Can I meditate while standing? Driving? Biking? Walking? Talking??? I get it. We all want to reach that blissed out feeling 24/7. So what's the best way to get there? Will standing meditation hurt or help? These questions and more will be answered in today's episode. I'll talk about the benefits to sitting meditation, why we sit, and what kind of effects standing will have on our practice.
While we may not wish to stand while meditating, I also dive into the best way to turn every activity into a meditation practice, from standing to eating, walking or waiting.
Please enjoy other episodes where Todd shares meditation techniques, tips and spiritual lessons from around the world for peaceful and stress-free living. Remember to subscribe to stay up-to-date.
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Welcome to path to peace with Todd Perelmuter,
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where he shares the lessons he's learned. spending nine years living with gurus, monks, and shamans,
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across 35 countries and five continents.
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Join in the journey as he brings some healing wisdom for living your best life.
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The path to peace, love, health, and happiness starts here
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Hello, and welcome back to path to peace with Todd Perelmuter. I'm your host, Todd PErelmuter. And today, the question is, can I meditate standing? And the answer is,
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I sure bet you can. I'm not so sure you should. Because when we're standing, we're not actually truly able to meditate, we're also having to maintain our balance. And our body is constantly shifting. And we are constantly making adjustments. So we're not really still as much as we are when we're sitting still. And when we're sitting firmly rooted into the ground, in a very strong base and posture, that stillness of the body translates into a stillness of the mind, it has a calming effect on its own, when we're standing, we're still using a lot more energy, we're not fully able to allow our body to reach that rest, digest recover phase, where the body can enter when it's very relaxed, because standing is a much more kind of on alert position.
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So if you have the option, I highly recommend
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doing any kind of sitting for meditation, sitting is kind of that in between state between lying down, and standing or walking. And that's appropriate, because meditation is that center, balancing line, between alert and relaxed, you're fully alert and aware, but you're fully in deep peace, as well. And meditation trains us to approach all of life like that. Whatever occurs, we're alert, and attentive to it.
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But we are not
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disturbing our inner peace about it. You know, everything we experience falls under this perspective, of happy or sad love or hate, and every positive has its negative, but peace. And that deep, inner joy and peace that comes from nothing at all, whether it's good or bad, it's just always this inner peace, that which is the center, it has no opposite. And we can be at that center point of peace forever, because there is no swinging back the other way for a balance to occur, because we are in full balance.
And I think that's really what gives the seated posture, its power, because you really become deeply grounded in that position. And in meditation, you can really relax deeply into your meditation. When you have that strong base of support, not to relax that you might fall asleep, but not too effortful, that it disturbs our inner peace.
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And so in this position, you can really let go
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in the most maximum way that worrying about falling asleep or getting tired and being drowsy.
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I will say this. While I don't recommend
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standing meditation
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I do recommend turning standing into a meditation. So what I mean by this is, anytime you're standing, you're in line for something, or
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you're waiting for something, try observing your thoughts, while you're thinking about, notice the nature of your thoughts. And then bring your attention to you and yourself standing in this space, and try to stay there for as long as possible, fully being, wherever you are. And it doesn't matter if you've never been there. Or if you've been there 1000 times.
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There's always so much to observe, in the present moment, no two moments are like, whether we're standing, and we're trying not to fall over, in addition to meditating, or if we're biking or walking, and we want to, you know, try to meditate while we're doing that, but really, we're making sure we don't get killed by a car, or bump into something. And so these activities can be very meditative in that they bring us into the present moment, and they give our minds time to process our thoughts and experiences. But meditation is about taking away all that activity,
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and focusing just on the experience of being in the present moment. This is what trains our mind to be able to do that behind the scenes in whatever we're doing the rest of our day. So the more we can get rid of all doing this in our meditation, the more we can put our mental power towards developing the skills of focus, and insight in gratitude and awareness, and all the other benefits that meditation
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produces.
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Thank you so much for listening to path to peace. I'm your host Todd PErelmuter. Thank you so much peace and love.
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Peace and Love