In between each agonizing stretch of Bikram "hot" yoga, we lie on our backs and pretend to be corpses for 20 seconds. 20 seconds to calm our breathing, focus on our bodies, and supposedly to keep the mind clear of distractions. Not surprisingly, it's the hardest pose of the whole 90-minutes. Here's what rattled through my head on one 20-second corpse pose today:
- Oh no, that was the hardest pose of the series (camel) and we have to do it again! I don't know if I can...
- Focus on your breath.
- Don't think about Camel, think about my favourite pose afterward (rabbit) then two more and we're done and I can go home and...
- Ugh, focus Rick.
- Just get through the final 4 poses.
- No, just get through Camel.
- Actually, just stay in this corpse pose for another 5 seconds.
- Just stay in this one breath.
- Breath.
From Woody Allen to Tich Nat Hahn in 20 seconds - I guess there is power in lying still.
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One of our previous graduates, the talented Jay Nahani, is leading us in a
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ReplyDeleteMany thoughts and non-thought fluffs. I amused myself many times quoting this in my mind-- (of course the first time it just came to me, and I couldn't remember the whole thing so later looked it up)
"Thus die I, thus, thus, thus. Now am I dead, Now am I fled; My soul is in the sky: Tongue, lose thy light; Moon take thy flight: [Exit Moonshine] Now die, die, die, die, die." -- you know the Rude Mechanicals in Midsummer Nights Dream.
More profoundly perhaps, I also really loved (in the past, haven't done Bikram since last spring) just really deliberately feeling what it would be like to be fully lucid and conscious while dying. Lying in the body, still of the body, but knowing I was not of the body. Something like that.
xoxo