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But the story goes that after drinking the blood, she goes into overdriveâŠshe canât stop herself. She is no longer aware of what she is doing and is operating on auto-pilot. Heads are rolling, but soon the Gods fear that she might come for theirs too! Shiva lies down dead as a corpse and Kali steps on him and is suddenly shook. She is brought back to awareness. We are told that the lesson is that yoga means bringing conscious awareness to all of our actions. But Shiva lying beneath Kali is literally UNconscious. Heâs a corpse. What if we take it more literally? What if Shivaâs corpse represents restâŠlying stillâŠthe ultimate STOP. We are often told that Kali sticks out her tongue in shame when she realizes she is standing on her âhusbandâ. Iâve always hated that interpretation. What if Shiva is telling his beloved, âyouâve done your workâŠyouâve vanquished that unvanquishable demonâŠ.you can rest now, babe. I got you.â Shavasana (corpse pose) is the rest at the end of a yoga class. Itâs named for Shivaâs Shava in the famous image of Kali. Itâs called the most important pose in Hatha Yoga. Shavasana is meant to be a minimum of 10 minutes. Itâs when your body can integrate all the work that it has done. It is when your subtle body can do its subtle work. One of my biggest pet peeves is when in modern yoga classes, the teacher takes you right to the end of the hour and then lays you down in shavasana and says, âfeel free to stay as long as you needâ and then they leave the room and the next class starts rolling in and setting up their mats around you. Shavasana is treated as an afterthought. It isnât valued as much as asana. But actually in traditional Hatha Yoga, there is meant to always be a balance of effort and rest throughout the practice, not just at the end. There is a rest posture in every position. If you are doing a standing posture, you rest afterwards in mountain pose. If you are doing a prone posture, you rest afterwards in childâs pose or prone shavasana, etc. You exert effort. You do a hard thing. You focus and concentrate. And then you rest. You rest as long as you need to. You rest so that you can gather your energy to do the next pose with full integrity. If you donât take those rests in between, your poses become less mindfulâŠyou canât hold them with integrity and you could end up hurting yourself. This is the life lesson of the Hatha Yoga practice and of the Tantric Goddesses standing or sitting on top of Shivaâs corpse. Hatha Yoga is all about balancing energiesâŠHa and ThaâŠ.Sun and Moon. In nature, ebb and flow is the natural order of things. Our days are divided into our waking lives ruled by the Sun and our sleeping lives ruled by the Moon. Our years are divided into summer ruled by the Sun and winter ruled by the Moon. But colonized society likes to pretend that only productivity matters. We all know that when we donât get enough sleep, the next day is likely useless. We know that the creative energy of Spring requires the dormancy of Winter to be able to burst forth. When we try to push ourselves according to colonized notions of productivity, we feel exhausted, depleted. We live in struggle. And our efforts are often wasted. If we donât give ourselves the necessary rests, our bodies may force us to rest by falling ill. I know Iâm guilty. This pandemic has been a collective manifestation of forced stop. But the thing about driving ourselves to sickness in order to rest is that it isnât very restful. And definitely not enjoyable. When we donât rest, both our efforts and our rests are wasted. When we give ourselves over to being, rather than doing, to acceptance rather than struggle, a sense of spaciousness opens up. We can trust that our creativity is gathering energy under the surface. We can trust that our every action will have full integrity, vitality, awareness and intention. We arenât operating on auto-pilot. We arenât in a frenzy. We are relaxed even as we move. And both our efforts and our rests feel more fruitful. As Winter approaches, the urge to rest naturally grows. Embrace it. Rest is healthy. Rest is necessary. Youâve done enough. You can rest now, babe!
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