Iyengar has called Shavasana*, the final relaxation pose, one of the most difficult. Why is it difficult? As serious yoga practitioners we strive to eventually be able to live outside time–inside time’s heart but disconnected from the past and the future: in other words, to be always in the present. Shavasana is training for this triumph.**
To do shavasana is to cut the threads that connect us to the concept of “I.” We become present but formless.
My yoga instructor, Dassa Oppenheimer studied with Iyengar in the 70s when his class size was no more than a dozen. She got a lot of direct, personal instruction that she passes on to us and stories, too. For instance she told us: “In class, Guruji liked to sit on my abdomen when I was in Urdhva Dhanurasana (the wheel, upward bow pose). ‘Look,’ he would say. ‘Oh, she’s a strong one’.”
I suppose that story let us know that despite her small size and elegance, she’s tough. Not that we hadn’t realized that already. We have been studying with her for decades. Her instruction possesses the sturdy, relentless drive of a master teacher who both cares for her students deeply but who also has little tolerance for lapses of attention to detail.
“No,no, no,” she says when we are about to stop sweating and are ready to close our eyes in a welcome, final relaxation.“How many times do I have to tell you!” She knocks our legs an inch further apart or a bit closer together.
According to Dassa, an improper shavasana never permits you to let go of your body, which is a necessary step in letting go of your thoughts and therefore entering timelessness.
10 STEPS FOR A PROPER SHAVASANA
1. From sitting to lying. Place yourself on the mat in dandasana, heels at the bottom of the mat. Align your body. Be in the center of the mat and your body. On your sit bones. Your hip bones parallel. Have a folded blanket ready at the head of your mat (or a prop that will lift your head & neck only as much as to be on the same plane as your spine, not higher.)
Going down from dandasana to shavasana is one of the few times in yoga that you are permitted to collapse your torso. Roll down from sitting, vertebrae by vertebrae, to a flat-on-your-back position.
2. Placing head prop Place the head/neck prop (more…)