in every yoga class you can hear a sigh of gratitude when the teacher says, “please prepare yourself, and what you need, for our final relaxation.”
final relaxation is an interesting phrase for what in sanskrit is called “shavasana”…the pose of the corpse. can we truly relax into ‘corpse-hood’?i have, for years, thought of this pose as yoga’s greatest challenge. how to use that 5 or 10 minutes imagining myself as a corpse? in the stillness of body we ideally maintain full awareness as we practice shavasana. at the same time, there is an element of letting go completely, releasing to the support of the floor and the warmth of the blanket.can i think of myself as dead? not really.however, i can practice imagining that my life, as i have known it thus far, is over.each moment is a death, a passing of time, never to be reclaimed. each breath is unique and will never be repeated. each heartbeat, a manifestation of consciousness beyond words, can only happen once in a lifetime.
each thought passes through the minefield in its singular form, never to repeat exactly the same way. each blink bathes the eyes in that moment only.knowing all this, i can then commit to take what’s left before i become a corpse…the next moment, the following breath, the succeeding heartbeat…and live it with curiosity, purpose and passion. i can, as i lie still on the yoga mat, breathing, live in a vast, unbounded “yes”.
i can aspire to open to the offerings that arise, whether pleasant or painful, whether planned or unexpected.i can, in the tranquility of shavasana, be free.