Learning to Sit on the Floor, Part 2

by Baxter
Last week, our resident physical therapist and yoga teacher Shari Ser began a discussion about learning how to sit well on the floor. While sitting on the floor is frequently the first position we take in most modern yoga classes, there is often little attention given to the various ways we can sit comfortably either at the start of a class or for home meditation practice. So if you did not have a chance to get to it last week, I suggest you read Shari’s post now (see Learning to Sit on the Floor), with special attention to the last half of the post that covered yoga poses to strengthen the supporting muscles of the spine and back, as well as ways to improve flexibility of the spine, especially in the area of the rib cage. 

Today I’m going to address a follow-up question one of our readers left on Shari’s post: 

Something missing for me here: I can't sit cross-legged because my knees won't go down and my ankles can't stand the bend caused by knees less than halfway to the floor. I couldn't do this even when I was young, flexible, and lean. Help? 

This reader highlights a reality that many of my students encounter when trying to take a comfortable seat in yoga: their bodies don’t allow them to sit easily in cross-legged position, not due to lack of work on the poses that can open and strengthen them to improve their ability to sit, but due to structural realities of their bodies. It turns out some people’s skeletons and connective tissue just don’t permit enough movement—particularly in the hip joint—to allow the pelvis and femur bones (thigh bones) to take their ideal positions. This usually becomes apparent after a practitioner has spent a reasonable amount of time trying to improve his or her sitting position without seeing any changes in those joints.

So today I’m going to make some suggestions for those individuals, and I suspect many of our readers fall into that category! First, make sure you have an adequate support under your sitting bones to elevate your entire body for sitting. Shari suggested a folded blanket or pillow on a chair seat to start to get the idea of your hips being slightly higher than your knees. For challenged yogis who are sitting in Seated Crossed Legs position (Sukasana), I suggest sitting on two to three folded blankets, on a block, or on the edge of a firm bolster.

You will have to experiment with how much height you need to get your hips high enough so they are even with or higher then your knees. Sometimes, if your support is high enough, you might feel a release in your pelvis and hip joints, and your knees might drop a bit more than expected, even for those like our questioner today. Second, provide some support under your knees. Using a block on each side may immediately resolve any pain that is occurring in you knees or hips (and maybe even your ankles). If you do all that and your ankles are still uncomfortable, try rolling a blanket and wrapping it around your ankles and under your knees. This alone may support and cushion your ankles and support your knees.Unfortunately, even with all of these props, some of my students are still unable to get comfortable Seated Crossed Legs position. So this is where my personal favorite way to sit comes in: Hero pose (Virasana).In Hero pose, the challenges for your body are different than Seated Crossed Legs position (Sukasana), so you may still need some support. If your knee joints and/or ankles are stiff, the propping I will show here today will likely take care of those difficulties. If your lower spine is stiff or your front thigh muscles are tight, you may still need a lift under your hips to get that slight forward pelvic tilt that allows your lumbar spine (lower spine) to take on its natural curve. In this pose I personally always sit on at least one block on its lowest or middle or lower height, so I suspect you will need to experiment on you own to discover the height that is best for you.

Start by placing a folded blanket on your mat to support your shins. Then kneel on the blanket, with your knees near front of blanket, and your ankles and feet hanging off the back edge. Have your knees hips-distance apart, but splay your shins a bit wider apart in back. Place a block on its lowest or middle height (or a stack of two blocks) sideways between your feet, so both sitting bones can rest on it). Then carefully sit back on the block. Adjust your pelvis, as you might move it in Cat/Cow pose, until your lower back feels like it has a nice natural arch. 

Many practitioners have ankles that are very stiff and inflexible. So if your ankles are uncomfortable in this pose, you can use an additional blanket under your ankles to relieve that tension. (To improve ankle flexibility in the long run, practice poses such as Child’s pose (Balasana) and Cobra pose (Bhujangasana) that stretch your ankles and the tops of your feet.)

Finally, if you do end up adopting Hero pose as your preferred sitting pose, I’d suggest you exit from it carefully—especially if you end up sitting for longer periods of time—because your knees have been deeply flexed in this position. To come out of the pose, carefully shift forward onto hands and knees and stretch one leg at time back behind you to open up your knee joints.

And with whichever sitting pose you choose to work on, as you build strength and flexibility in your spine with our other recommended yoga poses, add in an inner action I call the “inner lift.” This simply means that as you sit, you imagine lengthening up from your sitting bones to the crown of your head through the center of your spine. Notice how long you can maintain this feeling of inner lift before you begin to sag and lose support. Then, try to re-establish the feeling again for a while. If you start to fatigue and can no longer easily maintain your inner lift, stop for the day and note how long you sat. Try to gradually spend more time in your seated position, so that eventually you, like our reader who is preparing for his wedding, will be ready to sit for longer periods of time! 

And if you do find yourself in a situation where you need to spend a long time sitting on the floor and you realize that even in your preferred position your legs are starting to go numb or you are feeling pain, switch to another seated position to give your legs a rest (switching between supported versions of Simple Crossed Legs and Hero pose works well for many of us).

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