SAVASANA, THE SACRED REST
By
Ma’lena Walley
Savasana, or corpse pose, is the one where we lie on our backs, feet splayed, arms alongside, allowing ourselves to sink into the earth. Still as a corpse. This pose should be simple yet most of us find it challenging. Sometimes it seems impossible to lie down, settle our breath and quiet our mind. Many people fall asleep—not surprising in a culture starved for rest.
Rest is a state wherein we cease movement and attempt to recover and refresh ourselves. Savasana takes this rest even deeper by allowing us to tap into the divine.
When we come in to the pose, we give ourselves permission to create a space around us and within us that is sanctified. To fall into savasana is to enter a rest that is sacred, one that brings us peace and comfort as well as the safety to completely be: be silent, be reflective, be receptive, become the holy being that we already are. We feel the power of gravity and surrender utterly, without reserve. We feel everything becoming heavy, muscles and bones sinking, nestling into the earth, sending out roots that anchor us and connect us to everything and everyone
Savasana is an active rest; we breathe and our bodies gently rise and fall, moving effortlessly. As we settle into comfort, releasing tension and mental chatter, our breathing slows and deepens into our own pattern and rhythm.
In savasana the part of the brain that responds to meditation—the parietal lobe—becomes tranquil. Thus we soften ourselves from the inside out: organs—stomach and liver, heart and lungs, kidneys and bowels. We push the softening outward, allowing it to radiate into our veins and nervous system, limbic, respiratory, immune and circulatory systems. We invite the softness into our muscles and bones, down to the marrow, softening our joints, tendons and fascia, softening all the way out to the surface of our skin—softening, settling, sinking into the earth, nestling into a burrow so that we are completely safe and comfortable. Now as we breathe we experience the quietude of body and mind before stepping into our spirit—that endless mobius of timelessness where we are able to reach the divine.
We are at ease. We move from comfort into calm; from quiet into stillness . . . We breathe and release, breathe and release.
©Ma’lena Walley, May 2009
