Getting more comfortable sitting in 正座 (seiza)

Question

We often end up sitting in 正座 (seiza) for some time during class. This is much longer during demonstrations and gradings. In addition, a whole corpus of techniques (suwari waza, ghosin no kata) do start from seiza.

Most of us westerners did not have the benefit of sitting in seiza during our childhood, thus prolonged periods of time are just painful. In my case, it's the legs that go to sleep and get really stiff.

Is there anything one can do to increase one's ability to cope with sitting in seiza?

To get better at something you have to do more of that thing. This is kind of obvious. It is the how and why a specific set of exercises will improve safely my ability to sit in seiza that I am interested in.

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⚠ None of the current answers go beyond "just do more of it" which is lazy advise. Clearly, the way to get better at something is to do more of that. That is obvious. I am looking for an effective and safe way to improve. The bounty was not awarded to anyone.

Answer 1

The best thing I found was to try and sit in seiza more often. This helps to get used to the position and will also help you to find your "sweet spot". For me that is with my weight on top of my feet with the ankles pushing out.

Outside of just sitting in seiza try to stretch out quads before and after as that also helps with position. - Disclaimer my issues with seiza was tight quads.

Further investigation has yielded this video on how to practice seiza. It covers the use of pillow to help support your weight (between the legs, not underneath) and various stretches.

I also uncovered this forum post which again offers a variety of methods for practising seiza. Unfortunately both involve sitting in seiza which could constitute to "Do more of it" and neither are peer reviewed or sourced. Hope it helps though.

Answer 2

The most important part is doing exercises that stretch your quads. One efficient one is this: Sit on your knees, shins against the ground (like in seiza), then lean back, trying to put your shoulders and upper back on the floor behind you. Knees and legs should remain in full contact of the floor.

Answer 3

If you spend part of your day in front of a laptop, find a low table and spend part of that time sitting on the floor, in seiza, legs crossed, legs streched, whatever. It will give you flexibility and improve circulation on your legs.

You can also go for having some of your meals on the low table, Japanese style.

Answer 4

I don't know if this will help you, but I've gotten great results from foam rolling and using a tennis ball to work out trigger points in my thighs and calves. I used to get stiff, painful knees and hips from seiza, which sounds different than you, but the "magic bullet" for my knees was the tennis ball work. A lot of knee issues stem from knotted calves, which isn't super obvious. I never would've believed rolling a tennis ball on my calves would possibly help my knees, but it was literally magical. Your mileage may vary but it won't hurt to try (actually it will hurt a lot, but it's a good hurt :) ). Stretching and rolling are totally different in my experience; I can stretch my calves all day and it won't get rid of the knots that a tennis ball will. Same with quads.

Answer 5

I recommend picking up a yoga block and placing it between the legs so that it supports the butt. Start with the block in the highest position, then after you get comfortable in this height (could be a few months) then move to the medium height until comfortable, then the smallest height until you get comfortable and finally remove the block. Wishing you all the best in your training.

Answer 6

In The New Rules of Posture, Mary Bond suggests two modifications to seiza if this position causes strain.

1. If kneeling causes strain in your knees, put a cushion between your thighs and buttocks and sit on the cushion.

   The accompanying illustration suggests this cushion should actually be separate the buttocks from the ankles and the thighs from the calves. If your quads are tight, this will reduce the demand on them by increasing the angle at your knee joint. This is in contrast with trying to keep your legs on the ground and lean back to stretch starting from seiza, which is more demanding.

2. If the position strains your ankles and feet, place a rolled towel under your ankles.

   Similarly to 1, this will allow you to start from a less demanding position by reducing the required angle at your ankles.

The section on seiza is very meager; most of the book is not about this particular position.

Presumably if you have strain in both your knees and your ankles, then you can use the cushioning in both areas.

I do not have personal experience with these methods.

Answer 7

My strategy for learning how to sit like this was for meditation as I fully lacked better sitting positions, I personally found it very comfortable until my muscles and body screamed at me. MY default sitting positions and lack of crouching for extended periods result in this position to be heavily difficult for me. My strategy was to do the following:

1. Get a seiza sitting position setup. I have an office chair that I put around 6-7 inches of cushion on, namely a thick blanket and a bed pillow, the blanket being folded up. Sit in the Seiza position for as long as you can, then change on sitting on your rear with both legs still bent, however is most comfortable. I swap between these two and while in the normal-for-me sitting position (not seiza) I tend to also flex my toes or fidget my knee up and down with my feet. My plan is to get to a point where I can keep the position comfortably for an entire straight hour and only then will I begin to slide my feet forward and assume a more-stretched position for my ankles. As someone who used to stretch their arms behind their head very regularly and eventually go to a point where for half my life I can touch my brain stem with my own elbow without using my other arm (can lick the elbow's tip with help from my other arm) this is more or less the best option.

Comfortable seiza sitting requires that you build flexibility, and if you can't assume the position even slightly yet, the next point will be what you can do.

2. Things you can do, all will help, do them as much as you can manage.

A. Walk on your tiptoes like you're pretending your feet are hooves and you're a minotaur (maze and murder excluded).

B. When stretching your leg so your foot touches or gets close to your rear, hold that position for 20 seconds at a time and do those repeatedly (I say 3 times) 20 seconds apart.

C. Hold a squatting position with your thighs and calves touching, lean forward if you have to. You are on tiptoes with this one.

D. Assume a situp position, something used to weigh your feet down as if you were going to do situps as if you couldn't keep your feet on the floor. Legs bent and feet outstretched as much as you can manage.

The great thing about building flexibility is that downtime from attempts are more important than the stretching. As a kid, the above arm stretching mentioned prior was only performed maybe 2-3 times per day for maybe 10 seconds straight, I simply touched my arm to its jointed-shoulder and stretched it backwards and did this repeatedly for weeks. Eventually my arm became flexibile enough that I've never needed backscratchers.

You are building flexibility more than anything else and for that, taking it slow and easy is important. Your exercises are ultimately all stretches and as such it will take time.

There is no shortcut to building flexibility and becoming more comfortable in the seiza sitting position outside of simply integrating different forms of the sitting position into your daily life, you're stretching your feet, ankle and lower calf as those parts feel the worst when trying it

Note: If you also have problems with your knees hurting when trying this, stretch it out straight, either sitting or standing, and tense your knee for 10 seconds, relax it for 10, tense for 10 and repeat this tense-relax loop 10 times, it will strengthen your knees and reduce the likelihood of such pain.

Goodluck!