“Lie still in savasana. This is where you get the benefits of the pose!”
How many times in the last 19 months of yoga have I heard that statement? At least once a day. I’m still not good at being still. My body is deceiving because I can lie there without moving a muscle. It’s my mind that refuses to be reigned in. I want the twenty seconds to hurry up and pass so I can get right into the next pose. My thinking is “Let’s get this workout done so I can feel good and get on with life.” But did I really get the workout that is supposed to make me feel good? Or did I skip the most important part – the part that held the benefits?
I have a blogger friend who made me laugh so hard with a Facebook post last week. She is a business owner and is constantly busy traipsing the country. She went to visit her sister and her sister said to her, “Don’t you ever stop and smell the roses?”
My friend, still so preoccupied with business at hand said, “Oh! You sent roses? I’m sorry! I must’ve missed them. Where are they? I’ll smell them now.” She really thought her sister was talking about real flowers. At the end of her post was a note to herself: Get a life.
How much do we really miss by always wanting to hurry up and move onto the next thing? Sure, what I’m doing now is nice, but what’s next? The benefits. The benefits are not found in anticipating the next thing on our list. My life needs more savasanas. Today I’m in NY and not going to yoga, but I am going to dinner with friends we haven’t seen in a long time and tomorrow is my father’s 80th birthday and will be spent with family. I will make an extra effort to “savasana” in between the two.
This morning I just had a wonderful gym workout. After my stretching at the end of it I did something I never do (the free coffee on the counter is always calling me.) I laid out the towel on the mat and spent an extra song on a savasana – just letting my mind and body take in the workout. While putting on my coat to leave the gym, I have to say, that workout was just a bit more special than usual. The coffee afterward tasted better, too.
When “the benefits” of what you’ve done are allowed to seep into the mind and bones, true change takes place. If we keep skipping the “savasanas”, it’s no wonder we fear change and then change, when it finally does happen, is so slow to take effect.
And so, as another day goes by, I will make an effort to add more “savasanas” to my days, and….I have written.
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