For many meditation practitioners, (particularly if they do not come from a cultural background that sits on the floor) posture is sort of a tough subject to get to the bottom of. I will share my perspectives on what I have learned and experienced, and perhaps what works best will manifest through experimentation.
There is a cultural component to some of the commonly taught sitting postures as they came from cultures that sit on the ground a lot. I started as a teen without the flexibility to sit in any position on the ground other than a kneeling bench, and wanted to practice regularly, so I really examined what postures work and what don’t (and continue to). First a list of the postures in what I would rank as best to least effective but still functional.
- Full lotus
- Half lotus
- Quarter lotus
- * Laying in lions pose on the right side or on the back with a towel under the neck
- Easy pose/Burmese ties with kneeling on a bench
- Edge of chair at proper height, without using backrest
- Standing
- Reclining in a chair, pillows, similar
- Criss cross, Thai style sitting on the floor, other more asymmetrical postures
Can a person meditate in any of these postures potentially? For most that is a yes. I put a star by the laying postures as they are quite effective but many people deal with dullness, sleep and dreaminess while using them due to conditioning or not being caught up on sleep. They also are not often usable when sitting with others for various reasons, but are quite useful in intensive practice and solo retreat.
What do the postures toward the top provide that is more than cultural that the postures lower down do not? If one is able to get into them properly, they provide an increasingly stable, extremely grounded, and energetically aligned body position that can become important for those that work with deep samādhi (sits that can go from 3+ hours unbroken, to 3+ days). When the deeper end of the pool of samādhi practices become part of the toolkit, energetics become increasingly important, and doing wrong things with the posture can lead to things like incredible splitting headaches, violent uncontrolled shaking, and powerful imbalances in the body that can express in really difficult to deal with ways. Hakuin for example reached a point where he had to practice a standing method he claims to have learned from a Taoist hermit because he was no longer able to sit at all due to a type of Zen sickness that may have been influenced by posture, and so learned the melting butter method (which is a great practice method). Being able to place the palms of the hands on the soles of the feet is also good for some specific energetic practices at times.
Mainly however, the postures towards the top are better for one big reason; the body wont fall over if they are done correctly, breathing wont be inhibited and it wont get injured.
When working with lighter 4th jhana and up, (or deeper any jhana), cessation of feeling and perception (nirodha) and other deeper practices, the body disappears and sometimes perception of the material world completely disappears for prolonged periods. The worry that the body is going to fall over can prevent access to these practices, or lead to injury and difficulty in re-accessing them. There are experiences of breakthroughs to liberation that also can be prevented by these same concerns as they require complete surrender of everything including the well-being of the body and our survival instincts are often quite deeply rooted.
Once we reach the bench on the list and burmese, we get to postures where the body may fall over or not work well when very deep in practice. I think it is safe to use the postures from there down however unless one reaches those types of practices and these things become a concern.
The next biggest hurdle I would say are postures that cause subtle issues with ease of breathing (surrendering control, again a survival mechanism), circulation concerns, alertness, energy flow through the spine, and postural asymmetry that must be maintained, preventing letting go of the body.
Any posture that has the knees above, level with, or not sufficiently below the hips will cause a subtle back pressure into the abdomen (which is where breathing generally moves to when the body becomes relaxed enough). This back pressure can then place tension in the diaphragm, make it hard to work with breathing without controlling it, create chest pressure and perceived pressure on the heart and pericardium area and other issues. If you are an anapanasati meditator this becomes more obvious more quickly but for most after years they begin to notice it and the deeper postures become of more interest. I know “energy flow” is probably not something that sounds like a real thing, but many methods directly work with qi, kundalini, breath energy, etc., or they activate it as it ends up supercharging the mental capacity (shen in Chinese) which in turn further powers the meditation practice.
So…what is good? Whatever posture leads to you practicing regularly and safely. While lack of pain seems like a plus, safe discomfort is actually a teacher in practice in many traditions and discomfort will show up in even the most comfortable position (try laying for too long without shifting position to experience this).
If reclining in a chair is the only posture you are comfortable with, and you have the option, I would recommend perhaps continuing with what you are doing, but trying to do other activities in positions that begin to open up the flexibility to undertake other postures so that they are available if you would like to explore them in the future.
Regarding kneeling, I use a kneeling bench still quite a bit, the trick is to get it tuned to the correct height. The best way I have found is to get a very low one, then put layers of towels on it sit after sit until you dial in the best height. Most of the weight should go into the buttocks with maybe 1/3 going into the knees, your mileage may vary. Also try some standing meditation, feet shoulder width apart, hands either in diamond fist mudra or hanging at the sides, chin tucked in. I have used this posture on retreat a lot to great effect and it is also a primary method for some taoist practices, they also find it useful for spiritual cultivation. Buddha referred to 4 primary postures: sitting, standing, walking, laying on the right side in lions pose.