This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Seated Asanas is the largest group in the asana taxonomy, fourteen postures, and most are close variants of one idea, a cross legged or heel pressed seat, distinguished only by small differences in where the feet and heels are placed.
Padmasana, the lotus, places each foot on the opposite thigh, and is the seat most often shown in Hindu, Buddhist and Jain meditation images, which is why it is the one most people recognise; the Pradipika calls it the destroyer of all disease. Siddhasana and Simhasana join it as the Pradipika's four principal postures, the first singled out as chief of all eighty four and linked most closely to breath restraint, the second, the lion, notable as the only classical posture whose description includes what the face is doing. Bhadrasana completes that set of four; the Pradipika says yogis also call it Gorakshasana, while the Gheranda Samhita lists the two as separate postures with different descriptions, a disagreement the atlas records rather than resolves.
Guptasana and Muktasana join Siddhasana as a close family in the Gheranda Samhita, differing only in the heels; unlike Siddhasana, neither appears in the Pradipika. Gomukhasana, Sankatasana and Svastikasana are named for the shape the legs alone make, cow, contracted, or well being, with no arm position specified despite later teaching. Vajrasana takes its name not from a shape but from the vajra, the thunderbolt weapon, for the firmness it demands of the thighs; the kneeling seat modern practice calls by this name differs from the Gheranda Samhita's own. Vrishasana, Virasana and Yogasana close the set, the bull seat named for Shiva's mount Nandi, the hero's seat, and the final posture of the Gheranda Samhita's own list of thirty two, named simply for the practice itself.