unclench everything:

winter's IN-vitation

In the northern hemisphere, as i write this, we are fully inhabiting the season of savasana, the symbolic yoga posture in this life-death-rebirth cycle where movement slows or ceases, where we draw our awareness inward. 

Savasana [pronounced shavasana]; Sanskrit: शवासन -- ‘dead posture’; corpse pose, resting pose

                Lie on your back, feet flop open naturally.

                Arms rest alongside the body, palms facing upwards.

                Neck is elongated, shoulders drop towards the ground.

Unclench everything – kneecaps, jaw, butt.

Allow the tongue to relax from the roof of your mouth.

                Eyes are closed, body is heavy, breath is natural.

                Release any lingering tension.

                Soften everything. 

The physiological necessity of this pose at the end of a yoga practice is real: the body needs some time to acclimate to the changes, the subtle shifts that occurred during all the twists, folds, balances + extensions.  Adept yoga guides and wise practitioners sanction at least five minutes at the end of sessions for this posture.  More than that?  Even better.  Envision the function of a good marinade for these meat-suit bodies of ours, where we allow the proverbial ‘juice’ of the practice to seep in, soften, and enhance the situation.

On the subtler plane, well, this is where the irony of this pose’s perceived ease shows up.  From here, there is ‘simply’ noticing what shows up in the ‘nothingness’: observing the antics, the subject matter and tone of one’s inner chatter-scape.  It is scary terrain, this stillness, this diminishment of stimuli and sensory input.   We are conditioned to avoid it, trained to stay in constant ‘productive’ motion, to keep our attention hyper-fixated on the prized external world.  So…what lives here in this darkness?  While i (nor anyone) can’t ever truly know what that ‘looks’ like for others, if this territory is anything like mine, there has been an abundance of self-deprecation + judgement (usually in the tired-old category of not-enoughness) and “should-ing” going on.  A lot of frenzied internal narration in the style of, say, overly-caffeinated ping-pong matches?  That sounds pretty accurate.

Something i am (still + rather annoyingly) confronted with as i meet myself in savasana is the question of worthiness to rest.  To just lay there.  To not jump up after seventeen seconds and get after the extensive list of tasks that rank as ‘more important’ than this pose. 

Savasana, or any stillness practice i’ve been exploring, continues to reveal this deep conditioning around the correlation between productivity and worthiness, the toxic voices of achievement + hustle culture that tell me: certain conditions must be met in order to be deserving of rest; that relaxation is equal to laziness; that stillness or a slower pace mean that i don’t care or love enough, or i don’t want something ‘bad enough’; that I need to wait for some flavor of permission to take balancing breaks; that giving myself ample time in restorative practices is something to feel selfish or guilty about.

Can you relate?  i’m over it (read: i am deep in the rebellious work of unlearning this nonsense).  

It does not require a fancy degree or years spent studying under a guru to glean why most of us don’t “go there” into these darker inner-scapes.  When movement intentionally ceases and distractions have been minimized, we are invited into the hallowed ground where our individual (and thus very collective) ego/shadow work lives – our core wounds, our self-limiting beliefs, our fears and insecurities.  The deeply-ingrained belief pattern that my inherent value and worthiness is directly tied to what i am - or, in the face of prioritizing rest, NOT - accomplishing and producing, is a beast-of-a-knot to unravel.  Yet i know that the compassionate vigilance of my inner self-talk is worth the attention it requires, because, y’know . . . as within, so without.  Bringing illuminated awareness into these darker realms of the psyche means taking radical responsibility of my own shit:  no matter ‘how’ it got there, it’s mine to notice, understand how + where it shows up in the day-to-day, and ultimately heal.  I have found that access to these inner spaces is heightened in nature, in solitude, in stillness.  Integrating psychedelics also can offer insightful layers here, but it’s not essential.   The natural world right now, in her extended cocooning darkness and cold, is reminding me of the necessity of this inwardness, of this slowness, of tending to the releasing and shedding of all that is not serving the most-integrated expression of my life -- so that the more-replenished-balanced-present version of me can emerge.

Savasana is a beautiful embodiment of this knowing, of trusting in the wisdom of a rested state.  It, or any stillness posture, feels like a devotional act, an honoring of the ways that all the beautiful activity – whether that’s a sequence of poses in a practice, or a string of events in the life – has shown to us, changed us, assisted us in our unique unfolding. 

“All” we have to do is create space for it and remain open to what is there.