This Fish Needs A Bicycle

savasana

Am not feeling quite like myself today. Perhaps is lack of sleep in combination with other out-of-whack elements. Feel a little broken and if had to think enough to write anything, might get weepy or otherwise pathetic. So, instead will recycle something that wrote a year ago this month, in another forum.

Bikram Yoga, or Hot Yoga, was one of the most intensely demanding experiences I have purposefully exposed myself to.

The temperature in the yoga studio was over 105 degrees; the amount of sweat pouring from my body was clearly more than I'd sipped from my Dasani bottle during the day. The weight of my own body became nearly insupportable as I twisted and balanced and bent in ways I would never have imagined myself doing. The impossibility of it (as I perceived it), was the greatest challenge. My physical body, I'm certain, can withstand much more than the limitations my psyche imposes upon it. And at my breaking point, when it did not seem there was enough strength or water in my body to support even my own breath, the voice of my Yogi would puncture that natural fibre bubble and ease all my shaking muscles and strained mind with one word: Savasana.

In Sanskrit, Savasana is the Corpse Pose. Complete rest. Dead still. The lights would be turned off and eventually the soft sitar music would enter my consciousness and I would breathe deeply, sometimes tears forming in my eyes, using up what remaining moisture was left in my body. Savasana. Complete rest.

Thomas Paine, I believe, once said, "These are the times that try men's souls." A generationless observation of the nature of human suffering. We have obligations and emotions from which we cannot detach ourselves. We have relationships and loyalties that defy rational thought. And we have mental yoga sessions, so demanding and exhausting, that if one more drop of our precious emotional hydration is spent and if we do not soon hear that voice calling us to rest, we just may reach our limitations. Re-hydration of our willpower isn't found in a plastic, over-priced bottle of water. Such relief comes only by something as sweet as the milk of human kindness.

And in those times, when I am spent, and my entire self is bent and twisted in ways I did not know wouldn't break me, all I can do is hold the position, blinking back the sweat that stings my eyes, and wait for that voice to finally, firmly but ever so gently say

"Savasana."

Posted by This Fish at October 10, 2003 10:13 AM