Savasana and Time
Many people wonder why, in my book Light on Yoga, I consider
Savasana (corpse pose) as the most difficult pose. To most of us, corpse
pose is an agreeable payoff after a hard yoga class, in which we feel a
relaxation that is either torpid or vibrant or, to some extent, luminous.
Luminous here means sattvic, which is both aware and passive. To rpid
means tamasic, and as many of my students come to class after a hard
day at work, I have never objected to that. It is only natural, and many
snores have provided the music that ends a class filled with even my
most senior students. I may be a martinet when you are on your feet,
but I do not think I have ever woken a student from Savasana, except
possibly in time to send him home. But Savasana is not about falling
asleep. If it were, Savasana would hardly be a difficult pose.
Savasana is about shedding, in the same way that I earlier men
tioned the snake sloughing off its skin to emerge glossy and resplen
dent in its renewed colors. We have many skins, sheaths, thoughts,
prejudices, preconceptions, ideas, memories, and projects for the fu
ture. Savasana is a shedding of all these skins, to see how glossy and
gorgeous, serene and aware is the beautiful rainbow-colored snake
who lies within. We even lie on the ground as a snake does, with the
maximum possible surface of our bodies in contact with the earth.
Now, Savasana is about relaxation, but what prevents relaxation?
Tension. Te nsion results from clutching tightly to life-and in turn
being held by the myriad invisible threads that tie us to the known
world, the known "I," and the known environment in which it oper
ates. It is the threads that bind the "I" to its environmental context that
give us our sense of identity. My students, as they lie on the floor at the
end of a hard class, are still aware that they are husbands or wives,
maybe still with shopping to do on the way home, with parents waiting
for them there, or children who will want help with their homework.
My students are tired because they are aware they are businessmen or