Larry has given me permission to post his experience of the posture lesson on the website. Here is the letter that he wrote after attending the lesson:

Phil,

Thank you so much for your posture instruction for sitting meditation. I have been practicing sitting meditation for 35+ years and teaching meditation for 20+ years. Being involved with the Buddhist practice I've sat primarily on a cushion for that entire time. Occasionally, when the discomfort would become unbearable I would sit on a chair for my practice. I have also practiced yoga on and off that entire period. After all those years of practice I had resigned myself to the fact that I was a westerner who had grown up sitting in chairs instead of on the floor and I would never find complete physical comfort sitting on a meditation pillow during long retreats.

While I had gotten to a point where I could sit for an hour or two at a time without much pain, any more than that and I would begin to develop distracting pain in my middle back and hips. While I was sitting crossed legged I'd also have problems with my right leg falling asleep. Over time, I had convinced myself that the pain was just another distraction to be dealt with through concentration and mindfulness.

Your simple three and a half hour class was an eye opener for me. It gave me a new perspective on which physical discomforts were those to be dealt with mindfulness and which ones could be relieved through a simple re-alignment of my posture. As I have often learned through my yoga practice, doing what seems "natural" is not necessarily helpful or beneficial. Over the years, through over use or under use, muscles become too tight or too loose. Alignment becomes distorted. In sitting, particularly in my back, I had begun to use muscles to hold or control areas of my body that weren't designed to hold those areas.

After years of meditation practice I had assumed that I had established my "natural" sitting position. Instead, your class showed me that I had been ever so slightly out of alignment in my sitting which had in turn caused my back muscles to become strained and tense as I sat. This is extremely difficult to discover in oneself, much less to discover the "correct" position, as we are sitting there with our eyes closed and only have a kind of mental picture of how our body is configured at that moment. This mental picture may or may not conform to the reality of my actual sitting posture. In my case it didn't.

By having someone else, particularly some like yourself with thirty years of chiropractic/structural experience, observing my sitting posture and making subtle adjustments, I've gained relief from much of the physical discomfort I had resigned myself to. Your class taught me not only to understand the how's and why's of sitting comfortably but gave me a personal understanding of a beneficial sitting posture. This understanding has helped me deepen not only my own practice but also support others in their efforts.

Keep up the good work. If someone who is considering your class would like to talk to someone who has gained from the experience please feel free to give them my name and phone number and/or email address.

Thanks again,
Larry Baker

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