Each journey is considered sacred…. [T]he ancestors and helping allies reveal to us what is needed for our current healing and guidance. – Angeles Arrien

I love meditating while sitting up and lying down. Yes, you read that correctly, lying down. My lying down meditative practice began when I started working with cacao in personal ceremony.

My teacher provided us with a beautiful, guided meditation where we lay on the floor to relax our bodies for the journey with cacao; and then sacred music accompanied us on the rest of our journey, which almost always meant more lying down (or we could dance or sit or write or draw, whatever we felt most called to do).

I lay on the ground a lot, opening, allowing and receiving messages, guidance and healing as that was what I most needed. It became a healing, meditative practice for me.

This posture of “lying meditation” is actually an ancient shamanic practice according to Dr. Angeles Arrien, an anthropologist who studied ancient shamanic cultures and shared her learnings in the book, The Four-Fold Way: Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Teacher, Healer and Visionary.

“The lying posture is the most healing posture that the body can assume. The body equates this posture with rest and the nourishment that comes from receiving and giving love. It is the posture of surrender and openness. The lying posture assumed in the journey is way of placing the body…in order to open to guidance and to receive healing.” – Angeles Arrien

This was certainly my experience with cacao journeys, and it became even more evident as I began my work with drum journeys. Drum journeys are another shamanic form of lying meditation, one that allows for direct connection with spirit guides to receive healing and guidance. In this form, you can ask a direct question of your helping spirits and receive an answer while listening and journeying to shamanic drumming. My journeys with the drum for myself and on behalf of others tapped us into a wisdom beyond our minds.

We usually think of meditation as a practice of witnessing the mind and accessing a deeper state of awareness; as a sitting posture with specific positions for spine, hands, legs, chin and gaze; and as a practice that connects us to our breath. There is a meditation form called Yoga Nidra, where the savasana (corpse) pose is held while being led through a guided meditation. All forms are calming and clarifying.

Lying meditation with cacao or the drum embodies those same qualities, but what’s received is qualitatively different based on my experience with both forms. In order to explain it beyond my own experience, I Googled it, of course.

Scientific studies have been conducted to understand the difference between “regular” meditation and shamanic journeying. Here’s what those studies found, according to Sara Violante, a Shamanic Practitioner, Journey Meditation Instructor, & Reiki Master: “During ‘regular’ meditation the brain slips into a Delta state, but during Shamanic Journey meditation, the brain slips into Theta state.”

It’s the drumming at a certain rhythm or the ceremonial cacao that allows us to access this Theta state. Sara shares on her blog post: “Theta brainwave state is known to foster creativity. It is that space between being awake and being asleep…the state where there are no barriers between the spirit world and our brains. Entering into a theta state the mind is open, aware but at rest; there are no pesky barriers of consciousness throwing up “rational” road blocks for what presents itself….[W]e connect to spirit in this state and then the mind interprets this connection and translates it via imagery formed through the imagination – we receive imagery.” Thank you, Sara, for explaining it so well.

Both sitting and lying meditation are each beneficial and complementary. I practice both (not at the same time, of course) depending on what I need in that moment. While I have received clear messages while sitting in contemplative meditation, when I’m looking for a boost in imaginal creativity, deep inner healing where what’s being healed is beyond my awareness or direct messages from spirit, I lie down :).

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