Be Like A Corpse In Savasana

By Brooke Hewes, 10-05-07

Savasana (corpse pose) signals the death of our asana practice. Lying on our back, we relax our body and mind to disengage and detach. Symbolically, we die. In actuality, we say goodbye — goodbye engaged body; goodbye engaged breath; goodbye asana practice; and, finally, goodbye judgment and attachment to body, breath and posture.

Be careful, however, that “goodbye” is not “goodnight” (as the intonation might suggest).  Savasana is a time to relax, not sleep; in fact, falling asleep misses the mark, and misses an opportunity to truly rest.

According to the founder of the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in Mysore, India, savasana is “most difficult for students” because it is “not waking, not sleeping.” Being neither one nor the other, savasana is extremely challenging to engage. Sure, your leg needn’t wrap around your head to assume the pose, but engaging and assuming can be two very different things. And to fully engage savasana, body, breath and mind must be entirely relaxed and entirely present.

Lying Like a Corpse
Assuming the pose, however, is pretty straightforward: lie in a neutral position on your mat. Nationally renowned yoga teacher Donna Farhi in her book Yoga Mind, Body & Spirit advises students to lie as symmetrical as possible to “enhance your relaxation and ensure that energy is allowed to circulate equally throughout the body.”

Space your feet at least hip-width apart and allow your legs to relax outward. Position your arms beside your body so that, as Farhi writes, “there is air between your armpits and your upper arms.” Face palms toward the sky. Many practitioners place a blanket over their mat and themselves — the first to create a physical separation between themselves their practice space and, by suggestion, their practice; the second to keep warm.

Some people place a bolster or folded blanket beneath their knees to release the muscles in the lower back. At the studio where I practice, there are also long, skinny bolsters that you can place lengthwise beneath your spine to encourage your shoulders to relax and chest to open.

Eye bags are also wonderful props for savasana. They encourage an inward gaze by blocking light and external stimuli that can creep beyond closed eyelids. The weight of the bag itself also releases tension around the eyes. Plus, many eyes bags are infused with relaxing herbs like lavender and chamomile to further promote relaxation.

More important than where you place your arms and legs, however, is how you handle your breath, which should settle into an easy, natural cycle. Exact length of the inhalation or exhalation is not important; rather, what’s critical is that the breath be free of tension and effort — from calm breath flows calm body and mind.

“When breath is free, the mind is free,” writes yoga teacher and psychotherapist Michael Stone in his article Savasana: Corpse Pose. “When the breath is allowed to move naturally, the mind settles into itself.”

It is when the mind settles and relaxes, however, that the pose becomes challenging. The mind is quick to jump in with one of its many distractions: What’s for dinner? What’s left to be done at work? What pose did I do really well today? As Stone says, “the mind tries all sorts of tricks to avoid coming into contact with the feelings and sensation in the core of the body.”

Sleeping and daydreaming are wonderful, but in savasana, they are distractions. They are the mind’s way of avoiding the present moment.  A fully conscious mind (in yoga, a clear, satvic mind) follows the breath in, out and throughout the body, watching distractions and worries rise and fall without following them. A conscious, yogic mind is an unattached mind.

As Eckhart Tolle writes in his national bestseller The Power of Now, “…the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to dis-identify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger.”

In savasana, we find stillness. Disengaged, our mental monkeyiness fades to make room for the present. Alert, conscious and un-attached, in savasana we practice just being.

Savasana, writes Stone, makes “room for experience to happen.”

And, then, after a suitable amount of time (ideally 10 minutes, but 10 or 20 breaths is a great start), we leave savasana behind. First, by wiggling our toes and fingers, then by rolling gently to one side. Here, from a fetal position, writes Farhi, we begin “anew without the weight of these attachments dragging us down.”

From the floor we simply use our hands to push up into a seated position.

Savasana Off the Mat
“Ultimately,” writes Farhi, “the practice of savasana is about learning to be in corpse pose all the time so we don’t do through our days letting unimportant things stick to us like tar and feathers.”

As we let our perceptions of experience fade in favor of experience itself (goodbye judgment, goodbye monkey mind), we are — says Pattabhi Jois — offered “a small death, every moment, every day.”

Still, if you can’t quite reach the full expression of savasana — if distraction is still the primary experience — do not dismay. It is a “practice” for a reason and there are many practical benefits of the pose; lower blood pressure; a calmer mind; less stress and fatigue. So even if you find yourself following those habitual, distracting thoughts, you are still honoring yourself by assuming savasana.