Let's talk about Shavasana.
Something you'll find typically at the end of a yoga asana class.
Now in English,
Shavasana is translated as corpse pose.
Which throws a lot of people off the first time they hear it.
But the name is intentional and understanding it actually tells you a lot about the purpose of the yoga asana practice.
Now on the surface.
Shavasana is just lying flat on your back.
Arms and legs relaxed,
Doing nothing.
And that's exactly what trips people up.
We spend an entire class.
Moving,
Stretching,
Balancing,
Working,
And then we're asked to just stop completely.
No adjusting,
No fidgeting,
No effort at all.
And it turns out.
That that is incredibly hard to do.
Most people either fall asleep.
Or their mind continues to race even though their body is still and they start to fidget.
True Shavasana is neither of these things.
It's staying alert while releasing all effort,
Which is a strange in-between state that most of us rarely practice.
Now the name corpse pose.
Comes from the mimicking of the stillness of death,
Not in a morbid way,
But almost as a rehearsal,
A practice.
The idea is that if you can release control of your body for just a few minutes,
You can start to loosen your grip on this idea that you always have to be doing something,
Being something,
Achieving something,
Holding yourself together.
There is actually a teaching in the Bhagavad Gita about action and inaction.
The notion that real stillness.
On the outside can involve something quietly happening on the inside.
So shavasana is not as passive as it looks.
Modern yoga teachers talk about this pose in more physical terms.
They say that a lot of us live in a state of low grade tension almost all day without realizing it.
Shavasana would be one of the few opportunities we have.
To actually let our nervous system downshift into real rest,
As opposed to just lying flat,
Lying down.
In the Sivananda Yoga tradition,
Shavasana is compared to the cooling system of a car.
You wouldn't run a car at top speed and then shut it off with no cool down.
And the body is no different.
So,
The next time you're in Shavasana.
Know that doing nothing is exactly the point and that this is considered one of the more advanced things you can do in the yoga asana practice,
Not because it requires flexibility or strength,
But because it requires a relinquishing of control.
Which most of us are pretty unpracticed at.
