The Final Pose: Understanding the Importance of Savasana
July 15, 2024
Yoga classes vary widely from instructor to instructor, depending on the type of yoga you choose and the studio you visit. Despite those differences, many classes have one thing in common – they finish with participants lying on the floor in Savasana pose. Easy as it may seem initially, Savasana has plenty of benefits for new and experienced practitioners.
The History of Savasana
The term Savasana comes from Sanskrit and stands for the posture of a corpse. It’s one of the older and most established yoga poses with initial mentions dating back to 15th-century hatha yoga texts found in India. In those writings, Savasana is used to eliminate tiredness and promote a calm mind.
Ancient Hindu history tells stories of the Lord Shiva using Savasanan to enter a deep meditative state, connect with the divine, and defeat the demon Ravana through meditation. The power of Savasana also features in the Ramayana narrative, where it helped the injured prince Laxmana rest during a period of insomnia.
Today, we’re still using Savasana at the end of many yoga practice sessions as a gateway to relaxation and meditation.
Explore the Benefits of Savasana
Savasana is more than a convenient way to end an hour or so of yoga practice. This pose creates the space you need to digest and assimilate every piece of information from your active practice. Savasana gives your body a chance to process your recent movements and adapt.
This pose also stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system which steers your rest and digest response. At the same time, Savasana calms your sympathetic nervous system and its fight, flight, or freeze response. This stimulation and calming process is the reason that most practitioners feel deeply relaxed when their yoga practice finishes.
Savasana also offers a gateway to meditation. If you have never tried meditation before, the thought of sitting still for a considerable amount of time may seem daunting. Using Savasana and practicing Yoga Nidra (also known as yogic sleep) builds a bridge between your practice and a budding meditation practice.
How to Practice Savasana
One of the easiest and safest ways to explore Savasana for the first time is by joining one of our classes at Uptown Yoga and allowing an experienced yoga instructor to take you through the pose.
Your instructor will ask you to lie on your back on your mat with your legs spread mat-width apart and your arms lying by your side. Turn your palms up and relax your spine, lengthening it from your neck to your tailbone. Pay attention to your shoulders – they should be relaxed and lying on the mat.
When you first lie down, you may feel some tension in your lower back. Don’t be afraid to pull your knees into your chest and rock back and forth to massage your back. You’ll find that even a minute or two will make a difference to how your back feels.
Next, you start scanning every part of your body for muscular tension left over from your practice. Our instructors will guide you through the process and help you consciously release any tension. Then you let go any any control over your breath, your mind, or your body and try to reach a deeper state of relaxation.
You’ll remain in this state for several minutes, and some of our practitioners even dose off. That’s ok! To help you return to the present, we’ll start by flexing fingers or toes and slowly bringing movement back to the body before finishing your practice.
Integrating Savasana Into Your Daily Life
Savasana is one of the easiest poses to practice at home. It’s impossible to get it wrong. All you need is your mat and a few minutes, and you’re ready to use Savasana to wind down from a busy day, for example.
If you’re just getting started with your practice, you may find that scanning your body can be challenging at first. Don’t worry about having to restart again. Simply bring your mind back to your body and keep looking for those tense spots.
Many of us hold tension in our faces, for example, the areas around our mouth and our forehead. Learning to release that tension will help you manage and lower your stress levels. Holding tension could lead to headaches; releasing that tension during Savasana lets you prevent them.
The Next Step
Experience the benefits of Savasana for yourself by booking a Uptown Yoga class today. If you’re a more experienced practitioner or you’re looking for a way to start a meditation practice, consider using Savasana to establish a Yoga Nidra practice.
If you’d like to know more about either, don’t hesitate to talk to our instructors about reaping all the benefits of the last pose of your yoga practice.
