We will be more successful in all our endeavors if we can let go of the habit of running all the time, and take little pauses to relax and re-center ourselves. And we’ll also have a lot more joy in living.
THICH NHAT HANH
And . . . Savasana.
Those magic words spoken by the teacher at the end of class can be a huge relief! Finally, after all your hard work on your mat today, comes a chance to rest deeply and let go of doing and trying. Indeed, Savasana does promise deep rest, but that is far from the beginning and end of what it offers us.
As a pose, Savasana is unique. Its promise is simple and straightforward: you allow it to be, and it allows you to be.
The essence of Savasana can be summed up in three short sentences:
Here is where it is.
Now is when it is.
You are what it is.
In other words, if we allow it to be so, Savasana is the purest expression of full presence. It allows us to expand through simply being, without any trying, thinking, or effort required.
How often in life do we get a gift as sweet as that?
I realize that when asking a class to take Savasana—to really do nothing and just be and relax with what is—I am asking them to do something that is not always easy. For some, it may occur as uncomfortable, or even threatening. It takes courage to just be with yourself instead of humming along with your favorite playlist.
Savasana is the completing pose of yoga practice. It is an opportunity to come home to yourself—where you can see that there really is no “home” unless you find it within yourself. It is the place where your whole being is awakened, where you allow and accept all feelings and emotions to arise—comfortable or otherwise. It’s where we learn that openness is the key to inner strength and that it doesn’t come from resisting our fears and feelings, but rather from allowing them to rise up and then letting them go. It is the place to simply be you, simply and fully as you are.
Ordinarily on the mat, we do poses as a way of becoming something more: better, wiser, stronger, greater. Through our efforts and actions, we are embodying the energy of “becoming,” which is distinct from just “being.” In Savasana, we discover the possibility of just being. No trying, no effort. Savasana is the practice of non-action—non-doing—and that is the space of being.
Each of us has experienced those magic moments in life of pure being, when we’re fully present and engaged in the moment. Whether these moments in life are frequent or rare, in Savasana, we can get in touch with that place within ourselves as a conscious act and access it at will.
Baptiste Yoga is centered around three embodied themes: Be a yes; Give up what you must; and come from You are ready now. These themes are valuable tools in every pose, but in Savasana they move from being tools to becoming embodied in who you are.
As you surrender to the completing pose, be a yes for openness. Be a yes for being yourself. Be a yes for giving yourself over to something greater, to allowing for something new, to holding nothing back. Be a yes for the rising and falling of your chest with each breath, for that natural ebb and flow of life force in and out of your body.
Drop into your body and give up any need to exert effort, to control, achieve, or accomplish. Give up any “shoulds.” Give up your to-do list. Give up any remaining resistance. Give it all up to get empty.
Come from a place of I am ready now to surrender and relax with what is.
Allow all of what you’ve done up to this point on your mat to seep in and be fully received in your body, mind, and being. You are ready now to root down deeper and expand your energetic space upward and outward.
Like meditation, Savasana holds the space for powerful breakthroughs. A student named Wendy once shared this breakthrough—one of thousands I’ve been privileged to witness:
“In Savasana today,” she said, “I saw how much I get disempowered by worry. I’m always worrying about what I should be doing; I even worry about what I’m not doing. Even while I’m doing what I think I should be doing, I worry that I’m not doing it right. As I was lying there today, I was actually worrying that I wasn’t ‘doing’ Savasana right, and I realized I have a choice: I can keep worrying about what I should be doing or that I should be doing something better or different, or I can let go of all that and allow myself the gift of acceptance. In that moment, everything in me got calm and peaceful, and for the first time I can remember, I felt totally free in myself. I could just be.”
She continued, “I now see that Savasana is an opportunity, like you said, to fully accept that this is it, and there is nothing to fix, make right, or figure out. Savasana isn’t the end of my practice. It’s actually a new beginning.”
As Wendy saw, empowerment in Savasana for any of us requires that we have a breakthrough in acceptance. It calls for an internal shift from “doing nothing can’t be it” to accepting “this is it.” As you lie still, you come to experience that all is imperfectly perfect, just as it is. You accept where you are and where you are not, as you are and as you are not. In this space of Savasana arises the strength and freedom to choose what is and is not, exactly as it is, and to choose how you will act (or not act) going forward, both on and off the mat.
Like so many yogis I’ve known, I have personally had a transformative experience in Savasana. In a single moment, from nothing and out of nowhere, I had a paradigm shift. After that moment, my body and my circumstances were all the same, but I was not. As the observer of myself and my life, I saw my entire existence and practice in a whole new light.
In Sanskrit, sava means “death,” and asana means “seat.” In this particular Savasana on that day, I was confronted with my own experience of walking through the valley of the shadow of death.
It happened at the end of a not particularly extraordinary yoga practice; there was nothing significant about my being on my mat that day in the Baptiste Yoga Center in Cambridge, Mass. But there I was, on my back on my mat, when I had the realization that everything my life had been about up to that point was meaningless and empty. I saw, with a jolt, that the things I thought were so significant—like looking good, by being a well-known teacher, and spreading the lofty practice of yoga—meant nothing.
At the time, I was dealing with struggles in my marriage and with a business partner, and a travel schedule that kept me away from my kids, and I came face-to-face with a feeling of being massively thwarted and a total sense of hopelessness. I had a profound sense that I was alone and not good enough, smart enough, strong enough to deal with all of the commitments and complexities of my life. In that moment, my life occurred to me as stuck, impossible, and bleak; I was left with the feeling that I had nothing to offer, nothing to draw on. No help, no way out. (You see now why I refer to this experience as walking through the valley of the shadow of death).
