Photo by Pais-Thomas

Posture reveals all.

It offers clues about character, self-worth, and mood. In contrast, posturing is an attempt to disguise a mind-state. It is an attempt to lie with the body. For example, someone who is afraid might straighten up to try and hide their fear from their opponent.

Posture - a barometer of emotions

Posture is like a barometer of how we experience the world. On one hand mind-states influence posture; on the other hand posture influences mind-states. I once saw a Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown is standing around with his shoulders slumped and his head hung low. Lucy asks him, “Why are you standing like that?”, “If I straighten up I can’t stay depressed,” Charlie answers.
Check what happens to your mind if you stand with round shoulders and hang your head. Then straighten up, little by little. Does your mind-state change? When you straighten up, start from your chest bone. When you straighten up there, the whole spine unfurls. In many meditation traditions good posture is valued. This is because a balanced body creates a balanced mind. Here is what Zen master Shunryu Suzuki said about posture:

You should not be tilted sideways, backward, or forwards. You should be sitting straight up as if you were supporting the sky with your head. This is not just form or breathing. It expresses the key point of Buddhism. It is a perfect expression of your Buddha nature. If you want true understanding of Buddhism, you should practice this way. These forms are not a means of obtaining the right state of mind. To take this posture itself is the purpose of our practice. When you have this posture, you have the right state of mind, so there is no need to try to attain some special state. (Suzuki: Zen Mind, Beginners Mind).

Five tips for developing good posture

• Take up a body practice that helps you to develop posture awareness (yoga, Tai Chi, Feldenkrais, etc). I have found body practice very good for me. I practised karate for eighteen years but have now switched to yoga. I’ll often do twenty minutes of yoga before meditating.
• Notice your habitual patterns of posture. How do they relate to ingrained mind-states? One of the things I suffer from is tension in the shoulders. It tends to come on when I feel a load of responsibility (which is most of the time!). I find it helpful to simply notice my raised shoulders and then to let them go.Notice your posture when standing. If your shoulders are rounded or your back swayed, stand against a wall and re-align your body. (Do this a few times each day). I’m always surprised to find that the wall tells me I’m still bent, even when I feel at full stretch. Then I find some areas in the spine that can be stretched even further.
• Notice your posture when sitting. Do you slouch? Can you sit upright, even on the sofa? How is it when you walk? Catch sight of yourself in shop window. Do you bend forward or do you lean back? What does this signal about you? People like me who tend to bend forward while walking tend to embrace the future, whereas people who lean back while walking tend to look back at the past.
• Notice the posture of people you meet. What does their posture say about them?

It’s good to explore posture with interest, not with a critical mind. The more you notice what how your mind-state relates to posture, the easier it will be to improve your bearing.
What do you notice about your posture?

Do you notice the benefits of meditation in your life? There is a big gap between the orderliness of retreats and the chaos of ordinary life. Take a peek into a Zen retreat you’ll see black mats and straight rows. People sit like rocks and every minute of the day is regulated from black dawn to the last bow at night. Life, on the other hand, is chaotic and colourful.
There is no way we can impose control. Events rush at us out of the blue. We move from anger to joy and every other emotion in between like a soprano singing a coloratura. As to mindfulness–one moment you’re chopping carrots the Zen way, next the phone company rings to tell you that you’ll be cut off if you don’t pay the phone bill, then friends barge in for a cup of tea. Mindfulness? Ah yes –an hour later, stirring the soup you remember to be present.

In my work as a Zen master I see many people emerge from a sesshin (a traditional Zen retreat) with a new spaciousness of mind and heart. Their eyes shine, they are peaceful and their mind is like a clear pool. Then, when they arrive home, life hits them like a speeding train.

John S. wrote to me after sesshin:

“I felt wide open after the retreat. Somehow the barrier between me and the world seemed to have disappeared. It was as if my body enclosed everything. That felt really precious. But when I arrived home, life hit me between the eyes: My wife complained that I spend more time doing Zen than with her, the school rang up to say that my teenage daughter has been playing truant, I found some dope in my son’s room, there were over a hundred messages in my inbox, my boss is threatening a performance review. How can I maintain the peacefulness and spaciousness of retreat in this chaos?”

It seems to me that many Zen people and other meditators know how to use meditation techniques when sitting on their mats, but don’t know how to bring their spiritual practice into life. In the Goodlife Zen blog I explore ways of bringing Zen into daily life. I hope that you will find inspiration here.