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The Cop did a good job at practice today. He is starting to ask a few questions and kind of piece things together. The breath sequence for vinyasas, the cant of the knee in ardha baddha padmottanasana and ardha baddha paschimottanasana.

He zips right through savasana, though. I know better than to tell him to lie around for a long while – that wouldn’t compute. So he finishes his finishing poses and then lies down for a few seconds and then it’s back to the races.

So after I finished my practice I went into the livingroom and explained savasana. From my perspective. I told him that savasana is practice for dying. I reminded him of the documentary we watched about Tibetan death rituals, and how when the body dies the consciousness goes into the bardo. It can be scared or confused, and if it hasn’t figured out that it is free, if it hasn’t figured out what it is, it will hover around the physical world, longing to be reincarnated.

Savasana is practice for letting your body go. Asana teaches you to still your thoughts and sudden, intense reactions – it kind of relaxes the automatic responses of the body and its hyper-attached intersection with the mind. Pranayama teaches you to relax reactivity around breath. All of it frees up consciousness. And savasana is a place where you can practice dying. So that one day you can let go and your consciousness will remain even-keeled and clear. And then you’re free.

So that’s how I see it. The Cop listened and I felt kind of goofy spelling out my mystical beliefs. When I finished, though, he reached out and patted my hand. “You’re a good teacher,” he said. Very sweet.

It kind of makes me laugh. I love these notions of savasana, but I wonder how it would play in a regular class. Practice for dying? Yeah, I don’t think other people would necessarily find that as good an idea as I do. Somehow it seems very soothing to me. Very grounding.