Ep 132: Savasana: Everything You Need to Know

Savasana is frequently treated as downtime near the end of class, but it deserves far more attention and intention than most teacher trainings give it. This episode draws on some of the research I originally did for one of my 200-hour teacher training assignments to explore the history and philosophy of savasana, practical variations for different student needs, what a teacher should actually be doing while students rest, and an honest conversation about touch that many yoga teachers have never fully examined.

Let's give Savasana a bit more study. I'll cover:

• The History and Philosophy of Savasana
• Why Your Language Matters So Much in Savasana
• Savasana Variations Worth Offering Your Students
• What Teachers Should Actually Be Doing During Savasana
• An Honest Look at Touch in Savasana

 Mentioned in the episode:

Within Your Scope Workshop

Have you been thinking about scope, touch, and what's appropriate to offer as a teacher? The Within Your Scope workshop is a great next step for fully understanding your scope of practice as a yoga teacher. 

The Nervous System Toolkit 

If this episode has you thinking about how much breath can do, the Nervous System Toolkit gives you practical, ready-to-use tools for working with the nervous system, including breath-based practices, Yoga Nidra, and 10 Common Yoga Pose Modifications.

Transcript

Monica 0:00

Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Monica, and I'm so glad you're here. Here, we talk about the anatomy, the injuries, the nervous system insights, and all the real-life knowledge you wish had been included in your yoga teacher training. I'm a yoga teacher who specializes in helping teachers work confidently with students who have pain and injuries. I focus my continuing education in biomechanics, human movement, pain science, and the nervous system, and a lot of what I share with you comes from real experience, both my own and the students I've worked with over the years. Today's episode is one I have been excited to record for a while because it is literally 14 years in the making from my experience way back in my 200-hour teacher training. We were each assigned a pose to study in depth and present to the rest of the training, and you know what pose I got? I got Shavasana. And here's the thing about Shavasana, there's almost, like, no alignment to teach, right? You lie down, your arms relax, you cue students to relax their legs, and pretty much that's basically it. So when I got this assignment, I had to think differently about what I was going to present. I ended up going deep into the history and philosophy of the pose, the variations, what a teacher should actually be doing while a class full of students are lying there in front of them, and a question that I think a lot of teachers have never really contended with, which is whether or not it's appropriate to touch students in Shavasana. So today, I wanna give you everything I know about this pose. Some of it might surprise you. Some of it might change how you teach the very last part of your class, which honestly might be the most important. So let's get into it. I think Shavasana is one of the most underestimated poses in the entire yoga practice. A lot of teachers treat it as the moment where class is basically over and students get to rest while you wind things down, and they get to integrate in their bodies everything that they've done in class. And I understand why it feels that way. There's no cuing of alignment or very little of it, no transitions to manage, nothing physically demanding happening while students are lying in Shavasana. But Savasana is actually where a huge amount of the value of the practice gets absorbed. This is the pose where the nervous system has the chance to fully shift parasympathetic state if we give it time, where the body integrates everything that happened in the previous hour, and where students often have their most meaningful experience of the entire class. If you treat it as an afterthought, you're leaving a tremendous amount of value on the table. So let's actually look at what this pose is, where it comes from, and how to handle it. When I researched Shavasana for that training assignment, I learned some things that really changed how I thought about the pose, and I wanna share a few of them with you. Shavasana translates to corpse pose. We know that, right? Shava meaning corpse, and asana meaning pose or seat. And I think a lot of teachers know, like, that translation, but don't spend much time with what it actually means. The pose is meant to be a practice of conscious surrender, a kind of symbolic death. You are practicing letting go completely, releasing control over the body. And in the yogic tradition, this was understood as a rehearsal for the ultimate letting go that happens at the end of life. That might sound heavy for the end of a yoga class. I get it, right? And in a lot of ways, it is supposed to be a profound moment, even if most students experience it as simply restful. In some of the older traditions, Shavasana wasn't always placed at the end of practice. It was sometimes used as a reset in the middle of a sequence, a way to fully release tension between more demanding postures so the body could approach the next pose without carrying residual effort from the last one. I find that detail really interesting because it reframes Shavasana as a tool you can use throughout your sequencing, not just a closing ritual. If you have a particularly demanding sequence, even a brief moment of Shavasana in the middle, 30 seconds, a minute, can give students a physiological reset before you ask more of them. By the time your students reach Shavasana, their nervous system has typically shifted into a more settled, more receptive state as you have likely started winding down class a few poses before Shavasana. They've moved, they've breathed, and for many of them, the busy analytical part of the mind has finally begun to quiet down. What that means for you as a teacher is that the language you use during Shavasana lands differently than it does at the beginning of class. Students are more open, more suggestible in a sense, more likely to absorb what you say at a deeper level. This is exactly why your cueing during Shavasana matters so much. If your language is calm, spacious, and reassuring, that lands. If your language is rushed, however, or if you're filling the silence with too many words because it feels uncomfortable to be quiet, that lands too, just not in the way you want it to. I have learned to use fewer words during Shavasana, not more. A short, clear invitation to relax, some spacious silence, and then a gentle, unhurried way of bringing students back out, and that's it. I also think about the specific words I choose. Telling someone to relax can actually be activating for some students because it can feel like one more thing they're being asked to do, or one more task to perform correctly. I've shifted towards language that's more about permission than instruction. Something like, "There's nothing to do right now," or, "You can let this be exactly as it is." That kind of language tends to land more easily in a nervous system that's already starting to settle. So let's talk about variations because Shavasana doesn't have to look the same way for every student