Hi,
I struggle with very severe fatigue ( medical condition ) and cannot do much efforts.
Are there some “active” meditation I can do lying down ? Should I combine active and passive meditation and if so how ?
I am thinking about it bc I read this on the sub :
In order to experience that deeper purpose of meditation, you have to be a little bit more serious about your practice than just 10-20 minutes a day. According to yogic science, it takes the body 40 minutes to relax in order for the mind to be relaxed and open that door. So if you want to experience those states, the recommended time for yogis is at least 1 hour. That's why a lot of active meditation is incorporated into the practice, so you're not just sitting for an hour but there are techniques that you use that incorporate movement in order to unburden the body/ mind of accumulated stress and tension.
I am new to meditation and want to do it extensively. I need to get out of fight or flight to heal from my medical condition.
Thank you for any tips!!
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There are many techniques you can still do.
To avoid drifting, you may want to rest your arms next to your body, while lifting the lower arms towards the ceiling. This takes minimal effort and allows you to stay awake and focused without drifting away.
You can do body swiping: start from your toes and consciously scan your entire body slowly up to your head’s crown, then reverse the direction.
A little known technique is to consciously feel into various body parts in a “star shape”. Start with your face and head, gently focus on it until you can feel it full. Then switch to the middle of your chest. Again, rest there until you consciously feel the chest region. Then switch to your left hand. Same there. Back to chest/heart region. Then left foot. Then chest. Gen right foot. Then chest. Then right hand. Then chest. Then face/head again. And so on.
Drats! I started guiding a star-shaped polarity breath with the hub at the heart space, and I thought I was being creative. 🤣 I should have known to research more deeply to see if others had already developed such a technique.
You really should make the effort to meditate sitting up, at least at the first part of your session. When we are prone and horizontal, we are in the Earths restorative energy field. But sitting up or vertical, spine is able to align with the spiritual energy from Earth's core to "universe". This is why humans walk upright, opposed to animals. We're a weird evolutionary crossover.
hey, that whole thing about needing an hour, honestly, that feels like a lot, especially when you're dealing with fatigue, right? like, i feel like you could probably get some benefits without having to commit that much time, you know?
I would recommend Yoga Nidra guided body scan meditations. Ayla Nova is very good and on all the platforms. I didn’t sit up for meditation until I was a year in. I still often lie for meditation and I practice Yoga Nidras most days
There are many things you can do, but for starters: Progressive muscle relaxation with multiple variations of deliberate tension and release, lifting and dropping the limbs, palming the face and neck and giving your body a self-massage, having a pretend temper tantrum where you are scrunching up the face and banging your fists and feet against the surfaces beneath while making noises, opposite stretches, restorative yoga poses, breathing in Makarasana or Crocodile pose to cultivate optimal diaphragmatic breathing, sandbag breathing to strengthen your diaphragm, chanting OM 3 to 21 times, Bhramari pranayama, EFT tapping, somatic release exercises, etc. After each of these preparatory practices, observe the flood of energetic sensations in your body and allow your mind to melt and merge into the vibrant field of pulsating sensations.
How about leaning back instead of lying down?
If the object of meditation is mental or focused on a bodily function like breathing, it's perfectly acceptable to do it lying down. The real issue with lying-down meditation is that it's much easier to drift off to sleep compared to sitting up.