Beautiful Beliefs 5: I believe that…

…I am reborn through savasana.

A what pose? You want me to pose like a dead person? Why on earth would I want to do that!?

My first thoughts at adopting savasana – or corpse pose, as it’s also known – were not entirely positive. However, this whole yoga thing is still so very new to me, that I knew that I owed it to myself to give up any judgements I may have about the practice, or my capability to achieve half the positions I had committed to attempt.

I’ve surprised myself with how quickly I’ve grown into my practice. How, after even only one week, it’s now become an indispensable part of my day. The foot stretch is still fairly uncomfortable. The child pose is bliss. The plank is an impossibility. The pigeon makes me cry large fat tears for no real reason I have managed to discern. But it’s corpse pose which has surprised me the most..

I have an image in my head. I am standing in front of a mirror, and the mirror-me reflected in the glass seems grey, insubstantial, veiled. As I stand and watch this figure, the veils begin to fall away. Each veil is as fine as gossamer silk, and as it peels away and drops to the floor, the reflection appears a little less grey and a little more radiant. Layer by layer by layer the veils pull away to reveal a luminous me: one who is unashamed, one who is not afraid to step forward as herself.

This is the vision I see when I lie in corpse pose. As Terri Guillemets so beautifully claims, the “corpse pose restores life. Dead parts of your being fall away, the ghosts are released.” When I lie flat on my back, open palms resting lightly by my side, breathing slow but regular, body utterly motionless other than the rhythmic rise and fall of chest and belly, I am in a state of unveiling. My ghost selves are dissipating, dissolving into the ether leaving behind something essential, something pure.

There goes that ghost of humiliation, and there goes the ghost of shame. Hand in hand, the ghosts of embarrassment and fear leave the scene, with the ghost of loss hurrying to catch them up. The ghost of need appears reluctant to leave, but is eventually persuaded by the ghost of lack. The ghost of overload, the ghost of inadequacy and the ghost which just can’t say no are among the last to leave. They seem reluctant to relinquish the place they’ve made home.

You see, they’ve all been so welcomed, made to feel at home. They’re like the guests who wouldn’t leave, and who started making ever more excessive demands on their host. There’s the mistaken belief that by treating them well, by suppressing your true self, your true emotions, that they’ll eventually be satisfied and go away. But they don’t. Instead they grow ever more comfortable, and take ever increasing liberties. After a while, you forget that they were “just visiting” and you begin to believe they belong.

But they don’t. Belong, that is. And that’s what I realise during savasana. While I’m lying on the floor it suddenly begins to make sense. I feel like with my eyes closed I suddenly see my life, my direction, my self, so much clearer than I did before. As I breathe in and out I repeat the mantra that appears to have become my touchstone my yoga practice: Just let go. These three words over and over and over until they lose their original meaning and become magical sounds which I use to detach the ghosts.

And from beneath these ghostly veils, there’s a shining self which has been trying to find release for oh such a long time. There are glimmers beneath gossamer. There’s a glow beyond the ghosts. Because this luminous figure wrapped up in the veils is me at my highest potential. My work, while I’m here, is to help free that figure. To let that figure breathe and shine; dance and laugh; connect and share. But mostly, my work is to let her be herself. Because that’s what she really wants, and that’s what she really deserves.

And all I need do is keep turning up to the mat. Turn up to the mat, lie prone as I melt into the present moment, that place which is presided over by the goddess of the in between. She’s working her magic, but only if I show up to work my own. But together we can speak the sounds (just let go just let go just let go), unwrap the veils, and then one day, one day the last ghost will leave. The work won’t stop there, of course. These ghosts are tricky, and they’ll do their very best to cling to clothes, weave around limbs, drape themselves over shoulders.

Thank goodness for savasana.