Terre Pruitt's Blog

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Posts Tagged ‘savasana’

Shavasana Three Different Ways

Posted by terrepruitt on May 31, 2017

This will be the fourth post that is showing an example of three different ways to cue. The three basic ways to cue that I’m talking about are: just referencing body parts and how to move them, that is Anatomic. Then there is where you talk about how the pose or movement is sensed in the body, that is Sensory. A third way is using images and known movements to help people to get into a pose, that’s Imagery. I am confident that most teachers do a mixture and most students probably aren’t even aware of the three different ways. There really is no need to be aware of them and see the difference. I just think it is interesting. It is really interesting – to me – as a teacher to see how different students respond to different cues. Sometimes I find that I have to cue a movement with more than one way in order to get everyone to move. But that doesn’t happen often. For now, this will be my last “Three Cue” post. I can see myself picking more asana in the future to cue the three different ways, but for now I am going to end with Shavasana.  I don’t know how to add just audio to a post, so I did it as a video.  Just me talking while filming a candle burning.  But they are short, so hopefully you’ll listen.

Savasana (Corpse Pose)

Anatomic
Lie on your back and close your eyes. Before you relax lengthen your spine, reaching the crown of your head away from your neck, and your ribs away from your hips. Allow your legs to relax, your feet falling comfortably as they may. Let collar bones move away from each other, opening your chest. Your arms are on the floor running the length of your body. Your hands are at hip level wider than shoulder width, so somewhat away from your body. Palms are up. Fingers are relaxed so they might curl. Breathe and relax. Becoming heavy on the floor.

Sensory
Lie on your back gaze toward the sky even with your eyes closed. Sense your head moving away from your shoulders. Sense your shoulders relax. Create space between your ribs and your hips. And create space between each rib. Sense your spine lengthen. Your legs are soft so your feet may fall gently outwards. Your arms feel the earth down their entire length, because they are straight and resting comfortably on the earth. Feel the ground with the back of your hands, as your palms face the sky. Your hands are down near your hips but away from them, wider than your shoulders. Breathe, let the relaxation be a sense of pleasant heaviness.

Imagery
As you lie down close your eyes and imagine you are floating on a cloud. Everything is comfortable. Your entire body is happy because of the practice you just did. Your elongated spine has a lot of comfortable space between each back bone. Your legs are relaxed allowing your feet to gently fall where they may. Your arms are straight with back of palms on the cloud. There is space between your hips and hands. As you float your arms become heavy, sinking into the softness of the cloud. Your breath is even and relaxed. Every muscle from your head to your toes relaxes into the fluffiness of the cloud.

So there you have it.  Perhaps bringing a new awareness to your practice and your poses with knowing about the three different ways.  Perhaps not.  As I said, not something you really need to know, just something cool, if you are interested in that type of stuff.

Any thoughts on the three different ways to cue?  Any thoughts on the cuing of this pose?

Posted in Yoga/PiYo/Pilates | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Socks Could Help You With The Pose

Posted by terrepruitt on May 23, 2016

I have written and posted about shavasana (savasana) before.  This asana can be used to start a class or be done anywhere in the sequence that you see fit to use it.  It is used in many yoga classes as the final pose.  I think of it as a Challenging Easy Pose.  It is a challenge because many of us have busy lives and things to do all the time.  Many of us have a lot to think about.  Many of us are challenged with quieting the mind.  Not necessarily having no thoughts because I am not sure that is even possible, but not having a lot of chatter in the mind.  Having focused thoughts.  The thoughts focusing on breath, body, and the practice just experienced.  Some people are further challenged with just being still.  So in addition to the busy, moving mind, there is the busy, moving body.  For some just relaxing and not fidgeting is a challenge.  I find that being comfortable really helps.  When doing shavasana as the final pose, I instruct my students to put on their jackets, if they want.  I encourage them bring blankets.  I almost plead with them to bring sock, nice, comfy, fluffy socks — and use them during shavasana.

Dance Exercise, Nia, Nia in the City of San Jose, Nia classes in the South Bay, Nia Teacher, Nia Class, San Jose Nia, Nia San Jose, Nia workout, Nia, Gentle Yoga, Group Ex classes, YMCA, Zumba, PiYo, Nia Technique, SJ City Fit, SJCityFitI think this one simple thing will change your shavasana.  It doesn’t matter what the temperature is.  The room could be hot and the last thing you would think to do is put on socks, but I invite you to try it.  I reserve at least 7 minutes for shavasana.  I shoot for 10 minutes but sometimes that doesn’t work.  But we do at least 7 minutes.  So there is plenty of time to sink into relaxation.  It could be that in my classes, with all of that time the feet have a chance to cool off so socks are great.  When the feet are chilled it might keep you from completely relaxing.  You might not even realize they are chilled.  So socks can help.

Also air moving around your more than 7000 nerve endings (in each foot) might distract you.  With many yoga classes there are some standing poses, so you’ve activated the nerves in the feet.  Perhaps sensitized the feet during the class.  So nice socks could help keep the distraction to a minimum. COMFY socks might help bring some calm back to those nerves.  So if possible use warm and comfortable socks.  Not dress socks, because those do not help with warmth.

I am not sure the ancient yogis would endorse or even agree with such a recommendation, but I think of socks as a prop to help me achieve the purpose of the pose.  If props are used and recommended for other poses why not shavasana.  I do know that some people use bolsters when they are available, so why not use socks?

For me, once I started using socks, my shavasana changed.  I hadn’t even really thought about my feet affecting the pose until one day I decided to put on socks.  The few students of mine that have decided to use socks during their shavasana mentioned how it made a difference.  We all marvel at how it did!

So . . . whether you love shavasana or not . . . whether you are challenged by it or not . . . I suggest trying it with socks on.  See what you think.  Then let me know.

