In this instructional video, Chad Woodford explains how to find a comfortable seated position for meditation, pranayama, and kriya within his Elemental Yoga practice. He emphasizes the importance of maintaining a tall, long spine with minimal muscular effort, and recommends elevating the hips with props (blocks, bolsters, blankets, cushions) when hip flexibility is limited. Chad walks through several seated postures—starting with the beginner‑friendly cross‑legged Sukhasana, then moving to traditional poses such as Siddhasana/Siddhyonasana, the fire‑log pose (Agni Dambasana), heel‑based seats like Vajrasana and Virasana—highlighting alignment cues, common challenges (tight hips, ankle sensitivity), and prop modifications to achieve a neutral pelvis and comfortable balance. He also advises on building a simple home prop kit to support a regular meditation or kriya practice. The tone is instructional and supportive, aimed at beginners seeking practical, low‑effort solutions for seated yoga work.
Chapters
Hello and welcome. Today I thought we'd talk about how to find a comfortable seat. I feel like it's so important for so many aspects of yoga practice, whether it's meditation or pranayama and kriya, and we don't talk enough about it, I think. So I just thought I'd spend a few minutes talking about what your options are for seating Sitting comfortably and how important it is. And then in a later video, maybe I'll talk about how to open the hips more to get more comfortable sitting. But anybody, I just want to start by saying, anybody can find a way to sit comfortably in these positions and these practices. So in the style of yoga that I teach, Elemental Yoga, it's very kriya-based, pranayama and kriya-based. And so we do, in the journeys and the classes, we do end up Sitting quite a bit and doing these seated practices, and for some people that can be challenging in the beginning. So, what to do? Well, you know, not everyone has open hips, and it's important to use props if you need to, to elevate the hips. So the goal is, in these practices, you know, whether it's kriya or even just meditation, the goal is to have a tall and a long spine, In a way that's comfortable and uses a minimum amount of effort. And so you don't want to be sort of slouched back and then having to use, you know, your muscles around the core and lower back and everything to be kind of pushing yourself up and then holding yourself there, using all this effort. You know, this is a lot of effort to hold yourself tall. I mean, sometimes you're sitting for half an hour, right, if you're meditating. So, So there's a lot of things you can do. If you have tight hips, the first thing to do is to just get comfortable with the fact that you may need to elevate the hips quite a bit. And what that means is sitting on some combination of blocks, bolsters, blankets, and maybe a meditation cushion if you have one, until you find a place where you can just kind of sit there, Comfortably. I use this meditation cushion for myself, but when I get to a place where you can sit comfortably, and you're just balanced there, your spine is tall, you're not using much effort at all, your pelvis is relatively sort of neutral and level with the floor. That's the that's the goal. And so here you can see I've got relatively open hips, and so I'm able to sit in what's called Agni Agni Dambasana or Fire Log Pose. But there are plenty of other perfectly good seated positions, and I'll walk us through them right now. And so if you have tight hips, you know you want to elevate the hips like I said, but you also probably want to use Sukhasana. Which is simple cross-legged pose. And so here, your shins are just crossing in front of you, and then, you know, you can have your knees up maybe this high, however, you know, however it has to be in the beginning. And then if your hips aren't high enough, you may want to add an extra layer of support until you are. Your hips are generally, you want to have them like level with or above your knees. And so if your knees are really high, You may have to elevate a little bit. So that's Sukhasana, and so that's a great place to start, and I think you'll find that's where most people start, and that's a great place to be. In this one too, you'll find that your feet, in the beginning, if you haven't been sitting this way very often, the edges of your feet or your ankles may get tired after a few minutes, or just get sensitive. And so part of that is Learning to just sit with that discomfort, and maybe the foot falls asleep. But also, you want to start doing other practices that help you to open up the ankles and toughen up the feet and all that. So that's outside the scope of this video, but you may encounter that challenge as well. So that's Sukhasana. And then from there, I can talk about traditional yoga practices, yoga poses for sitting. There's Siddhasana, where you bring For men, the left heel into the perineum, and then the right goes on top, and you're sitting this way. This is probably the easiest way for a lot of people who have open hips, at least this is the easiest way to sit tall without a prop. So you're sitting here, there's secondary benefits to having the heels into the perineum, but That's a topic for another video as well. And so this is, this is another good option if you can get there, something you can practice. And again, there's, there's certain positions that will help to open the hips and get you into shape for this pose. And then for women, I think traditionally you start with the right heel in and then the left comes over. That's Siddhasana or Siddhyonasana. And a couple other, just to close it out. There is, there are 2 variations of this sitting on the heels, so to speak. So there's Vajrasana, Vajrasana here. And here you've got the knees together, the thighs are together, the feet are together, and you're sitting back onto the heels. In our practice, we have the right toe going over the left toe. To complete a circuit of energy that balances the sun and moon energies in the body. And you're just sitting there, and here you can see you'll have a tall spine as well, relatively easily. The challenge for this one, in this one, for most people is that in the beginning, your ankles will be a little tight, and so you'll feel that tightness, and the tops of your feet may not be conditioned for bearing weight, And so, if that's the case, you can sit on a blanket like I'm doing here. You can actually have a folded up blanket in between your legs. That can actually take some of the pressure off. That's worked for me in the past. And if you need to be up pretty high, that's okay too. You can have a bolster in between in the beginning. And so, you just want to ease into these things. And then, just for completeness, there's Virasana, which is where your heels are apart. This is a different pose. And here, ideally, your sit bones are on the floor here, and your knees are still together, mostly, and you want to kind of move the flesh of the calves out from underneath your thighs to give you some space, and then you're just sitting in between the heels. Now, my butt doesn't touch the floor, so I would need a prop, like a block, or perhaps a blanket to hold me up in this one. But this is a pose that we use for specific purposes in the practice. There are some kriyas where we use vajrasana, but generally virasana is just part of a sort of asana yoga sequence position. So that's seated postures. Hope that helps. If you're definitely interested in building a dedicated meditation or kriya practice, for yourself, you could invest in some simple props for your home, and that'll give you a lot more comfort and a lot more encouragement as you start to practice more at home. So I hope that was helpful, and again, my name is Chad. I teach elemental yoga, and I look forward to seeing you again. Thank you, and namaste.
