Day 2: Find Your Foundation

Hi, my name is Chloe Freytag, and welcome to day two of our 14-day meditation challenge here at Get Healthy U TV. Today, we're going to talk about sitting positions while we meditate. So the foundation of our seat is the foundation of our practice. Finding a comfortable seat is the first way for you to relax your body and therefore become relaxed in your mind as well. So find your way into whatever feels natural for you to sit at first, if you wanna do cross-legged on the floor, potentially using a pillow or a blanket to sit on to elevate your hips.

Another option always is sitting in a chair with your feet flat on the floor. So go ahead and find your way into that position where you can lift up your spine nice and tall. And then from here, you can choose to either close your eyes down or just softly gaze towards the floor. We'll start by taking three deep breaths together to set ourselves into the space of our meditation. So take a big deep inhale in through your nose and then exhale the air out the mouth.

Again, really full inhale in, and let all the air go out. Last one, big, deep inhale in, and exhale, let the air go. Begin to breathe long and deep at your own pace. Keeping your attention on your breath as you bring your awareness into the position that you're sitting. So for our meditation, we want our pelvis to be in a neutral position.

So when we've got that neutral position in the pelvis, when our hips and our pubic bones are kind of sitting up on top of each other in a natural stacking fashion, this really helps us then to find more length in our spine, which is what we want in our practice. So a tendency that many people have is to kind of roll towards the back of the pelvis and let that tuck, and then it's really hard to find that space in the spine. So we're gonna start by finding ways we can use our neutral pelvis to then stack everything else up on top. So an option here is to sit and utilize a pillow or a blanket to elevate your hips so that the front of the hips can relax a bit deeper and it becomes easier to sit up tall. Another option you can choose is possibly to even extend the legs out in front of you.

So I recommend using more of a wide position with the legs instead of straight out in front. Again, because the more relaxed the front of the hips can be, the easier it will be to create that neutral position in the pelvis. Noticing when you've got that length in the spine, it's much easier to breathe long and deep. Your lungs naturally open up. Another option you could try for sitting is sitting onto your knees.

So bringing the shins onto the floor, potentially using your pillow or blanket now in between your hips and your heels, and then letting the hands rest on the thighs as you sit up tall. Continuing with your long, deep breaths in whatever sitting position you've chosen to try out. And throughout these 14 days, you can maybe utilize different positions on different days, kind of noticing which one works better for you so that you can find the most natural and comfortable way to sit. You can create the most space in your spine so that you can really enjoy those long, deep breaths and feel at ease in your meditation practice. Take a few more breaths at your own pace, keeping your awareness on how slow and deep you can breathe.

And as our second day of meditation comes to a close, we'll take a big breath together that we'll pause at the top of and we'll exhale the air out the mouth. So take a deep inhale in through your nose, pause for a moment, shoulders stay relaxed, and then exhale all the air out the mouth. Start to softly blink your eyes back open and gaze forward. Thank you so much for meditating with us today on day two, and we'll see you tomorrow at day three.