RSS FeedsBack Misalignment When Sitting
I was looking around for information on what happens to your back when your hips aren’t elevated properly, and I found this site, Prapattiprops. It’s power for the cause on why we all need a meditation cushion if we sit regularly. Now this site has a sizing poster (follow the link on the site) that tells you all you need to know about how your back slips out of alignment if your hips are too high or too low, or not elevated at all.
In general terms, your spine is designed to sit with three curves in it if our alignment is perfect. If our sitting position is not correct it can cause our spine to drift out of alignment and place pressure on various parts of our back, in the long run this could cause or exacerbate back problems.
If your hips are sitting flat on the floor or not elevated at all, the spine curves back, and this tends to make you crunch in an attempt to stabilise yourself and hold yourself vertical. If you check out the poster on the website above, the graphic shows how your spine gets all scrunched up, and this is going to put pressure on your lower back, which isn’t comfortable if you’re sitting for a long time.
Likewise, if your meditation cushion is too big and your hips are too high, it causes excessive curvature of the lower back, again putting pressure on it.
Sitting for too long in the wrong position is bound to cause some stiffness, and might even give you some pain, neither of which will help your back, nor will they help your meditation.
So in summary, the graphic on Prapattiprops sums it up beautifully, getting the wrong size for your cushion will cause curvature and pressure on the lower back, you’ll be able to tell because you won’t feel comfortable whilst you’re sitting, and you can adjust the height of your meditation cushion to find your correct alignment
