Savasana can be meditation

After an active yoga class, our students usually welcome savasana (translation: corpse pose). Students sometimes fall asleep during savanasa, the last pose the the class. I won't wake them unless they are snoring loudly. When one's mind quiets down, a tired body will fall asleep because it needs the rest. The mind has slowed down enough, it will not keep the body awake, just like when we go to sleep at the end of our day.

In 200 AD, Patangali wrote"Yogas citta vritti narodha" (translation : "Yoga is the cessation of the movements of the mind.) He did not mean that Yoga slows the frequency and reactions to thoughts down enough so we can sleep. He was assuming that the yogi was observing the change in the flow of thoughts. When we are lost in thoughts, when we are totally absorbed in these thoughts, as they slow down, a tired body can fall asleep.

In our western culture, hatha yoga is, many times, an exotic exercise that can be quite intense and exhausting. We can be very intent on getting back into shape, performing some advanced pose after much preparation, or completing some difficult sequence. Savasana is a welcome relief after such intentions.

25 years ago, hatha yoga was a snazzy way for me to stay in shape. I later realized the therapeutic effect and started treating my physical therapy patients with hatha yoga. But it has only been in the last 10 years or so, that I began to see the meditative side of hatha yoga.

Meditation is observation, witness to what arises in our attention. Savasana can be meditation. During savanasa, we could fall asleep, try to breath well, try to be still. Or we can take this opportunity to let go of all effort. Movements of our mind can keep us absorbed in these thoughts. To lie supine in a warm supported position is simple, but not easy.

I had lived most of my life from the flatland viewpoint ( the scientific mechanistic Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm). I never had appreciated depth of consciousness until I started to observe the subtlety of energy in breath and movement. This inquiry into movement allowed me to see beyond the surface of function and performance of movement. The richness of experience from deeply observing movement of body and mind is my vehicle to freedom.

In savasana, can we just watch sensations, feelings, thoughts, and reactions to thoughts as they arise?

Can we broaden our perspective to realize that we are this awareness watching this body, its sensation and this mind and its thoughts and feeling?