365 Savasana – 6 months check-in
Time flies when you’re taking Savasana. The more you practice, the truer this becomes! At least, this is what my experience has been so far.
Back in September 2014 I embarked on a 365 day Savasana practice. The aim – to practice for Savasana for 20 minutes each day. I did not know what to expect. But I knew I had to do something about taking out some time for myself each day as well as address my difficulty with allowing myself to be still (without that guilty feeling that there was something else I should be getting done instead!).
I find it hard to believe six months have already passed. Some days my twenty minutes has extended into thirty minutes and it feels like no time at all. I notice patterns depending on how I am feeling. For instance, when I have been working long hours or feeling more stressed there is a high chance that I will fall asleep. Falling asleep during Savasana is not ideal, but it does tend to be a sign that I am exhausted. That said, the good thing about this is it gives me a clear signal to look again at my schedule and ask myself if I am filling my diary with anything unnecessary.
Most days, (when I am not falling asleep part-way through) my Savasana is when I meditate. So, my meditation practice has over the past six months shifted from sitting to lying down. Part of me did feel I was some how ‘cheating’ by meditating lying down. However, my mind was changed during my Yin Yoga intensive earlier this year with Norman Blair when Maitripusha Bois who led a meditation session with us talked about lying down meditation. There are also days when I listen to a guided meditation like this one from Tara Brach while in Savasana.
There are days when I have kicked myself for deciding to do this. Ah, 365 days of savasana sounded like such a good idea at the time! However, I am very happy to find (especially on the days where I think I don’t have time) that practising does not take time, it gives time. Always. I never think, “Ah, I shouldn’t have bothered with that Savasana.” As a consequence I feel overall more content and more determined to be less ‘busy’, that does not mean that I want to sit around doing nothing all day, but rather it has made me more aware of looking at how much of my time is spent doing things I want to do versus things I do not want or need to do.
Now I am just past the halfway-mark, I am already looking forward to the next six months.
For more on The 365 Savasana Project or to give it a try for yourself, please click here.