“No winter lasts forever, no spring skips its turn.” – Hal Borland

Ritam or rhythm of nature.

I thought I would talk about Shavasana, well that, and the end of your practice. You might be asking, what could she possibly say about a pose that literally requires you to do nothing? True, but in the nothing everything new happens. The moment from Savannas to the final bowing of your practice is your “Spring.”

Shavansa literally translates to shave meaning "corpse" and asana meaning "seat or "posture." Death to your practice. Now I know that sounds morbid, but if we look at the transition of your Winter to Spring, it is rather beautiful to think of as you transition to the final moment of your practice.

Once you have completed your practice, we close, quite literally, our practice. The practice is the work, to change from the older version of you, 45 or 60mins ago, to the new version of you, the moment after the savasana. This allows you to “bloom” into the new version of yourself.

Sometimes we fixate on the absolutes or the opposites, winter vs summer, but we can forget about those shoulder seasons. Those moments of transition. They are so beautiful and so utterly important.

In fact, although Shavasana is considered a resting pose it is rather active and I encourage you stay actively awake. Think of it like Spring time with all the rain and thunderstorms. We need them. Not all forest fires are bad. The ones near homes definitely, the ones caused by arsons, 100%. The natural ones caused by lighting or controlled fires by educated fire-persons are not. We need the old dead growth to burn off so that the new undergrowth might come to the surface. It allows for the soil to be renewed for tiny saplings, and inches of grass to peak through with full access to nutrients without dead grass hiding the sun. In fact, if the old grass doesn’t burn off appropriately that’s when we have really bad fires because there is just too much kindling (hence the need for controlled fire by really smart professionally scientific arsonists.)

So I want you to think about shavannas as a place of closure, burning off who you were, the slow rise from the floor to seat as spring where you allow space for the new version of you to grow and blossom. Next time you find yourself in Shavasana "Corpse pose" see if you can actively notice your body shifting, the adrenaline curing through your veins, the heartbeat slowing, the muscles relaxing, and the mind slowing. See what you can learn as your transition.