Sometimes i meditate, something i highly recommend. I have a fatigue problem and only meditate on days when i have enough energy for it to be worthwhile. On my many tired days there is a fog in my brain that prevents me from concentrating enough for meditation to be worthwhile. It's like when you have the flu, i just can't direct my mind in any way. Not even enough for the open awareness of meditation.
I stopped using the pretzel postures that are traditional years ago. Shortly after doing so i realized the pain and tension they caused had only been distracting me, preventing me from really engaging in the activity. People who are extremely flexible maybe enjoy those postures, the other 99% of us are far better off just sitting on a chair. Lift its back legs a couple of inches with books or whatever, and it is a fine meditation platform. Just put a bit of padding on it so you are comfortable even though your weight will be centered over your butt's bony bits. Then you close your eyes and balance your torso such that you can sit upright with a minimum of effort, so little that it feels like you aren't even trying. That takes a lot of practice, you have to feel out the posture bit by bit by noticing where you are tense, and finding how you can adjust your posture so that the tension can be relaxed. Eventually you end up sitting nice and tall, your spine carrying your weight, your chest open for easy breathing, feeling light and deeply relaxed.
The particulars of what you do with your arms and legs really don't matter, as long as they are relaxed. In the Zen center where i was taught to meditate closing your eyes was a no-no because they said it would make you sleepy, but it doesn't at all. There were a lot of rules there. Special hand postures, and robes, and ways of bowing, and all sorts of routines. Traditions handed down from Japan they dared not modify because that would be 'egotistical'. I doubt the people who ran the center have ever really tried meditating in anything but the prescribed way. The small handful of people for whom that format works well enough continue at the center, and the vast majority who abandon it after a short while are judged to have not been ready for meditation.
Meditation is natural and there is no secret to it. There is no need for pain and suffering, you don't need to be taught a mantra, or work on a koan, or visualize anything. You just need to find the posture and relax. The rest will happen by itself. Let your mind relax like your body is relaxed, let it be open and aware like your body is open and alert. Don't worry that it takes time for that to happen, that is natural. The whole thing is natural. No religious framework is necessary. That's why different traditions in different parts of the world have developed varieties of meditation while standing, walking, lying down, or doing any repetitive activity that is doable while using that long, relaxed spinal posture that is central to getting into the mind-state.
