I meditate to awaken (in the deeper sense), to bring calm to a wild mind (as I think Robert Pirsig said, peace of mind is not the most important thing, it's the only thing), and to try to become a better, more compassionate person.
You don't have to meditate in a convoluted sitting position if you choose not to (although there are good reasons for sitting in lotus).
I would start by just regularly sitting or walking quietly, being aware of your breathing, and watching thoughts and emotions flowing into and right back out of your mind's I.
My cynical suspicion is that the lotus position is traditional, and looks cool, and therefore people have come up with rationalizations for it.
Someone has already quoted Wikipedia, so I won't repeat it, but most of those sound like benefits that you can get by lying down, or finding a really comfortable chair, or something similar. And the bit about improving digestion sounds especially dubious, since it doesn't really say what that means, and a lot of Yoga folks have a bad habit of making vaguely shiny-sounding medical claims without evidence.
(Do I sound negative? I actually do sometimes meditate, because it's a pleasant thing to do. I just want to make sure I'm not fooling myself about why I'm doing it.)
Speaking from my own experiences, and pulling loosely from the zen tradition in which I practice:
Sitting meditation keeps you more alert, makes it easier to reach a state of samadhi, or focused, non-discriminating awareness. For a while, due to back pain, I switched to lying meditation. I was not a fan, it was much easier to drift off. Zen meditation typically involves leaving the eyes partly open to avoid daydreaming or entering some sort of trance state. I also found this difficult to maintain while in a prone position.
Sitting in full lotus is difficult for me, and I'm relatively flexible. I generally sit half-lotus or in a chair. Sitting without a chair for long periods causes pain in the legs and back/shoulders. That's part of the practice, learning to maintain focus and equanimity through pain and discomfort.
To the best of my knowledge, the common sitting postures - lotus, half-lotus, burmese, seiza - came about because they were maintainable for long periods. Sitting indian style with legs crossed in front, for example, your stomach muscles will quickly tire and you'll be hunched over.
I did quote Wikipedia and even though I'm (definitely) sceptic about the digestion bit myself, the others do make at least some sense. Obviously it is always quite easy to find justifications for something you believe (or want to believe) in.
I personally don't believe meditation needs a specific position. I've seen and read a few things that document the practice while walking and while lying down. I guess tradition does point to the lotus being the normal way to do it, but as long as you get the benefits of it in whatever position you find yourself in, you're fine.
I apologize for simply lifting this off Wikipedia, but I too had that question before, and this paragraph was helpful:
The Lotus position is adopted to allow the body to be held completely steady for long periods of time. As the body is steadied the mind becomes calm, the first step towards meditation. The posture applies pressure to the lower spine which may facilitate relaxation. The breath can slow down, muscular tension decrease and blood pressure subside. The coccygeal and sacral nerves are toned as the normally large blood flow to the legs is redirected to the abdominal region. Digestion may also be improved.
My understanding is that the lotus position forms a tripod or your two knees and your butt, which is supposedly pretty stable.
I wouldn't know, as I haven't a prayer of attaining that position.
I have a little folding wooden meditation bench that I use. I don't think I'd want to meditate for more than half an hour using it, though. Some similar benches are available with cushions.
Your argument that "vaccines cause autism" has huge problems, not the least of which are thimerosal-free vaccines over the last decade.
In addition, the authors of the first study you cited appear to be involved in vaccine litigation and in a business that purports to treat autism by "chelation therapy" and would thus seem to have a vested interest in research findings that show heavy metals cause pathology.
Your second link doesn't go to a paper - you linked to some anti-vaccine website which itself doesn't link to a paper.
You can read the paper for yourself - but I am personally not at all impressed by an N=16, with N=3 in the control group. Complete MRI data in this study were obtained on N=9 in the treatment group, and only N=2 in the control group.
Another discussion of the posters that preceded this second paper's publication can be found at:
You rather carefully chose to note that neither paper was "written" by Wakefield. However, the authors of the second paper noted that Wakefield reviewed their paper and actually helped design their study:
"We thank Drs. Saverio Capuano and Mario Rodriguez
for veterinary assistance; and Dr. David Atwood, Carrie
Redinger, Dave McFarland, Amanda Dettmer, Steven
Kendro, Nicole DeBlasio, Melanie O’Malley and Megan
Rufle for technical support. Special thanks to Dr. Andrew
Wakefield for assistance with study design and for critical
review of this manuscript; and to Troy and Charlie Ball
and Robert Sawyer. This work was supported by the
Johnson Family, SafeMinds, The Ted Lindsay Foundation,
the Autism Research Institute, the Greater Milwaukee
Foundation, the late Liz Birt, David and Cindy Emminger,
Sandy McInnis, and Elyse Roberts. Prior to 2005, Carol
Stott was involved in vaccine litigation."
Papers aside, some anti-vaccine folk seem to have a great deal of emotion invested in the issue:
No, he's not being unfairly downvoted, and I cannot upvote you either. You are basically talking out of your ass...please cite figures to back up what you mean by "a not insignificant number". And how, pray tell, is some unhappiness essential to "social stability", whatever that may be...
Simple. Human nature is about survival and reproduction. Resources are limited so that only some of us will survive and reproduce. Scarcity produces unhappiness which in term induces human productivity/creativity.
Case in point, Love in the Time of Cholera. You want to get the girl but you are a victim of socioeconomic scarcity. You become a life-long melancholic but are motivated to climb the social/professional ladder to get what it is that you couldn't get in the first place. All great literature, music, scientific discoveries were of products of unrequited love, jealousy, or the urge to overcome a self-inferiority complex.
>which in term induces human productivity/creativity.
Show me that depression leads to greater productivity. I expect that you cannot.
>climb the social/professional ladder to get what it is that you couldn't get in the first place.
This has nothing to do with depression and little to do with happiness.
>All great literature, music, scientific discoveries were of products of unrequited love, jealousy, or the urge to overcome a self-inferiority complex.
This is trite, wildly hyperbolic, and almost certainly baseless.
Not necessarily. Depression paralyzes you, leaves you too scared to leave the house or do anything.
"Stars" are more likely to be hypomanic. Or just people who like writing or composing music too much :) People like to blame success on mental disease or drugs because it helps them justify their laziness. Also, attempt to claim that Jimi Hendrix or Kurt Kobain wrote their music because they had a self-inferiority complex might be caused by the self-inferiority complex and envy :P
You don't have to meditate in a convoluted sitting position if you choose not to (although there are good reasons for sitting in lotus).
I would start by just regularly sitting or walking quietly, being aware of your breathing, and watching thoughts and emotions flowing into and right back out of your mind's I.