Savasana
We at Being Yoga have chosen “the most important posture in Hatha Yoga” (according to Bikram Choudhury), to be our Theme of the Month. Practicing this posture correctly, Bikram says, is a “powerful way to breathe life into the body,” while helping to “tame” our “rebellious minds.” As powerful as this asana is, it is not surprising to hear that Bikram also considers it to be the most difficult posture for most students.
Exactly what is this therapeutic and extremely challenging posture? Is it Half-Locust which requires dogged determination to lift the weight of both legs backwards off the ground? Or is it Camel where we push ourselves beyond our comfort zone to reclaim our natural range of motion in a deep backbend? Surely this most important posture involves great effort, hard work, perseverance and struggle, right? Actually, the answer is just the opposite. Please read on to understand our Theme of the Month, “Savasana” (“Dead Body Pose”) and the amazing power of peaceful relaxation.
It is an appropriate analogy to compare the Bikram series with cultivating crops. As Benjamin Hoff writes in the Tao of Pooh, in order to grow nutritious crops while keeping the soil fertile, farmers need to work in “…harmony with the earth’s rhythms. Now you plant; now you relax. Now you work the soil; now you leave it alone.” If not, of course, the soil becomes depleted of its energy and produces tasteless, nutrition-less crops, if any. In Bikram’s, we “plant” then we relax; we “work” and then we “leave it alone.” By practicing active postures, then completely relaxing in Savasana, we work in harmony with our natural rhythms of needing both exertion and rest.
Bikram uses another analogy. He says that resting between postures turns his class into an “environmentally friendly gas station for the human body, enabling you to leave more energized and revitalized than when you came in.”
Whichever analogy works for you, the fact is that a majority of people today are walking around depleted and empty and need to be re-energized—not just physically, but mentally and spiritually as well. Benjamin Hoff says that that the contemporary person confuses work with everything: “He works when he works, works when he exercises, and more often than not, works when he plays.” He says that we do so because we are all convinced “…that there is Great Reward waiting for us somewhere, and that what we have to do is spend our lives working like lunatics to catch up with it.”
As students of yoga, however, we begin to understand that there is no “Great Reward” that can be obtained by relentless fight and struggle. Through our practice we begin to understand that, although there is value in hard work, it must be balanced with serenity and rest. While practicing yoga, we begin to understand that “Great Reward” is more often found during “downtime,” when we can tap into an ever-present wellspring of physical and creative energy accessible only through stillness. As Paramahansa Yogananda has said, “All the happiness you seek lies within you…” We just need to stop, relax, and listen to find it.
This is why it is so important to practice staying on our mats during Savasana and “submitting to peaceful relaxation” (as Bikram says). Instead of using Savasana as an opportunity to drink water, use the restroom, fan ourselves, straighten our mats, etc., we can fine-tune our ability to let go and relax, therefore achieving (also as Bikram says,) a “gradual healing and integration of both body and mind.” And that is where we really do find our “Great Reward.”