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Worst Part Of My Job

Posted by terrepruitt on October 7, 2014

I often tell my students at the end of class that making them get up is the worst part of my job.  I have posted blog posts about savasana.  The restful period of time at the end of a yoga class where you take time to relax letting the body and mind absorb the benefits to be had from the asanas that were just practiced.  Let the body remember the stability and strength.  Give the body time to become accustom the space that was created.  Allow the mind to reflect on the stillness.  Well, in Nia we often end the routine in Floorplay.  Floorplay is either playing with gravity to experience the muscles or stretching or . . . it can be a combination of both.  There are a lot of ways to play on the floor.  There are a lot of ways to end the class.  Our Nia training DVDs have floorplay and ending movements, but they are not choreographed.  So there is a lot of freedom in the last songs.  Nia teachers can either duplicate what the trainer does on the DVD or they can create their own movements to the songs and end the class in their own way.  I know I sometimes do what I sense the class needs so sometimes I lead the class through movements and sometimes I instruct them to do their own free dance.  Often times we end by lying on the floor in a restful pose.  Just like in my yoga classes I don’t like to have to make my students get up.

Dance Exercise, Nia, Nia at the City of San Jose, Nia classes in the South Bay, Nia Teacher, Nia Class, San Jose Nia, Nia San Jose, Nia workout, Nia, Zumba, PiYo, Gentle Yoga, Group Ex City of San Jose, San Jose Group Ex classesIn the studio I rent, I think that I should rent an extra 30 minutes so we can just lie there.  Sometimes I sense the class could easily just stay there for an extra 30 minutes beyond the one hour Nia class.  In the classes I teach for the San Jose Park and Recs Department, I sense they could do that too, but we need to end on time.  Sometimes there is a class right after us so our restful period is interrupted.  But when it is not, it is a challenge to know when to interrupt the peace.

Recently I taught a class and I really didn’t want to tell them to get up.  The clock in the room was not working so I snuck up to check my phone and as I was returning to the circle I saw such peace and relaxation I didn’t want to bother them.  I toyed with the idea of just letting them stay an extra 5 or 10 minutes.  But without having planned that in advance, I didn’t want someone lying there past the hour and not knowing it.  Many people workout on their breaks so they need to get back to work.  Or they just need to get on with their day.  So as much as I don’t like interrupting their peace and as much as I would like to just let them relax, I need to keep to our schedule.  But it really is the worst part of my job when I feel they would love to just stay.

But, on the other hand, it really is a great part of my job when I can be in the presence of those that can just relax and let go.  After dancing and getting all sweaty it is so nice that they can just take a deep breath and melt into the earth and relax.  I get a huge sense of peace when I am in the presence of their stillness . . . . that is why it is so hard to disturb them.

Do you take moments out of your day to just relax and experience peace?

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Challenging Easy Pose

Posted by terrepruitt on February 25, 2014

I love my students. They are a great source to me; they teach me and they make me laugh. Recently one of my students happen to mention a policy that was told to her – a facility stated she could try the class for 10 minutes without charge, but would have to sign up for the class to stay longer. The comments from those that she was sharing this with was that 10 minutes was not really long enough to get a sense of the class and if they would like it. She said, “I know, if I would have only stayed 10 minutes I would have missed the nap time at the end!” That was the best. She, of course, was kidding . . . sort of. She was talking about Shavasana. A very important part, yet for many, one of the most difficult times in yoga.

She was kidding in the sense that we all know it is not nap time, but not having been familiar with yoga she would have missed seeing that part of the class if she had only been allowed to stay for 10 minutes. Shavasana is a pose of total relaxation. It is where you allow your body to rest and relax from the workout it just participated in. In some classes this is a necessary time for recuperation of the body, but in others it might not be so much about the body. In a Gentle Yoga class it could be more about the mind. In Nia we have BMES – Body, Mind, Emotion, and Spirit. We could say that shavasana is a time for those four things. So after a nice gentle class it could be more a time more for the mind, emotion, and spirit to relax. While the inner dialog should be kept to a minimum while practicing the asanas it is even more important to do so during shavasana. This is the time when the body absorbs all the goodness from the poses it just performed.

I had once thought that you DID shavasana IN the corpse pose, but the name comes from the Sanskrit words Shava meaning “corpse” or dead body and Asana meaning “posture”.*

One of the reasons shavasana is so difficult is because there is not supposed to be any inner dialog going on (as I just mentioned). This is not the time where you begin making your shopping list for your trip to the store after class, or where you decide what you are going to say to your boss/friend/spouse. This is a time of quiet, a time of reflection, a time where you do a “body check”. Check in with each body part or area of your body to see if it needs any attention, see if it needs to be relaxed and focus on allowing it to relax. Sometimes because of this relaxation one might fall asleep. When I first started every time I did shavasana I fell asleep. Now I don’t, I am better at being mindfully relaxed. It is a practice though. This might not be something that comes easy to you, it might be a challenge, but it is something worth practicing.

I’ve heard different ideas on how to hold shavasana in a class. Some say that a guided meditation is the way it should be done. Some say that total silence is the only right way. Some say some music or nature sounds should accompany this pose. In my classes I usually softly lead the participants into a relaxed state. Then I allow them quiet time with this pose — I do have sounds playing during class and I don’t turn that off, but sometimes I turn it down. Then after the time allowed I talk them back to awakening their bodies and moving again.

If this pose and time is not something that you include in your yoga practice, I encourage you to give it a go. Try it. If you fall asleep that is ok. But keep doing it and when you are able to achieve that relaxed state while staying awake you will see how powerful this simple pose is.

Do you practice shavasana? Have you ever fallen asleep during shavasana? How long do you stay in this pose?

*Wiki and Jaisiyaram

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