Padmasana practice

Yoga Discussion General Yoga
#1

Hi !

I am 34 years old. I started to visit a gym a year ago. I lost a lot of fat. I became stronger. I did both strenght and cardio training. I am not very muscular but I can run 4 miles, and lift my own weight several times, do several pushups and so on. This is not the point. Due to my increased vitality and possible carmic influences, I had to pass a rather painful romantic experience. (I am married and I have a 8 days old baby girl)

The experience made me question my whole life. I managed to get answers through the spiritual path of yoga and also through the Bible and certain antrophosofic literature.
I did practice yoga for a year during college.

I have a practical question. I want to master padmasana. I want to be able to sit in this posture for the required three hours, so l can use it for meditation. I am trying to live by the Yama and Niyama. I am making good progress in that.

Now, I am probably overly zealous, and impatient. After about two weeks of daily practice , I can sit in padmasana 10-15 minutes. In the beginning even a few seconds felt ages.
The problem: lately I can’t enter the posture. My hip and knee articulations feel even more rigid than in the beginning. I do not feel the normal streching feeling, but this sensation of cold stiffness in my hips and knees.

How often should I practice ? Right now I am unable to perform padmasana. I did swithch to vajrasana but I can’t sit in it for more than a few minutes.
And I really want to master only one position for meditational purposes. But I seem to be in front of the wall, and I don’t know what I am doing wrong.

I would be much grateful for any suggestions …

may God bless you all

#2

Well Hubert that is a whole lotta post my yogic chum.

Are we to skip over the subtle mention of your romantic passing? Hmmm.

And then right into asana eh? Okay then.
I am not your teacher, per se, any more than we are all each other’s teachers of course. So I am not in a position to discern if you are over zealous. Perhaps you are. Perhaps you are not.

You’ve slected a particular pose. And you’ve given a brief somewhat logical rationale for the choosing. Who has told you there is a three hour requirement in Padmasana? You know what, it doesn’t really matter who has told you. That’s a digression.

What does matter is that the pose must be accessible to the student in degrees, gradients, progressions, levels. This particular pose, like virasana, elicits misperception in the minds of students. It appears that one can come intop the pose with no issue at all. These two poses are easy to come into in a way that is damaging to the connective tissue. And there are only two ways to really know this without waiting ten years for knee surgery. the first is the watchful eye of a senior teacher. The second is sharp pain in the joint.

When the hips are not open enough for Padmasana to blossom, then the action must go somewhere else and that next elsewhere is the knee joint.
Conside some work in Adrha Padmasana. Also consider this: the path to consciousness does not merely go through padmasana. Meditation does not necessarily own a greater degree of efficacy in 3 hours of padmasana.

You might have a more authentic path coming to grips with where you body is instead of wrestling with where your agenda-filled thought center believes it should be.

Just my two rupees.

#3

Thanks for the reply.

I myself did some research. I realised that I am perfoming Padmasana by forcing my knees and ankles very much, because my hips are stiff. So I’ll have to work on mobility of that area first.

I did practice Ardha Padmasana before Padmasana, as a warm up.

Apparently I was hurrying. And you are right … I chose Padmasana because it is like a symbol of yoga, and I liked my image as a meditating Yogi. :slight_smile:
So I will try a more gentle, more humble approach.

As about a teacher. There is a yoga course in my city … but it has class only one day a week, and there is really no personal teacher. Maybe after a certain level.
I do have notes of my old yoga course where the asanas are well descripted, togheter with their subtler aspects, rules of feeding and conduct. So it is not like I am doing it as a momentarly passion. I know wery well what it is all about, at least in an informative way, and I realise, that I need several years of practice to achieve real benefits.

About my personal life ? I just added the note to give my post a certain gravity. I did suffer greatly. Suffering is a veritable guru, they say. So in a sense, life itself is my guru. I have seen the error in my ways and I made tremendous effort to overcome the odds. Yoga helps me overcome myself, as myself, my limited ego was the real cause of the suffering.

Peace to you all

#4

Understood and you are welcome.

Attend class once a week with the idea of developing a home practice.

#5

Hi Hubert,

I am not one of those lucky people who can do Padmasana easily. One time I almost injured my knee doing it. That’s when I realised I have to be patient and go more slowly. My hips and groins are tight so I do preparatory asanas, such as Pigeon Pose, Cow Face, etc.

Another tip to keep the strain off your knees and ankles: Use a strap fold it in half: put the loop side underneath your left thigh (loop is now in between your legs, the other end of the strap on the lift side of your left leg), put the “2 end side of the strap” around the middle part of your thigh and through the loop. Now tighten the strap and with the help of the strap rotate your thigh bone outward (i.e. inner thigh is moving upward, outer thigh down) and go into half lotus with this leg.
Basically the strap assists you in an outward rotation of the thigh bone.

If you have stiff hips this helps you to work on the rotation on your femur rather than twisting your knee and risking injury.

#6

Two more tips for padmasana:

  1. Fold a blanket and put in under your bottom. Heightening the bottom reduces the tension in hip joints. After a few weeks of practise, when you’ll notice your joints have adapted to Padmasana in this situation, you may unfold the blanket, so it will keep your bottom to a smaller distance from the floor. Continue to practise and unfold the blanket until you can eliminate it totally.

  2. In the morning, all people have stiffer joints than in the evening, becouse of kapha dosha accumulation. That is why you should perform easy asanas in the mornings and leave the difficult ones for the evenings.

In yoga, you don’t need to push yourself beyond your natural limits. It is not productive, nor safe.
For meditation, all you need is a stable and comfortable posture. In a difficult posture, with aching limbs, your mind&energy go with the pain - how could you be able to meditate?

Please, do not consider unhappiness and pain as gurus of your life. This would be a good consolation only for a week person - you don’t seem to be such a person!
So let the door open for happiness and pleasure to be your gurus, also. :slight_smile:

#7

Thank you all for the tips, and the kind thoughts.

I made a pause with Padmasana (I will come back to it when I am able … right now even Sukhasana brings a little disconfort ), and chose, other easier asanas. Those what I usually disregarded as too “easy”. Like Talasana, or Jivabalasana. And I reduced the time, I never exceed the recomended times, which is like 15-30 seconds to a minute in the beginning. But I do practice every day. Aasanas indeed are a great way to still the mind.

Right now what seems most difficult is to maintain my calm and positive attitude among more “worldly” minded people. And to avoid the beginners pride. Once you start a spiritual road, the temptation to consider yourself better than other people is great. I judge people instantly. Than I am ashamed of it. I have to practice compassion … but … it does not come just by wanting.

PS. to donna: I am a weak person. :slight_smile: But I do listen to beatuful music, I like to eat sattvic food, or watch sunrises. I love my wife and baby girl very much. Just that I did not saw them as my gurus until you did not bring my attention to this. Thank you. :slight_smile: