After my afternoon meditation session at Wat Sangharatanaram, I thought I would give an update on my new cushion as promised.
Well it worked! As I recall, last week I was only able to get 30 minutes concentration before the pain kicked in. Most of the pain was in my hip and legs. After 30 minutes I had to change position every five minutes to relieve the pain. The pain was still almost intolerable.
This week I went the full 60 minutes in the same position! There was only a moderate but manageable amount of generalised discomfort at about the 50 to 55 minute mark. My foot went to sleep, but I think I can overcome that with positioning next time. Changing position to a more comfortable listening position for the talk with Luong Por Pumee afterwards resulted in about 2 minutes of relieving the stiffness and a moderate amount of pain associated with that.
The result is that I am a lot more confident that I can continue with this cushion as an interim measure until my body adapts to what I want it to do.
I think I might be able to eventually get rid of it and just have a thinner mat in the future.
I was able to to develop my meditation practice today because I was not distracted by the pain.
