Savasana. Corpse pose. It’s the relaxing reward after a flow yoga session.
It just so happens to be my favorite pose. Lying on your back, eyes closed, letting the mind wander across or into ideas, sifting through them like clouds on a beach. Clarity of mind, peacefulness of spirit, relief of the body.
But you don’t receive the benefits of savasana without the practice before it. Simply lying on your back and staring at the ceiling doesn’t bring forth the euphoric mindfulness that corpse pose engenders. You need to sweat, to work through difficult poses like utkatasana (chair), vrikshasana (tree), and kakasana (crow). The little, forgotten muscles in your leg must balance you so you don’t fall over on the mat next to you… too many times.
The same goes for your thoughts. You have to exhaust your mind through another 5 breaths of downward dog where you fluctuate from the burning in your shoulders because you’re doing it wrong, to the ever-amassing pile of emails you have to return to after class.
But after an hour of tuning the physical and mental, after strength and fatigue pulse through your body, you have finally earned savasana.
You can’t touch the reward without the work before it. For brand strategy, you seldom find clarity without rigor. The same goes for UX flows and UI platforms. They can’t achieve seeming effortlessness without effort. It’s a great paradox.
Savasana comes in many forms.
