Listen instead:
We here at Huwe Acupuncture lived and grew into legal adults before the age of social media, and as a result we don’t necessarily feel duped by the constant inundation of airquote needs brought to us by such channels.
“Needs” here are airquoted because they aren’t needs, per se. They might be legitimate needs, which is fine. They might be legitimate wants, which is ALSO FINE.
Wanting things is not, again with the per se, bad. But it can be helpful to be clear within our own selves about the difference between needing and wanting a thing in our modern lives, especially when things have pretty much acquired a capital T.1 Things are everywhere, and they’re beautiful, and it can seem like they’re necessary when sometimes — often! — (almost always?) — they’re actually the cart placed right smack dab in front of the horse, which already has saddlebags a-plenty for carrying whatever we thought actually needed to go in the cart.
These Things are outright, explicitly marketed to us — in the form of various ad types that prey on our vulnerabilities thanks to behavioral science data — and indirectly marketed to us in the form of the Influencing Joneses, most of whom we likely see on social media.
To help me illustrate this quandary, I turn to the words of writer Shalom Auslander, who laments the Thingness of life today. “Things today are waaayyyyy better than Things have ever been. Cavemen had sticks. In the Middle Ages, they had typhoid. We have iPhones and Herman Miller chairs and shoes with air in the soles. Inside the soles!”
Yes, we have iPhones and Herman Miller chairs! And holy moly, I just looked up Herman Miller chairs, and found that the one I want can be mine for $9,495! It’s a gorgeous chair, and it’s from the Netherlands. Show me anything Scandanavian-made, and I’m pretty sure I need it. Or at least want it.
But! I don’t fool myself into thinking that possessing the aforementioned exquisite Dutch chair will enable me to Get More Writing Done, or will allow me to Relax Better, or will make me Fitter, Happier, and More Productive, or will give me magical keys to the hallowed kingdom of Arrival & Enoughness.
No one chair will do that for me, but almost any chair can.2
And the same goes, friends, for meditation chairs. Boys howdy, meditation chairs are hot right now! And they are purdeeeeeeee! And there are a couple of situations and ways in which meditation chairs can be very useful.
And also? Don’t fall prey to the hype. A rolled-up blanket or a chair you already have or a stump outside or your bath mat can — in most cases — do the trick.
For all its beauty and I-want-that desirability, a meditation chair will most likely not revolutionize your practice and mental health any more than that rolled-up blanket, chair you already have, stump, or bath mat. That’s because meditation is an inside job, and all the external décor under the canopy won’t stop a willing spirit and won’t budge a stubborn one.
So let’s take a look at when a meditation chair might be a tool, and when you are.
Take a Seat: When Meditation Chairs Don’t Do Squat
Look, I won’t attempt to conceal my mistrust of the wellness industry. Mayhap this surprises you, being as how this is an essay for an acupuncture practice I run with my husband. But there are a lot of unnecessary Things given a li’l glitter, guilt, retail mark-up, and strategic positioning as perennial must-haves for wellness.
The actual perennial must-haves for wellness were pretty clearly spelled out by the Canadian-Egyptian children’s singer Raffi in his 1980s song All I Really Need:
All I really need is a song in my heart
Food in my belly and love in my family
And I need the rain to fall
And I need the sun to shine
To give life to the seeds we sow
To give the food we need to grow
And I need some clean water for drinking
And I need some clean air for breathing
So that I can grow up strong
And take my place where I belong
We can add a couple of items, perhaps, but not a ton — and I don’t propose that gorgeous, expensive meditation chair should gain a place on said list of amendments.
If I were to rework this song for the subject at hand, All I Really Need to Meditate would go something like this:
All I really need is a wish in my heart
And 5 to 10 minutes a day
Seriously! This is one of the wonderful things about meditation. More than any other exercise, it doesn’t require a whole bunch of Things to support it. If you have a mind, you can meditate. The weather is irrelevant. The gear is irrelevant. The distance to and from the gym is irrelevant. The pulled hamstring is irrelevant.
Meditation is, as referenced above, an inside job. Which means you already have what you need to meditate. You really do.
This may be a bummer, but the odds are something like a snowball’s chance in Hades that the annoying, challenging, stumbling-block aspects of meditation will be solved by a chair. Unless, you know, they are.
Belly Up to the Bar: When Meditation Chairs Hit the Spot
The meditation chair does have a couple benefits I want to highlight. That said, most of these, in my experience, can be attained with fewer dollars than the average ’grammable meditation chair costs a person.
- Addressing Accessibility Issues: If you have physical realities that prevent you from sitting for an extended-ish period of time, you may benefit from a meditation chair. There are all shapes and sizes, made for bodies of all shapes and sizes.
- Defining a Space: It can be helpful to have a designated place for meditation. Sometimes that may be — as previously mentioned — a rolled-up blanket, chair you already have, stump, or bath mat. Sometimes that may be a meditation chair.
Meditating When Sitting Is Impossible or Undesirable
I’ve written before about the lack of absolute value vis-à-vis the tools we seek to heal ourselves with — e.g. is XYZ good or bad? This question is a looping hamster wheel because it presumes that we live in isolation, which is how no person ever lives or has lived.3
We live in relationship with our internal and external environments, insofar as that distinction is a useful one. The same applies to meditation. It might not be a great idea to only do the sitting type of meditation.
There are many kinds of meditation, and not all of them require you to sit. You can lie down and meditate. You can do walking meditations. You can learn meditative styles of qigong or dao yin.
In Conclusion: Do What You Want (and Know That’s What You’re Doing)
For some folks, a meditation chair might be a delightful addition to a practice. It might help ease the body into allowing more regular, fulfilling, or longer meditation sessions.
For others, it might become just another thing to feel bad about. For others still, it might be wholly unnecessary.
When it comes to meditation chairs, we recommend doing what you want — get the chair or don’t. But know what you’re doing, and please don’t allow yourself to postpone your well-being because you’re waiting on the perfect $9,495 accessory.
by Mary Beth Huwe
These writings are an exploration of what it means to be human – to be sick, to be well, and to heal – viewed through the lens of classical Chinese medicine. My words aren’t medical advice, and these essays don’t constitute a practitioner-client relationship. They also aren’t meant to be the final word on… well, anything. Rather, I hope they are the beginning of a conversation you have with someone in your life. Thanks for reading!
Footnotes:
- Honestly, they’ve probably acquired ALL-CAPSITUDE and are, in fact, THINGS by this point. ↩︎
- That probably sounds weird. What I mean is, there isn’t a single chair (or Thing) that will grant our wishes, but we can likely achieve our wishes through almost any chair or Thing, if that Thing is a tool or instrument and not a distraction or shield. And if our social circumstances conspire alongside us — at least in part — instead of utterly against us. ↩︎
- Not to belabor this, but I mean that we’re all interconnected. I don’t deny that some people require more alone time, and that others are isolated against their will. ↩︎
