My sitting posture was evolving as I sat regularly and for longer. The thrift store cushion and stack of books had served their purpose. I was ready to create from scratch my own stable, comfortable support for my meditation practice. Not having it in my budget to buy myself a cushion, I decided to use my skills to design and sew one for myself and incorporate into its shape what I imagined would best suit my needs. The body awareness gained from yoga, tai chi and massage proved valuable when I thought about my sitting posture from an ergonomic perspective. Of course comfort was paramount. Yoga and tai chi seemed to contain an element of stillness within their scripted movements. Even in motion, especially deliberate, mindful motion there is an element of balanced stillness. Each was on some level of meditation in motion. During seated meditation you will also find movement. Your breath flowing in lifts your shoulders. Your ribcage expands and then contracts with your breath flowing out again. Your spine lengthens upward a little on the inbreath, shortening again on the outbreath. You might even notice your pelvis rolling slightly forward and back again with each cycle of your breathing.
Over time I began playing around with my meditation setup by shoving a couple coffee table books under the back half of the red velvet cushion to add an inch or two to the height. I discovered if I boosted my butt up a bit higher off the floor, but not too high, I could find a height at which my knees, feet and ankles would come down onto the blanket below the cushion and allow me to draw my feet up and ankles up snug to my torso. The new mockup felt much more stable and much more comfortable, but still a work in progress.
During another makeover I sculpted in a curved recess at the front of the cushion big enough to fit either one of my heels when it was drawn up close to me – a heel cradle. The sole of my foot lie in contact along the front of the cushion next to the indent. This had the effect of rolling my calves away from me as I bent my legs completely, so the outer portion of my calves, the outer edges of my feet and the knobs of my ankles were now positioned to lie flatter on the pad and not dig into it and cause discomfort and restlessness.
My sitting posture was evolving as I sat regularly and for longer. The thrift store cushion and stack of books had served their purpose. I was ready to create from scratch my own stable, comfortable support for my meditation practice. Not having it in my budget to buy myself a cushion, I decided to use my skills to design and sew one for myself and incorporate into its shape what I imagined to best suit my needs.
The actual shape it would take was still uncertain, but I knew that would likely come to me born of my own felt body awareness, and the many small adjustments I had made to my seated posture over the previous year.
As to materials, I had plenty of fabric choices on hand from the happi coat enterprise. I cut out the basic grapefruit section shape – two pieces, one for the top, one for the bottom and a tapering wraparound sidewall that when sewn in place would give the finished cushion a sloping profile: higher in the back and sloping down to the front edge. Thinking I was onto something, I stitched it together, leaving an open slot at the rear where I could load in the cushion stuffing. Another thing I had on hand was an older reading bed pillow that coincidentally was stuffed with kapok fiber* known to be a wonderful stuffing for cushion because if is soft and doesn’t lump up over time like polyester fiber, cotton batting, shredded foam or the environmentally awful Styrofoam microbeads, but here was 10 pounds of kapok fiber at my disposal to run many reshaping experiments.
It wasn’t long before I had a cushion sewn and stuffed and ready to use in my daily sits. Instead of the squishy chopped foam, I stuffed firmly enough with kapok fiber that it didn’t collapse under my weight and still resilient and good at padding my sit bones nicely. By sitting on it and adjusting my posture, I immediately realized the cushion was a noticeable improvement in comfort and stability. My breath flow was aided quite naturally by the slope of the cushion which gave length to the front of my chest in a way that made my inbreath deeper and more effortless. Breathing diaphragmatic first into my lower abdomen, then into my ribcage, and finally up into the tops of my lungs. Breathing now took on a very rhythmic circular quality. I had experienced while doing yoga and tai chi what pranic energy or chi felt like when they flow unimpeded in the body. **
Often as I sat meditating the question bubbled up in my mind “what would make my cushion more comfortable? More ergonomically supportive?”
I continued to repeat the process of taking the cushion completely apart so I could redraw the shape of each piece of fabric. I altered the pieces in ways I thought would move in the direction of better support and comfort and stitched the new pieces together.
It was usually a couple of months between each iteration of the cushion and that I refined my sense of where to add or subtract from the 3D form beneath me. By the fifth or sixth version the changes I made were smaller and smaller.
At times the cushion literally seemed to disappear altogether. I could not really feel its presence below me and any pain or strain I often felt in my lower body while sitting disappeared along with it. The cushion now felt ideally shaped to offer me the stable support and long-lasting comfort I had been searching for.
I found joyful satisfaction in the journey I had taken to create a meditation cushion so well suited to my own body’s posture and ergonomics. It was a pleasure to find it inviting me to meditate each morning.