in Liber E are problematic from the point of correct daily posture, and I think some of them could lead to long-term injury - although you might develop tremendous will-power if you persevered with them, it would be at some cost in health. It seems that Crowley's idea is to "wear out the possibilities of sensation" through a painful initiation in the body, leading to what Sekida called "body off sensation" - the aim is that one literally doesn't feel the body any more, and it's a blissful relief, and the basic foundation for hardcore meditation. But I think Sekida's Zen methods, as well as the Daoist methods, are more relaxed, healthier, and actually quicker at getting this.
However, it may be that the A:.A:. initiation does require a period of painful "trial by fire", or "tapas" (burning, austerity) so I respectfully defer to that, if that's the case. Just to let people who aren't so strongly affiliated with the A:.A:. system know that there are other, far easier ways (and actually very old traditions in their own right) of getting the "body off" sensation, if that's what's specifically being aimed for, as a foundation for meditation.
(Btw, I don't mean to sound like an authority on any of this, just my little experience and accumulated knowledge, FWIW. I think this is actually worth a debate, because by now there must be quite a few people who have tried living Eastern traditions, and found their "asana" to be much more of a relaxed and easy affair than it is portrayed in Liber E, and it's caused me some puzzlement, but the above is my attempt at reconciling - i.e. Crowley's method requires "tapas" and will-exercise as perhaps the *most *important part of it, so it's really quite a different process, reaching the same functional goal in the end, but possibly with the goal of will-training more to the fore, and the actual attainment of "body off" viewed more as a useful byproduct.)
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Asana is about negating the body-idea.
The body only speaks if there is pain, otherwise it is asleep and you are only borderline aware of it.
Same with the mind. Thoughts are the only thing that disturbs it.
"I am" in the eternal NOW is only possible when all mental modifications are stilled.
Hatha yogis can reach samadhi only by kundalini flowing in the sushumana nadi while in asana.
Jnani yogis or advanced bhakti yogis just have to reach up. -
I wonder, how important actually is it to have an erect spine when you're doing this?
I tried sitting this way but I have chronic posture problems and the muscle strain was just killing me. However, the other day I sat in a reclining chair and for the first time got an unmistakable result. There seems to be a difference between the discomfort felt from sitting in a position that actually puts unusual stress on the muscles and just the general discomfort which is caused by the body wanting to twitch and shift balance regardless of what position it is in. It seems that overcoming this latter type of discomfort is what produces the result.
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From Book 4
"Asana is that which is firm and pleasant." This may be taken as meaning the result of success in the practice. Again, Sankhya says, "Posture is that which is steady and easy." And again, "any posture which is steady and easy is an Asana; there is no other rule." Any posture will do.
I believe all the reference to the straightness of the vertebra is actually hinting at a specific Mudra.
Think of the Caduceus superimposed on your body. The twin snakes are pingala and ida channels(or solar and lunar) and the staff represents the Sushumana nadi. Kundalini literally rests in your perineum. In order for it to rise we are given this Asana as a Mudra.
I have a vertebrae abnormality that causes my head to tilt to the right unconsciously. One of my first experiences with kundalini nearly burned the ass out of me.
I am sure there are many and varied levels of result. -
@Jim Eshelman said
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@jg93 said
"My back used to kill during 1/2 lotus. I sat through the pain, slowly increasing my time, and after a few weeks it went away. My legs still go numb about 15 minutes in though. You could try leaning up against a wall, or sitting on a cushion. But you have to sit through the pain - that's one of the points of this work."Just to clarify... Pain isn't part of the work. There is no particular NEED for the pain. But it will usually be there at one point, and getting through it is part of the work.
This shouldn't be confused with a real orthopedic problem. Remember that Libri E & O instruct you to start from a place of health before commencing the practices. If there is something structurally wrong, you need to work on fixing it first.
Beyond that... find any position at all that is comfortable FOR YOU."
Pardon me... I'm a noob. But I completely disagree. Pain isn't part of the work? That's silliness. No pain, no gain. There is sometimes a great deal of pain. That doesn't mean you are doing it completely wrong, but is entirely up to you to determine a safe threshold. I'm a freestyler myself, with some pretty crazy and at times very painful and disturbing results. Embrace the pain as much as you can manage to.
Just remember to put it down and walk away for periods of time when it gets too intense. It's like a kid sipping beer. Enlightenment has an aquired taste. Took me two years of physical and mental agony before I started to accept the taste.
I'm sure it is different for everybody. All depends on your subconscious mind state. We are in complete control of our bodily functions at a certain level.... and if you can stand the pain, eventually, you'll literally find that your body IS held in its state by your mind. You will begin to FEEL all this tension in relation to your mental state.... it's hard to descibe, but you can observe the correlations very subtlely. Eventually, like any muscle, physical or otherwise, it strengthens and fine tunes itself....
It's currently a work in progress on my end. Common sense dictates whether you are going too far for your own good or not. If you can't stand the heat, step away from the flames.