Day 4: Savasana

"Some say that savasana, corpse pose, is the most important pose because this is when our body begins to integrate what it has learned. So close your eyes and let go." - Clara Oss-Roberts (Moon Salutation class)

After nearly eight years of practice, I am still amazed at how hard "letting go" - truly relaxing, deeply, allowing all of your muscles to release, including your jaw, your eyelids - can be.

And, even if I succeed at this task, there is still my mind to tend to. Quieting it can be even more daunting.

The final pose of most yoga practices, savasana is a study in this challenge.

Clara's right, though. While we, as yoga students, often take more pride in our ability to open beautifully into that perfect trikonasana or reaching our heart skyward in a graceful ustrasana, savasana is a humbling pose. It reminds us that practicing the art of non-action is as important as practicing the actions of deepening, strengthening, and opening.

Savasana is a funny pose. At times, I find that my mind is racing in time to my heart (some vinyasa classes, especially hot ones, set your blood a-pumping!) as I come into the pose, and I struggle to reign in my thoughts as they leap-frog from one topic to the next. Ten minutes of resting feels like ten years.

Others, I feel the peace wash over me like a wave from the moment I exhale into the pose and the minutes fly by like seconds, my mind temporarily taking leave of my body to fly around the moon, hang on some stars.

Savasana can be the sweetest of poses, if you allow it. The feeling of your prone body, lying atop your mat, on the earth; feeling the length of your body, from the crown of your head to the heels of your feet, pressed into the mat as your chest gently rises and falls.

Feeling your breath, you are in this moment, on your mat, in your home alone or at a studio surrounded by fellow students. You feel the weight of your breath, feel the air fill the nooks and crannies of your lungs, and you can almost imagine the blood as it enters your heart and goes back out to the tips of your fingers, your toes, your nose.

Savasana allows you to remember and focus on one thing: you are alive and able to practice movement and breath.

And stillness.