I'm sure all of you from time to time get physical pain. Sometimes it's going to be your posture and sometimes it's not going to be your posture. But it is helpful to check your posture. We have what we call the meditation pain that comes no matter what, you keep your body still and pain arises. But some people may not be sitting in a way that is right for them.
Now for me personally, sitting flat with no pillow is fine. The minute I sit on a pillow I get more pain in my butt. For Rosemary, if she sits flat, her legs fall asleep but if she sits on a little pillow, they don't fall asleep. You've got to adjust it yourself, and hopefully you have, but if you haven't, keep experimenting, see what happens. If you can sit cross-legged, if you can sit half-lotus, fine, parallel, whatever you can do.
Sometimes if you sit with legs parallel and tension comes in the shoulders, you may need prop up you hands a little in the lap as you don't have the foot in the half lotus raising them. You may also need to prop up the tight knee with pillows under it, until it stretches sufficiently.
If you are younger than me, try to sit half lotus if you're able. In the beginning, perhaps for the shorter sits to train the posture. But if you get too much pain, of course relax it and so on.
Most meditators do not push their limits very much at all, especially in the sitting posture. We've never said push the limits aggressively so that you're super tough but little by little. Listen well tomorrow night, so you work with the methods for observing unpleasant physical sensation so you can sit a little longer before you move.
If you can sit still for twenty-five minutes, why not 26, why not 27, there's limits of course, but most people, I find, never push even the slightest bit. If they get any pain or discomfort, they simply do not want it.
One of our students in their tenth retreat, day 5 morning after I'd given the Unpleasant Physical Sensations' talk the night before, wrote a note and said, "Steve, I've now heard that talk ten times, I guess maybe I should try to do it." They had never yet used this technique in a meditation retreat.
So when you hopefully wif hear the talk again tomorrow night, listen to it, hear what I'm suggesting and then see if you can expand your capacity to work with the sensations in your sitting posture even if it's only one or two extra minutes without hurting yourself, without macho mind. We're not doing this to be a Rambo or whatever, we're just doing it to see how well we can be there with discomfort and not react to the discomfort.
It's such a major important part of the practice, working with our reactions. Reaction, reaction, reaction. How many times do we say in one retreat, I'm not sure, maybe 100. The Unpleasant Physical Sensations technique is one way that we actually test our reaction to ourselves, our own physical body. How does that then relate in your normal life? When somebody says something to you which you don't like, or you read something in the papers you don't like, or the roof is broken and you don't like it, a refrigerator door doesn't work right you don't like it, all those aversions come from unpleasant experiences. That's what this technique tomorrow night is going to help you with, so you can react wisely to unpleasant experiences. It's not just physical, but what we talk about tomorrow night is mainly physical with that little bit I mention at the end about mental reactions. If you can sit still with a little bit of pain in your knee that's not real, it's not the real pain but a meditation pain, as much as you can sit there and be comfortable with it, you're going to be more comfortable in your whole life, with every negative thing that comes to you.