Sunday Blog: Let It Go—Why Savasana Is So Hard, And Steve Jobs Was So Right
Dead body pose. Corpse pose. Savasana.
For some of us, this seems to come so easy. Lie there and be still. Relax. Release. Give over to the moment. Ahhh.
But for so many, this pose is hard. I don’t want to close my eyes. Why am I lying here? This is a waste of time. My face itches. I am hungry. Are my shoulders in the right place? I wish the teacher would stop talking. I’m bored.
We resist change and transformation because something has to die in order to give birth to something new. We must "die" in the moment of savasana to let our new being take shape. I think the fear is that if I let go of what I think I am, what I think I know, then who am I?
Letting go is one of the lessons that we get from death. We realize that we actually have so little control after all. Not one person in the history of the world has escaped it, and none of us ever will. So how does one take this lesson of dead body pose and turn it into something less morbid?
I recently re-watched Steve Jobs’s Stanford speech (posted through TED on “How to live before you die”). Well, he certainly did. Watch the video below for his full speech, even more prophetic now that he has passed. In a nutshell: Trust your gut. Follow your heart. Be led off the well-worn path, and trust that the dots will connect in the future. Never settle and do what you love. Lastly, ask yourself each day, “if today was the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And if the answer is "no" too many days in a row, you have to change what you are doing.
When you live with the knowledge of your own death, you have nothing to lose.
So die in the moment. Give yourself to savasana. Let go of what does not serve you. And wake up to the new you, the best you, every day.
I was cycling home today and I saw a girl on a bike nearly run over an older couple. She yelled at them because she had a green light and they were in the road when they shouldn’t have been. The man told her she was going too fast. And she got angry with them. Here is a perfect example of where needing to be right is just so wrong. When did our humanity become prostrate to being right? Let it go.
Let it go. Let something die in order for something else to take shape. Give yourself the five minutes you get in savasana. And live before you die.
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