The Savasana Story
Did you know that every time we tell a story, it changes? We store the information that comprises the story in different areas of the brain, and string it all back together for the retelling. The reconstruction is colored by our shift forward in time and all of the changes in perspective that may have occurred, among other things.
We are made of stories. Our mind has a great protective strategy of being really good at telling stories about who we are and what we are capable of, setting parameters that become like an extension of our body.
Just like spinning a tale around the campfire, our personal mythologies pull from multiple sources. We are informed by information that is learned and inherited, and projected upon us from external influences. Our personal narratives are deeply internalized, but also evolving.
Your personal mythology may say you don't do enough, or that you are unloveable. Is your mind spinning tales about not deserving time to work on self improvement, reinforcing that your injuries can never heal, or constantly reminding that you don't have the kind of body that's right for yoga?
The body plays a role with it's own ways of telling stories, in a sensory language expressed through physical symptoms, places that feel "locked," or even diseased.
Storytelling is the nature of the mind, and the underpinnings of our identity. Great sages of the yoga tradition have been able to dissolve these confines of the mind and enter states where they are identified with the timeless soul of existence, which is said to be the true Self. This meeting of the self (with the small s) and the Self is yoga:
"Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the self.” –The Bhagavad Gita
Through yoga we can use our personal narrative as a portal to access what lies beyond. The yoga journey is a deep listening to the stories of the breath, the body, emotions, thoughts, and other felt senses. We must first become embodied to access this portal by accepting all that shows up and carrying the intention to harmonize with the pulsation of life itself. We are not likely to drop into full samadhi like the sages (you never know), but we can exercise out ability to abide in this realm beyond grasping and suffering.
When I first began teaching a decade ago, Savasana, the final resting pose at the end of class, was something I automatically squeezed in to the end of class because I knew that it was the time when the body could rehydrate and relax, because it felt good. These days in our sessions, I approach Savasana as the heart of the yoga class experience.
The active practice opens the inner faculties to awareness of our somatic stories and their sources. The active prepares us for Savasana, which translates to pose of the corpse, in which we metaphorically pass out of body identification. In this state, one can continue to abide in the deeper mode of existence and access the portals of the subtle body. Me move toward a state of Yoga Nidra, of a wakefulness of the casual body as the ego "sleeps," where we have access to the vital roots of our unique journey.
"What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience, something that never has been and never could have been experienced by anyone else."
- Joseph Campbell
