Struggles with savasana
How the least interesting looking pose taught me the most about myself
My personal story with savasana
(Trigger warning: mention of abuse/trauma)
There I was again, staring at a ceiling that started to become more familiar to me after each weekly yoga class. For a lot of people hearing the word ‘savasana’ (sometimes the only sanskrit used in yoga classes in the West), feels like a relief after some physically challenging poses.
Yet for me, I dreaded hearing the word for that final resting asana. My body would struggle with the stillness, I would feel muscle spasms, my hands would shake, and the idea of closing my eyes raised my anxiety. As I would lay there, I often thought to myself ‘how I had always been so calm and quiet by nature as a child, and wondered what had happend to me? Why couldn’t I do what seemed like the easiest yoga pose?’. I stared at those yoga studio ceilings for quite a while, but the questions it brought up was the introspection I needed.
Several things were happening in my body and mind at the time that caused my struggles with savasana. For a couple of years I had been living a life that wasn’t true to who I am (my authentic self). I had made life choices quite often based on security, expectations and most of all to please others. Since my childhood I had this strong sense that I wasn’t good enough and felt that my worth depended on what I could do for others (I became a people pleaser). I found it more important to be liked and to avoid conflict than to listen to my own wants and needs. At 25 (7 years ago) I didn’t know who I was, what I liked, or what I needed, yet I wasn’t aware of that until I started staring at those ceilings in savasana.
The people pleasing had actually taken such a toll on me, that I was very stressed and anxious (with an overactive sympathetic nervous system). My personal and professional life were draining energy from me, but having lost touch with myself I wasn’t able to refill my cup. This would eventually lead me to a burn-out at 28, I didn’t realise at the time that those struggles in savasana were a precursor to my burn-out. Only once I had a burn-out did I truly start to reconnect with myself, which eventually let me to completely change my life.
Next to not living in my authentic life at that time, there is another specific reason I still struggle with savasana to this day. Reclined positions such as savasana sometimes trigger trauma responses in me, associated with abusive past experiences. I struggle with positions in which I feel vulnerable, the idea that I can’t get away easily or someone can overpower me, makes my sympathetic nervous system kick in (the fight, flight or freeze response) to keep me safe. Despite no longer being in actual danger, my body has stored these past fears. Laying in savasana still often makes me realise that no matter how healed we seem, some trauma lingers in our bodies and it takes a lot to rewire our brain to belief that we are safe.
So often we see posts online of people sharing their ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures of some impressive looking yoga asana, seeing their physical progression over a period of time. Yet the less glamorous savasana is the pose in which I celebrate the most how far I’ve come.
Over time some of the unease I experienced in savasana subsided enough for me to close my eyes and at least experience moments of stillness and safety. Yet I also recognise that it’s fine to not be perfect at savasana, staring at ceilings can be quite meditative in itself. In much the same way that I can’t do Hanumanasana (a full split/monkey pose), I still benefit from doing the pose to the extend my body allows me to. Savasana is a pose in which I’ve learned about how my body stores past experiences which need healing and loving attention, it’s a pose in which I’ve grown the most (there are even moments now when I love it). Let’s not underestimate the power of Savasana and poses which look so easy, let your imperfections in a pose inspire your curiosity into understanding who you are and what needs healing.
Why is it worth practicing Savasana?
It is quite easy to disregard the importance of a pose like Savasana, what is simply laying down going to do for us? I’ve been in power yoga classes where half the class would roll up their mats as soon as the word was pronounced. As I described above it provided me with so much awareness of issues I was facing such as burn-out and the consequences of abuse, but there is still a lot more! These are some of the numerous benefits of practicing Savasana:
Relaxation
Perhaps the most obvious benefit of savasana is relaxation, we allow our bodies to change from active to passive (from the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system). Relaxation is essential to healing and restoring our body and mind.
Practicing surrender / letting go
Yet Savasana goes further than mere relaxation, it is a chance for us to practice or even embody surrender. The ability to let go is the antidote to anxiety and a step towards experiencing deeper meditation. There are a multitude of reasons why surrender is hard, and quite often it has to do with how hard we are on ourselves. Especially in modern society we can be quite obsessed with productivity, and some of those people leaving class early don’t allow themselves ‘unproductive’ time. They struggle with surrendering to relaxation.
Sensing changes / awareness
Often Savasana offers a moment of introspection to notice any changes in how you feel. Perhaps the class changed your energy or emotion. Doing a bodyscan during Savasana can be a great help in improving bodily awareness.
Creating new neural pathways
We all need time to process whatever happend to us in a day, or on the mat. In Savasana we give our mind the time to learn and perhaps even change neural pathways. For example we might have experienced a deeper expression of a yoga pose than ever before during the class, in Savasana we have the time to process this information and our body will remember that it is safe for us to go to this deeper expressions. We might have also had some negative self-talk, but we proved something to ourselves in class, and neural pathways of more positive self-talk could be created.
How to improve in Savasana?
If you are experiencing uncomfortable feelings in Savasana you might want to work on improving your ease in this pose. You could start by practicing Savasana in a safe space (perhaps where you are alone and won’t be disturbed). You can build up the duration of the pose over time. If you are in a class it can be helpful to keep your eyes open but still try to find relaxation in parts of the body (however small), for example focusing just on your hand/fingers and finding out if you could relax them, or focusing on the fascial muscles. Another option is to count or use a mantra if the stillness is too uncomfortable, this form of concentration can be helpful before moving into a more meditative state of mind.
However, I think it is really important to only go as far as feels comfortable and when you experience a lot of anxiety (even in a class) I would always recommend to slowly come out of the pose and find a pose which works for you. I quite often change into a seated position if I experience too much anxiety and simply observe from this safer position what is happening in my body. Even the unpleasant experiences in asana’s can be blessings in disguise by leading us to a deeper understanding of ourselves which goes far beyond just benefitting us on our yoga mats.