Savasana: Corpse Pose
In the movie, Dreams, the filmmaker, Akira Kurosawa, is in a museum looking at paintings by Vincent van Gogh. The viewer sees him from behind, moving slowly as he absorbs the works of art. Then he picks up his gear, including an easel and paint, and to the surprise of the viewer, walks into one of the paintings. He asks some women washing in the river where to find van Gogh and then heads off through some golden fields. When he comes upon the artist at work, van Gogh turns to him and says, “Why aren’t you painting?”
* * * * * * * * *
Awake, or trying to wake up and not wanting to. My body hurts and the fatigue feels
overwhelming. I manage to get up. I attempt
to sit in meditation. My mind is not
quiet. My capacity to focus is
poor. I go into child’s pose, covering
myself completely with the blanket but today, even this pose hurts. I try a few other forward bends but nothing
seems to work.
Finally, I lay on my back with a folded blanket on my
stomach. Another blanket covers me
completely, including my face. I roll
side to side, tucking in the edges of the blanket so that I feel swaddled. This finally, is what I need, a swaddled
savasana.
Suddenly, I find myself in my own painting of savasana. It is unfinished. I feel the dry, parched land on one side and
the more alive, lush plants and creatures on the other side. My body is on/in the earth. Some parts of my
body are flesh. Some parts are only bone.
I see things not yet in the painting – a rock at my head and one at my
feet, a snake and a tiger.
In the painting, the differentiation between existence and
non-existence is dissolving. When salt
or sugar dissolve, the molecules separate into smaller particles like a pile of
leaves blown apart by the wind.
Dissolving makes it appear that something has disappeared from existence
when it has actually been spread out into particles too small to view. In my painting, the process of dissolving has
begun. Or, the process of new life has
begun. It is difficult to tell the
difference. They are the same process.
Shava means corpse.
Some schools of hatha yoga encouraged members to frequent graveyards and
meditate on the transience of life while perched on a corpse.[i]
Death for these yogis was the death of the ego identity and its consequent
release from suffering. For them, the
graveyard is a place of personal transformation.
“All that has a beginning must of necessity have an
end. All that is born must die, all that
comes into existence must cease to exist.
Thus every existing thing unfailingly aims toward disintegration. The power of destruction is the nearest thing
to ‘Qualityless Immenisty’ into which all must return..”[ii]
Death holds a feeling of sweetness for me. I imagine that we dissolve, just as sugar
molecules dissolve, into something expansive: a “Qualityless Immensity.” We humans have written myriads of texts about
who or what this mysterious Immensity is, texts that we understand as
sacred. When I am exhausted, I want to
dissolve into such a place of rest from which, I trust, there is some new
emergence of the vividness of life. I
imagine the death of ego as the yogis understood it, is just such a place of
rest. Ego is a heavy word. A healthy ego is, of course, necessary. Yet, melting into the landscape of my
painting where I am dissolving, and life is emerging, has great beauty and a
feeling of freedom from all the thoughts and cares it is so easy to get tangled
in. I imagine this is death of the ego –
the thing that distinguishes us from the landscape around us.
I confess that in the early years of my yoga asana practice,
I often skipped savasana. I didn’t
really feel I had the time or patience.
Now I have built a “savasana platform” for myself. I regularly lay down in savasana at a moments
notice when I am between tasks, or stuck, or just tired. My cats love this new ritual and I am
refreshed from the quiet moments.
Listening to the radio program “On Being,” recently, a Rabbi
told the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel. Jacob said to the angel, “I will not let you
go until you bless me.” The Rabbi
suggested that when difficulty or some form of crisis arrives on our doorstep,
as they most certainly will, we don’t let go until we find the blessing in them
- the gift. This perhaps, is a piece of
the personal transformation the yogis were finding when they sat on a corpse to
meditate.
I want to stay swaddled and in my own painting. But eventually, like Kurosawa, I step back
out of the painting, unroll my swaddling, and slowly get up onto my feet. I think I am looking at the world differently
though holding on to the experience feels like trying to grasp a cloud. Instead I try walking through my day with the
morning’s unique yoga practice of savasana as the background to everything I do
and say and think.
