The Savasana Dilemma
Part One
By Libby Young
As a teacher, hands down the absolute hardest pose I teach is Savasana. No matter
how soothing I try to speak or relaxing I create the environment to be, I always see
my students struggling to be still. They fidget, they look at other students, they even
sit up. As I was teaching the other day, I noticed one student had their eyes open the
entire Savasana period. I felt like I had failed somehow to help this person let go, to
relax. But then I remembered, all those years ago when I first started yoga, how hard
it was for me to lay still for even two minutes, much less ten. This got me
wondering…why is Savasana so difficult?
The human mind is a beautiful machine. It’s also a complete asshole. We are capable
of imagining and creating things in this world that no other species can
comprehend, much less do. But yet our minds can be terribly destructive. They
impede progress, harm intention, distract from focus, and deceive the truth. The key
to a successful Savasana is the mind; the problem with achieving a successful
Savasana is the mind. See the paradox?
The very first step we can take as practitioners is to recognize Savasana as an actual
pose. Because it is! Let’s first look at the etymology of the word. Savasana comes
from the Sanskrit words Shava meaning “corpse” and Asana meaning “posture”. It’s
is often referred to as the most important part of a yoga practice. Without Savasana,
a yoga practice would be incomplete. Like playing soccer without a ball, or
swimming without water. You can go through the motions, but the true benefits are
lost.
So why is “just laying there” that important to yoga? Relaxation to start with. After
completing muscularly and skeletally challenging poses, Corpse Pose let’s the body
rest. Allowing it time to recover from the physical demands just placed upon it. And
the same goes for the mind. When we practice, we are focused on a thousand
different things. ‘My arm goes here, right hand under, leg goes there, wait my toes
need to point, shit I forgot to breathe!’ During Savasana, it’s a time to let go of the
mind as well. Allowing the brain much needed rest. When we begin using that time
to think about the groceries we need to pick up after class or the fight we just had
with our significant other, we are removing the soccer ball from the game. Our
minds tell our bodies to relax. Here’s an example: scary movies. If you’ve ever seen
a scary movie, you know that during that creepy-music-playing, someone-is-about-
to-jump-out-at-me scene, your entire body actually physically tenses up. We aren’t
actively thinking about shrinking down in our seat or shrugging our shoulders up to
our ears, but we do. That’s because the mind is engaged in fear and therefore
subconsciously telling the body to react appropriately. The same exact thing
happens when we engage the mind with stress. Whether it’s a huge life problem or a
mild afterthought. It takes a physical toll on our bodies. This is why Savasana is so
incredibly important. For those few moments, we are releasing everything. And
when we do, the benefits can be numerous. Decreases in heart rate, rate or
respiration, blood pressure, muscle tension, metabolic rate, oxygen consumption,
anxiety, stress and fatigue. Increases in energy levels, productivity, concentration,
memory, focus, self-confidence, improved neural responses and achieving deeper,
sounder sleep.
Finally, Savasana is a mark of completion. If we look at the practice of yoga, it has a
beginning, a middle, and an end. The end is Corpse Pose. It is the phase in which the
effects of the practice are allowed to sink in and rejuvenate the body, mind, and soul.
Without taking the necessary time, again, those effects are greatly diminished if not
lost. And we aren’t fully participation in a complete yoga practice.
This is why Savasana is important to us yogis. Once we understand why, we can
begin the process of learning how to implement it. Look for next week’s post, Part
Two, where I will talk about how to start practicing Savasana.
