Struggling in savasana
If I had a dollar for every person who told me they can’t ‘do’ Śavāsana, well I’d have at least fifty dollars!
It’s not easy, but it doesn’t need to be as hard as we make it in our minds.
Śava means corpse, so in this pose the object is to lay the body on the ground and imitate a corpse. The purpose of Śavāsana is to keep both the body and mind still.
B.K.S Iyengar describes it perfectly in his book ‘Light on Yoga’ “this apparently easy posture is one of the most difficult to master”. The benefits of this grounding, relaxing pose are endless – removes and destroys fatigue, quiets agitation of the mind, and soothes the nerves are just a few. As explained by Iyengar “The stresses of modern day civilisation are a strain on the nerves for which Śavāsana is the best antidote”.
In my very beginnings of yoga, in my late teens and early 20s, I used to leave class before Śavāsana, blasphemy! I was scared of laying still and watching my manic thoughts, I also felt it was a waste of time, simply put I placed no value on this spiritual close to yoga practice.
Now I watch people struggle with it and I feel for them, sometimes I even become frustrated for them, I want to say “just stop the thoughts, still your body and be in this moment!!” but of course I know it is not that easy.
Here are my tips for a successful Śavāsana –
~Just let go; it is ok if your mind is racing, if you are thinking about your next meal or your plans for the weekend, in fact it’s more than ok it’s totally normal. Let go of placing pressure on yourself, make space for the thoughts and feelings that come up and sit back to observe. When we remove the stress around unwanted thoughts and emotions something wonderful happens, they no longer have a hold over us, rather than pushing the ‘stuff’ down allow it to be there without judgement or concern and eventually the spaces between the thoughts will grow.
~Give yourself a focus; to begin with I feel it helped me to focus on my breath. The thought of having to lay there and do NOTHING, think NOTHING, feel NOTHING can be extremely daunting, so if you are having difficulty stilling the mind, give yourself a focus. Our greatest gift to become present is our breathe, we have it always, when we are still it is steady and slow and when we follow this steady flow of inhale, exhale it helps to guide us away from our mind. You can also focus on the body and the different parts of the body relaxing, on sound or guided relaxation.
~Allow yourself to fall asleep; if you feel yourself falling asleep just go with it, it means you are really relaxed. Eventually the goal is to be in a wakeful sleep state, but I feel when you are starting out the fact that you can calm the mind to such an extent that you fall asleep is not a bad thing.
With practice we learn to love Śavāsana, we learn to let go of the pressure, to not stress about our ‘monkey mind’ and to simply enjoy the non doing of laying our bodies still on the ground.