Then, right there in Savasana, I just let go of all trying and all doing. I dropped every muscle and bone into the firm floor and sank into the ground of my being. As I truly released everything, it was as if something released me. Something let go, and all of a sudden, there was “no-thing” between me and the pulse beating in my chest. Something lifted, and it was as if I was elevated above the battlefield of my mind. All the heaviness in my body and being vanished.
That was when I was hit with the realization that all I had been struggling with and all I had accomplished was without real significance. It had no inherent meaning other than the meaning assigned to it all. In my body, I felt fully alive and awake, with both profound sadness and gladness, anguish and peace in my heart. On the one hand, I was saddened that I’d wasted my life up until that point in needless contention with others, thinking I was somehow special or important because of things I’d accomplished.
And right along with that realization swiftly came another: Wow, I’m free. My life suddenly occurred to me as an unwritten, open book that I was free to author a different way. From that day forward, I was free to create my life as something bigger than just myself and my concerns. That was a soul-altering experience for me into the greater purpose of my life.
As a yogi committed to growth, you, too, will have these breakthroughs on your way to greatness. What I’ve learned, and what I teach about Savasana, is don’t wait until you find yourself in these dark times to find the higher purpose of your life.
Savasana is an opportunity to allow new things to be. Tapping into something greater for yourself begins with the awareness that something greater even exists—and to recognize it. In Savasana, you can tap into that expansiveness and allow yourself to envision (or inwardly inquire about) your higher purpose, and what you want to have as a real possibility.
Like peeling an onion, Savasana is a process of letting go layer by layer in a series of openings, which occur with increasing depth. When you release fully into Savasana, you get to look within and discover something profound about yourself. You come to know yourself—not what you think, not what you feel, not what you’ve accomplished, but who you are truthfully, at your essence.
You become yourself in the moment when all the ideas and concepts that you’ve been carrying around about yourself are dissolved in the light of your awareness. You come to the ultimate state of “nothingness,” and from that fertile state, you become pure possibility. From that essence of you, you can then move into authentic, meaningful creation of your life. In other words, you get to pause, hit the reset button, and consciously choose your actions moving forward from a place of pure authenticity—no masks, no struggles, no doubt, no contraction. You can ask yourself, What am I truly a yes for? What do I want to create? You move from being passively curious to passionately interested in the direction of your life and your practice.
In Savasana, you can allow yourself to experience what you want in the future right here and now. Inner vision becomes clear as the drishti in your heart opens and sees. You will become more directed and more focused as you look and listen from your heart. When the head wants something, it will never go directly; it will zigzag, or spin in a whirlpool as it considers pros and cons, pathways and obstacles. But the whisperings from the heart are always authentic and singular in their focus. The heart knows what it wants.
The problems, challenges, and issues that most of us have now in our practice and our lives will be resolved only when we come back to knowing ourselves as a visionary from the heart. Each of us must come to the realization that we can practice and live at the level of Executive Creator of our own lives, in concert with a force greater than ourselves, rather than following an inherited or imagined vision of ourselves that we may have adopted from what has historically been expected of us.
Savasana offers the experience of opening your heart to hear its wisdom. It is an opportunity to know and be yourself—unfiltered, unencumbered, and unburdened. This deeply satisfying experience of yourself, as yourself, is a sign that your practice is working.
Acknowledge yourself for bringing yourself to your mat today. That’s your commitment in action. What do you appreciate about how you showed up, what you accomplished? Appreciation is a recognition of the contribution you’ve made. This is how we cultivate a grateful and happy heart.
As well, acknowledge where you got stopped in your practice, where you maybe didn’t accomplish what you wanted to today, knowing you will have the opportunity to refine next time. Acknowledgment is the acceptance of truth and allows something to be whole and complete as it is. Honor yourself by being honest. This is the practice of satya. Where did you hold back? When did you choose fear? Where did you avoid being uncomfortable or shrink away from your edge? What was your contribution to whatever it is you are concerned with in your practice? These questions are an antidote to any feelings of helplessness and, by affirming that we had a role in creating our experience, allow us to choose accountability. Just acknowledge the answers; that’s where the power lies. It’s not a failing on your part. No blame, no fault—just awareness. It’s actually a win to become conscious of where you got stopped, because then it becomes a foundation for growth.
Every fact carries the weight of the meaning you give it. If you view the points you held back as a failing, you’ll hold it as that. But if you view it as simply one opportunity you didn’t take, you can choose to do it differently the next time. Don’t waste time being disappointed in yourself; that’s a dead end. The famous radio host Bernard Meltzer wisely once said, “When you forgive, you in no way change the past—but you sure do change the future.”
I find it helpful to remember, as I step off my yoga mat and onto the mat called my life, that through today’s practice I reframed the whole context of my life. As I lift my body up from Savasana, I remind myself I now have the power to see everything that comes my way in life as a pose. In the stance of true north, I now have the power, stability, freedom, flexibility, and openness to keep things simple and live from the heart: singular in purpose, straightforward, and upset free.
Standing in the space of what you’ve accomplished and not accomplished, what is the future you’re now creating for yourself and your practice? Where do you go from here? The accomplishments are done . . . remember, today’s breakthrough is tomorrow’s ego trip. Enjoy them, fill your heart with gratitude in this moment, and then let them go. Keep the space clear for new insights, discoveries, and breakthroughs. Same for the places where you got stopped. Acknowledge them, let them go, and look to what you’re now creating from here.
As always, the question to ask ourselves is What’s now possible?