Savasana

even with decades of yoga my practice still surprises me with an asana that grabs my attention in a pull towards truly understanding it, giving a certain pose a priority in my daily routine in an attempt to deepen my connection to its hold. Lately it's been savasana, corpse pose, a deceptively simple posture of rest and surrender, most often placed at the end of a yoga sequence in order to relax both mind and body and allow the practice to settle in the benefits that it offered. 

it's an easy pose to overlook.

indeed I've often rush through this posture, either eager to begin the very next sequence or ready to move on and end my practice for the day. Yet it's a profound and deeply meaningful posture that really requires a commitment to better understand its importance to our practice. Physically, savasana offers a host of benefits - relieving mild depression, easing insomnia, reducing frequency and severity of headaches and migraines, as well as reducing high blood pressure. This is a posture that calms the nervous system, providing a deep rest on a cellular level due to the commitment of our surrender. For me it's been an important aid in helping me relax facial tension resulting from a misaligned jaw that causes me no small amount of pain, breathing concerns, and anxiety that will sometimes produce panic attacks in the middle of the night. Savasana offers me a return to rest, a mindful position to notice the tension, surrendering myself to the exactness of the experience without rushing for an immediate change. I'm present to the pain, feeling it without need judgement or comparison. 

and even my preference of relief is simply an opinion. 

that's the art of a truly deep surrender. 

it's also the challenge of this pose, relaxing our preference and opinions, not giving one thought favor over any other - at least for the few moments that we hold savasana. What's noticed is that as the body reduces its overall tension, thoughts will rush in to feel the void, our attention will be drawn to physical and emotional sensations overlooked through the busyness of our everyday mind. In savasana we surrender, deeply so, to the point of ultimately recognizing the qualities of it's name - corpse pose, the release of our concerns for physical and emotional affairs. 

if only briefly. 

this doesn't mean the absent of thoughts or physical sensations, although at a certain point they often seem to pass and not offer a return. When I truly surrender to savasana I am a corpse to all but the reality of my awareness, not separate or at all removed from what's present, but simply an easy allowing space of all that occurs with the very moment of my surrender. 

I'm not fighting what is present.

a truly, deeply, letting go...

only the emptiness of savasana remains.

spacious

aware. 

~

Peace, Eric