At the very end of each yoga class we finish by having a bit of a lie down. To a beginner this is a very odd thing to do- to lie down in the middle of the room with a bunch of strangers for a few minutes. The reasoning is that after having created all those wonderful shapes and moved the body, breath and energy in all directions, we let it all go. We lie down into corpse pose (Savasana), finally stopping and returning to stillness. In this stillness the body has a moment to absorb and assimilate, on all levels, the changes that have happened, before we spring back to life and it gets very busy again.
There are those who come to yoga so they get 40 winks or 5 minutes of 'peace and quiet'. And those who love the practice, but sprint out the room as soon as I say 'find a comfortable lying down position'. They either don't see the point of wasting time on the floor for 3-5 minutes or they can't cope with 3-5 minutes of doing nothing. To be fair it's not easy.
How Can Something So Simple Be So Hard?
In our chaotic world where we are inundated with constant stimuli, we spend much time in the sympathetic nervous system, ready for fight or flight. We rarely switch off and our stress just builds and builds. Unless we press the reset button regularly, we are potentially increasing the likelihood of having to deal with one of the modern big diseases. Taking 3-5 minutes to genuinely rest the body and mind is hugely important and simple to do. It allows us time to step into the parasympathetic nervous system (the rest and digest) ready to face new stresses. Of course there are other factors at play: sleep, nutrition, sense of community and purpose, exercise etc but every little thing we do influences us positively or negatively. (And no, sleep alone isn’t enough - your body and brain stay busy right through every sleep cycle)
How To Be A Corpse
Traditionally you lie on your back, arms along the side of the body, palms up and legs either hip or mat distance along the floor. One reason why the palms face upwards is because of all the nerve endings on our fingers and hands. We want to avoid external stimulus, no feeling, thinking, doing, hearing, but just being.
It is important to be comfortable, otherwise you’ll spend the whole time grumbling about how this or that aches. Better to be in any position that feels easy than to force the “perfect” shape. Once you’re settled, there are no excuses not to just ‘shut up and be still’.
But the mind likes to be busy, to chatter away. If it doesn’t already have your attention, it will find ways to grab it. Thus begin the mind’s cunning tactics: pointing out your to-do lists, your aches and pains, your memories, every irritating person you’ve ever met and all the little niggles you’d rather forget. Like a child calling “mum, mum, mum, mum” (or for dog owners, that persistent nudge to throw the ball or offer a treat), the mind keeps tugging for your attention - and it wants all of it.
This got me thinking whether corpse pose was easier in the olden days, where they don't see 5000 adverts day, (this is reportedly the true figure for 2007) but then I thought you'd spend the whole time worrying that a lion or bear might maul you as you lay on the ground for 5 minutes. So I started to investigate into the origins of corpse pose -savasana. I think you'll want to lie down for this one!
A Little Mad Yoga Background
It turns out that our modern Savasana comes from an important and secret Tantric spiritual practice in which the practitioner sits on a corpse for meditation (Shava Sadhana). You can't just sit on any body, you need an 'impure corpse' and there are strict rules when selecting your choice of perch. Mistakes and/or violations of these rules may lead to death or insanity of the practitioner.
The best corpses are from 2 specific castes who died due to drowning, lightning strike, snake-bite, injury or simply killed by a weapon eg stick, sword, spear. It also seems that if you can't find a suitable corpse a young boy can be intoxicated then killed. Female corpses are forbidden, as is that of a beardless man, a man whose genitals are not clearly visible and a hen-pecked man.
I have added a link in case you want to read what to do once you've got your ideal corpse such as how to sit on it and for how long.
What is interesting is the significance behind this practice 'the detachment from the physical world and uniting with the Absolute'. What are we trying to do in our modern day final relaxation pose, if not detach from the physical world? Whether we are trying to unite with the Absolute opens up a new topic of conversation about 'what is the Absolute?', but we'll leave that for another day. But if we think of it as 'the silence behind all the noise', 'the stillness beneath the moving thoughts' 'then I can see a connection. In our final posture we lie on the floor, let go of the body and the mind to see what is beyond and perhaps come to sense of true self, without all the obscuring noise around us
For now my yoga classes will continue corpse free and use the more modern practice of corpse pose ... but watch this space ;-)
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