Like we talked about in the last article, the final three limbs of yoga are concentration, meditation, and Samadhi. Final Savasana is the perfect time to meditate. It’s the payoff, the reward for all that hard work over the previous hour. The whole reason early yogis practiced asanas was to exhaust themselves and make the body healthy in order to make meditation easier.
This is why it’s really too bad that more yogis don’t fully embrace dead man’s pose. Some of them can’t wait to get out of there, they almost consider this valuable time to be an inconvenience. The moment the teacher tells them they can roll into the fetal position they do it without gusto, ready to get out of there.
The modern world is busy, there’s no question about that, but what will be the real difference between an extra five minutes or so spent laying on your back after class is over and rushing out right away? Embrace that time, give your body a chance to soak in the benefits of all the hard work you just did by maintaining stillness a little bit longer. Meditation at the end of class is ostensibly the reason you are there, so you might as well try taking advantage of the opportunity to see how it makes you feel, not just while you’re meditating but also afterwards as you bring that heightened sense of calm and focus into the rest of your life.
