photo by Amy Treasure via Unsplash
presence practices

Can I Meditate Lying Down?

Everybody settled onto the floor. We were swaddled by the sounds of shuffling limbs, the sighs of tired people arranging themselves, the rubbery sweat-smell of the yoga studio.

It was my first live yoga class and we’d finally arrived at the snoozy part.

Shavasana!

Savasana!

शवासन !

Then came the instructor’s voice.

He started giving quiet instructions. Specific guidance on how to align our bodies, bit by bit, so that we were laid out on our mats as if we were resting. But really, we were doing a lot. He was directing us to hold our bodies in this precisely aligned way. He was asking us to hold our awareness in this precisely aligned way. And to not snooze.

It was way more work than I had expected it to be. I thought this was the resting bit, the bit where we got to blow off all the effort, and the attention, and just drift away a little. But, no.

This happened in my first live yoga class and I was being very obedient. I have since done Shavasana many times and have often occasionally drifted away. I’m much kinder to myself about that these days.

But I have never forgotten that slight sense of shock at learning that you could lie down on the floor like that and not let go into dreaminess, but have it be a very rigorous practice of paying attention.

Sit Upright, Cross Legs, Face Forward

When I took that first yoga class, I had been meditating for a while in the Zen tradition. And even though my earliest experience of meditation practice was through using guided meditation recordings, I had decided that real meditation involved sitting on a cushion in a formal posture.

I didn’t think about it much, but if you’d asked me I wouldn’t have thought of lying down to meditate as being very useful. The only time I’d seen it happen recently was on a retreat when someone had some kind of injury and couldn’t sit up straight. Otherwise, it seemed like an invitation for a nap.

The idea that meditation involved sitting upright, crosslegged, facing forward was very ingrained with me.

It’s not like my practice was going that well. Whenever I sat, my body became a battleground of stiff limbs, knots of unresolved traumas, and grinding jaws trying to clamp down on all of this as well as an unrelenting wave of useless, critical thinking.

Pushing hard made sense at the time. I thought that if I meditated hard enough, correctly enough, that some kind of awakening would wash away all my difficulties.

That experience of meditation as a fight did ease, and as my relationship with the practice softened I got a lot of benefit from it.

Then I came across yoga nidra, a guided meditation practice that you generally do while lying down.

And.

When I began this daily practice of lying down to meditate I learned a whole lot.

The Gift Of Yoga Nidra

The reason I’ve been thinking so much about lying down to meditate is that my main daily practice for the last two years has been Yoga Nidra. In fact, a few months ago I became an I-Rest Yoga Nidra teacher in training.

Yoga Nidra is a form of awareness meditation you do (mostly) lying down, and after practicing for a while now, I’ve found that instead of lying down being a signal to my body to automatically fall asleep, it has now become a signal to wake up more.

That sounds weird, but it’s true. Hundreds of hours of Yoga Nidra has changed some set of neural pathways in my brain and now, whenever I lie down, my awareness starts scanning the body and noticing what’s going on in there automatically.

After laying down to sleep I nearly always launch into an informal body scan and often fall asleep that way. I often wake up that way too, my eyes open, I look around a little and then start noticing and following sensations in my body as the muscles wake up and I start moving around.

Yoga Nidra is about self kindness, and restoration. It’s also a very physical practice, and has completely changed my relationship to meditation. My meditation practice (sitting or lying) has become much gentler and kinder. That, alone, has been a great gift. There will definitely be plenty of Yoga Nidra inspired posts on this blog in the future, but for today let’s hang out with this idea of lying down to meditate, and what that can offer.

Some Things I learned While Lying Down To Meditate:

If you are exhausted at the end of a busy day and your mind is racing, lying down can be a great way to get grounded in the body and give your mind a chance to settle.

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A great way to increase your chances of staying awake is lie down on the floor or on a yoga mat. Lying on the bed makes it more difficult to stay alert and awake.

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Guided meditation is a great practice to do while lying down, and especially helpful if you are new to meditation. They were my first experience of meditation, way before I ever visited a meditation group. Think of the instructions as scaffolding for your practice. They help save mental energy that can then used to on simply maintain awareness, rather than worrying if you’re doing it right or if you should change your breathing, or your posture.

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You can sense through your back! We spend so much time facing forward, concentrating all of our attention and life energy into the three feet of space in front of us, it’s as if our backs don’t even exist sometimes.

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When you meditate lying down on the floor you get to feel how your back relates to the support underneath you. You can feel where your back has tensed up and lifts off the floor for no apparent reason, and the soft parts where it naturally sinks into the floor. And you notice after a while that all of this information is in flux. It’s a whole living system of tensing, and softening, and movement between. Through a regular practice of lying down meditation there is much more awareness of how you can sense things through your back, how this is a living, sensing part of you.