every time. One of my favorites, and something I use quite often, is Shavasana with a rolled blanket placed underneath the knees. This is such a simple addition, but it makes a big difference for students with low back pain. When the knees are fully extended the lumbar spine often arches slightly, which can increase discomfort for some students who are already managing low back issues. A rolled blanket under the knees also allows for a small amount of flexion at the hips as well as the knees, which helps the lower back settle into a more neutral, supportive position. It's such a small prop addition, and it can completely change how students experience those final minutes of your class. There's also supported Shavasana with a bolster under the spine longways on the mat for a gentle backbend, which can feel really opening for students who carry a lot of tension on the front of their chest. Side-lying Shavasana is a wonderful option for pregnant students or for anyone who finds lying flat on their back uncomfortable, whether that's due to pregnancy, certain back conditions, or even just personal preference. And legs up the wall is another variation I love to offer, especially for students who deal with swelling in their legs or feet or for anyone who wants a slightly more activating but still restful option. I think it's worth normalizing in your classes that Shavasana doesn't have one correct shape. Offering even one or two of these variations regularly tells your students that their comfort matters more than whole class uniformity. So what should you be doing while your students are lying there? This is something I don't think that we talk about enough in teacher trainings. First, you're watching the room, not hovering, not staring, not standing over students, but maintaining a general awareness of how your students are doing. Are there students who look uncomfortable and might benefit from a prop that you could quietly offer them? Are there students who seem distressed rather than relaxed? This doesn't happen often, but it can, and your presence as a calm, attentive guide matters even when you're not saying anything. Second, you're managing the environment. This might mean dimming the lights if you have that ability in your room, adjusting the temperature if the room has gotten warm from movement, or simply making sure the space feels supportive rather than just overlooked and you're leaving students there to just lie down. These small environmental choices communicate that you care even though most students will never consciously register that you made them. Third, and this is something I had to learn over time, you're managing the timing and pace of how you bring people out of the pose. Shavasana should generally last about five minutes if your schedule allows for it, sometimes longer depending on the style and intensity of the classes you're teaching. And when it's time to bring students back, the transition should be gradual. A few minutes of quiet before any wording or any cueing begins. Then small invitations, a little movement in the fingers, in the toes before bigger movements. Bringing someone out of Shavasana too quickly can actually undo a lot of the physiological settling that has just happened. Now, what are your thoughts and beliefs about touching students in Shavasana? I think a lot of teachers have strong feelings about whether to touch or not, but we rarely discuss this openly. We kind of do what we do in our own classes. So you know we're gonna talk about this here. In my own 200-hour training, I was taught to touch every single student during Shavasana and in every pose in class. It was presented as almost like a given, right? Something that every good teacher did. You offered assists or adjusts. we practiced placing our hands on students' shoulders, gently pressing their feet, and lightly touching their head. And for a long time, I did exactly that because we were taught that, and it communicated to students that we cared about them. Over time, though, I've stopped, and I wanna be honest about why, because I think it's a more layered answer than just a decision to abruptly stop. part of it was about my own energy. Touching every student in every class, or most students in every class, especially in larger classes, is physically and energetically demanding in a way that isn't always obvious from the outside. I noticed that by the end of Shavasana, where I had touched 15 or 20 students, I had very little energy left for myself, and that wasn't sustainable for me long-term. But the bigger shift was about respecting students' time to experience their own bodies without interrupting them. Shavasana is, at its core, a practice of being fully with yourself, And touch, even gentle, well-intentioned touch interrupts that. It pulls their attention outward towards you, the teacher, towards the point of contact, even if it's just for a moment. I started to wonder whether what I thought was a gift was actually taking something away from the depth of what a student could attempt to access on their own. There's also the consent piece, which I think the broader yoga industry has become more thoughtful about over the years. Touch that was once assumed and expected is now something that a lot of teachers ask permission for, often through something as simple as those, uh, consent cards students can place near their mat. I think that shift has been important, and it's part of what shaped my own decision, too. I'm not saying touch in Shavasana is wrong. I'm not saying that at all. Some teachers do it thoughtfully with clear consent, and their students love it. What I'm saying is that it deserves to be a conscious choice rather than a default, and I would encourage you to really sit with your own reasons, whatever decision you land on. What I hope you're taking away from this episode is that Shavasana is not a throwaway pose, just something that we tack on to the end of all of our classes. It carries real philosophical weight. It requires thoughtful language. Variations can be so beneficial, and it asks something specific of you as a teacher, even when it looks or feels like you're not doing very much at all. The next time you cue Shavasana, I want you to think about the words you choose, the variations you might offer, and the attentiveness you bring to this part of your class. If this episode has you thinking more about the role you play, even in the most quiet moments of class, including questions about touch, scope, and what's actually appropriate for you to offer as a teacher, I wanna point you towards an offering I have called Within Your Scope. It's a workshop that helps you get really clear on what's truly part of your role as a yoga teacher, so you can move through moments like this with confidence instead of second-guessing yourself. And when you access that workshop, you can also add on another offering called the Nervous System Recovery Toolkit, which includes a full yoga Nidra e-book with scripts you can use in your own classes, along with a detailed pranayama e-book. So if you loved what we talked about today around language and the nervous system in Shavasana, that toolkit is going to feel like a natural next step. You'll find both of those linked in the show notes Thank you for being here today, and remember to check the show notes. I'll see you next week. All right, bye