In yoga class, after the final Sun Salutation, I invite my students to stand for a moment and listen to their heartbeat. And they listen. And I wait for them to listen, and I listen too. But then something else begins to happen. They start to anticipate. I can feel this anticipation rise like a deep wave in the ocean and ripple through the room. They want the thing that’s coming next. Because the thing that’s coming next is the reason most of them came in the first place. They’ve been slogging for an hour through postures like Three-legged Dog and Cobra and Locust and Crow. They’ve been trying their best, twisting their tired, tight bodies into Triangles and Trees and Tables, and now, finally, it’s time. It’s time to play dead.

The final pose of every yoga class is one called Savasana, which is Sanskrit for “Corpse pose.” It’s the pose where you lie on your back and practice being dead. Except that I don’t refer to it as “Corpse pose.” I don’t emphasize the “dead” part of it. Instead I say, “It’s time to integrate the practice,” (which is true). Or I say, “It’s time to let your body “set” like Jell-O,” (which is also true). Or I say, “It’s time to take a little nap, like in kindergarten, except without the cookies,” (also true, I don’t serve cookies).

Because if I were to say, “Now I would like you all to lie on the floor and contemplate your mortality and the fact that one day you will be dead,” maybe people wouldn’t be so keen to do that, and that might be bad for business.

So instead I allow them to think of Savasana as “nap time” and they are happy about that and go immediately into their “nest making” routines. Some fold multiple blankets into complex origamis of shoulder and neck supports. Others take bolsters and position them “just so” under their knees, or lie back over them, offering their throats and hearts up to the sky. Some just put on socks and a hoodie. Some cinch the hoods so tightly around their faces they look like little Unabombers. Most of them place eye bags over their eyes.

And then in my best Valium voice I take them down into their bodies. I give them permission to let go. I take them deeply into the places they hold tension: jaws, necks, shoulders, low backs. I encourage them to melt, to surrender the weight of their bodies to the earth.

And then I watch them. I hold the space for them. And for me, this is the most sacred time of all, and my most important function as their yoga teacher. I watch over them. I watch my vibrantly alive, breathing, aching, complaining, chronically tight and overly-stressed students, die.

Some twitch involuntarily. Some fall asleep and snore. But most of them drop into the deep, soft beds of themselves. I watch over them as they sink into the primordial ooze. Expression melts from their faces and they become totally real, and in this “practiced death” more fully alive than when they were “ocean breathing” during Downward-facing Dog.

And then, sadly, I must bring them back to life. The incantation I use is this: I say, “Begin to deepen your breath. Wiggle your fingers and toes. Come back to your body. If you’re wearing an eye bag, remove it now. Begin to stretch—a long, languorous, luxurious stretch. Slowly bend your knees. Roll over to your favorite side. Begin to let the day back in. Notice the color of the day. Notice the sounds from outside. Notice how you feel.”

And then, slowly, they begin to press up to a seated position. They look out the window at the sky. Their eyes reflect the light of the day, but also something deeper, something intangible and curious. I am sad that they can’t stay longer in this deep, soft stillness. But they can’t. They have to go home, or to work, or otherwise rejoin the program already in progress. So we chant “Om,” and look into each others eyes and bow “Namaste,” and then they go.

But one time, a woman stayed behind. “I have to call my husband,” she said, “because I don’t think I can drive now.” “Okay,” I said. And we talked quietly for a while and eventually she said, ‘Okay. I think I can make it home on my own now. It’s not easy coming back from the dead, you know.”

“I know,” I said.

From my second story studio window I watched over her as she made her way across the street, got into her car and drove away.

“Namaste,” I whispered.

©2008