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It doesn’t have to make you sleepy. Sometimes it will, but is that really a bad thing. Sometimes you just need to rest, and if you’re not rested enough your mediation is going to be a pretty difficult exercise in staying awake and focused. If your body needs to sleep, let it sleep a little. When it’s more refreshed, let it meditate.

Walking, Standing, Sitting, Lying Down

In Buddhism they talk about the four meditation postures as being walking, standing, sitting and lying down. So there doesn’t seem to be any problem there with lying down to meditate. Any opposition to lying down meditation has mostly been a thing in my own mind, and it’s been a great experience to get past that limiting idea.

The practice of meditation, of cultivating awareness, is more than an exercise in moulding yourself into any particular form. It’s about finding awareness wherever you can, in whatever state, posture, or circumstance you happen to find yourself.

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16 Comments

  • Reply David Speidel March 8, 2016 at 4:37 am

    I love yoga/meditation. I haven’t done it in a few but it really relaxes me when I do. I never did a class before, only those beginner YouTube videos. Are the classes worth going to? I was always interested in hot yoga, seems fun haha!

  • Reply Dave Rowley March 9, 2016 at 11:36 pm

    Hi David, I started doing yoga videos well before doing a live class. Going to an actual class made a huge difference, I highly recommend it. Not so sure about hot yoga, though! That sounds a bit much for me. 🙂

  • Reply Reba Linker March 11, 2016 at 8:03 pm

    I often meditate lying down (yes, sometimes I fall asleep!) and it does allow for a relaxation of the body that can be challenging sitting up. (Yes, I’ve fallen asleep while meditating sitting up as well!) I enjoyed reading about how lying down has become a signal to greater awareness for you. Inspiring post! Blessings, Reba

    • Reply Dave Rowley March 11, 2016 at 11:49 pm

      I’ve fallen asleep while meditating sitting up too! Thanks for your thoughts, Reba. Cheers 🙂

  • Reply Marianne Soucy March 11, 2016 at 9:05 pm

    Thank you for this post. I love yoga nidra and have been doing it for years. It’s perfect after a yoga program, and I’ve also found it is very helpful to do if you can’t fall asleep at night.

    • Reply Dave Rowley March 11, 2016 at 11:50 pm

      Thanks Marianne. I have really come to love yoga nidra too. And yes, it’s super helpful when you can’t fall asleep.

  • Reply Vivi M March 11, 2016 at 10:01 pm

    This was very interesting and I’ve really wanted to get more into yoga and meditation as a stress reliever.

    • Reply Dave Rowley March 11, 2016 at 11:51 pm

      Hi Vivi, Thanks for reading and commenting. Yoga and meditation are a great way to relieve stress. Good luck!

  • Reply Iman Brooks March 11, 2016 at 11:37 pm

    I love this! I have had a hard time meditate since becoming a mom. It was not until I tried lying down that I realized I could not fully relax sitting (i’m on the go all day with my son). Lying down really gives my body a chance to relax thus giving my mind the chance to. Great post.

    • Reply Dave Rowley March 11, 2016 at 11:53 pm

      Hi Iman, Yes it can be hard to find time to meditate when you’re a busy parent. It can be done though. It’s great that you’ve found lying down to be helpful there. Thanks for stopping by!

  • Reply Uma Srinivas March 16, 2016 at 8:46 pm

    I like Shavasana! my favorite part 🙂 In my pregnancy time I used to go for yoga class, waiting for the last part shavasana, It gives so much relaxation. Entire body get energetic 🙂 Love to go again! I liked your posts all are well written.

    • Reply Dave Rowley March 17, 2016 at 5:02 pm

      Hi Uma,

      I’m with you on loving Shavasana. And you’re right about feeling that energy, all that goodness from the asanas moving through your body and integrating as you lie there. So good!

  • Reply Flavia March 16, 2016 at 9:27 pm

    Lovely post! I love yoga and thought that I could only meditate after practicing it, but after some trials I’m now meditating everyday and it makes a world of difference…

    • Reply Dave Rowley March 17, 2016 at 5:10 pm

      Hi Flavia,
      Yoga is a wonderful lead in to meditation as it can really help the body to settle. It’s so great you’re meditating very day, having a regular practice is so important. I’m glad you liked the post 🙂

  • Reply Bev April 6, 2016 at 10:46 pm

    I just started using the headspace app and am signing up for a meditation class that they have for free in my city. I cannot wait to put some of your tips into practice.

  • Reply LaKisha Riddick April 7, 2016 at 12:02 am

    This is very interesting. I know I would have difficulty with not falling asleep. Guided meditation would probably be very helpful.

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