Savasana
Written by: Sar
I’m in downward dog—hands shoulder width apart on the mat, my hips up in the air, feet hip width apart on the opposite side. I’m spreading my fingers and pushing down on my mat but I still feel myself slipping and my veins popping out in circles on the inside of my wrist. Leslie can see my arms quivering slightly. She walks over to me—I’m bent at the waist with my head by my hands but I can see Leslie’s feet through the V of my legs. Her feet are directly behind mine, hips width apart. I can’t see her hands but I can feel them on the back of my neck. She’s bent at the waist too, hovering over my back so that her fingertips reach the top of my spine. She splits her first and second finger into a V, like my legs, and runs them down each side of my spine toward my tailbone. Her touch is slow, intentional, and almost erotic. It’s the most sensual thing I’ve felt in months. Suddenly I sink into my pose carelessly, my exhale pushes my hips higher in the air and my heels towards the ground. I feel rooted into my mat and I realize it’s the first time I’ve felt grounded in a while.
When I was younger, I always thought that you couldn’t cry if you were lying down. If you tried, the water would drown your eyeballs, spew out over the eyelids and then pool towards the crease where eye meets nose. So now—while I’m lying on the ground in savasana during the last five minutes of class—how come I can cry? Luckily I, and everyone laying around me, has a thin tissue and eye pillow draping over their lids and temples. The tissue soaks my tears, but how can it if I am lying down? Leslie tells us just to be because we are always so worried about doing. I’ve just been for weeks now, not doing anything. I’ve been isolated in my own home while my children are at school and my depressed husband bar hops before he records his show. I’m sick of just being. I let my mind wander to somewhere else, somewhere far away in the past where a glimpse of happiness appears. It’s pretty blurry, like the ambiguous lines in a nebula, just discernible enough to notice the change in color tone.
In the room, our breath is a unified fire, cycling heavily through our lungs and throats, releasing from our mouths. Leslie says it is like fogging up a mirror but my breath isn’t strong enough. My breath is short and collapsed—Leslie says it’s okay since I’m a beginner but she doesn’t know that it’s actually from all the breath I’ve used up from crying. I can hear the ujjayi breathing: inhale one…exhale two. The savasana is also called the corpse pose. Can corpses feel this weight on their hearts—or the spots where their hearts once were? But theirs would come from the outside, the dirt pressing in on the coffin. Mine comes from the inside, pushing out, reaching for air.