Savasana mp3
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[00:00:00] Thank you for listening to the Luminous Recovery Yoga Podcast, hosted by Kari Doherty. The views and opinions expressed here are strictly those of the person who gave them. Take what you like and leave the rest. These views and opinions do not represent any specific 12 step program, only my experience, strength, and hope in recovering from the disesase of addiction and codependency.
If you'd like to learn more, please visit my website at www. Dot Luminous Recovery yoga.com. Hello sweet friend. This is Kari. Thank you so much for joining me for this week's episode of the Luminous Recovery Yoga Podcast. I'm so happy to share this space with you where basically I share what's on my heart, what's on my mind, what I'm going through, and what I find is that when I share, honestly, when I share generously that.
More likely than not, other people relate to me. Other people are having similar struggles, other people are going [00:01:00] through similar things that I'm going through. And why is that? Because we are human beings and as human beings, sometimes we like to believe that we are very unique or that we are.
Misunderstood or that nobody will understand what we're going through. And the truth is, the more I listen to people, the more I come into contact with people, the more I realize that we are actually not very unique at all. And and not to say that we don't have special gifts or that there aren't things that make us who we are.
As individuals, we do live in a society where there probably is a little more emphasis on individualism when really we're going through a collective experience. And so this podcast is really a space where I share my experience, strength, and hope, and. My hope for you is that you identify that you can identify with what I'm saying and that maybe you hear something that helps, or maybe a new idea that creeps into your consciousness [00:02:00] that helps you feel more connected to other people in your life.
So really this is just a space for me to share and hopefully. Take what you like and leave the rest. You don't have to agree with everything I say. This is just my experience, strength, and hope living life in a body in the 21st century. Exciting new changes coming up. I just wanna very quickly let you know that I'm making some decisions for myself.
I'm going to start releasing this podcast every other week. What you might not even know is that I have a second podcast. I actually have two podcasts and Kooky Ass Me has been running both podcasts every week, and I realize that I might not be giving people an opportunity to really digest all of the things that I'm producing.
So I've decided that I'm going to alternate. One week I will produce an episode of the Luminous Recovery Yoga Podcast, and then on the other weeks I'll be producing an episode of Baptiste Power Vinyasa Flow Yoga with Kari. So those will be [00:03:00] both opportunities for you to practice with me, to learn and grow with me, and also.
Will give me an opportunity to catch my breath, because we'll talk about this later, but I have a tendency to overdo things. And so I'm working to find balance in my life between, being a yoga practitioner, being a yoga teacher, being a business owner, being a content creator, and it's just so many different things at once.
One thing that you will note is that this podcast will be every other week, and then on the other weeks I'll be producing my other podcast. But another exciting thing, another update here is that I'm going to include a PDF for every episode. So there will actually be at the bottom of this episode. If you look in the show notes or the description, if you're watching on YouTube, there will be a PDF that you can download.
That will basically give you an overview of everything that I talked about in the episode plus some space to journal on some of the questions that I ask. I know that I sometimes pose questions in the episodes [00:04:00] about how these things are applying to your life. So this download will give you an opportunity to digest some of that information and maybe even.
Ask these questions for yourself and spend a little time just getting to know some of the concepts that I bring up in this podcast. So that will be an additional resource available with every episode of the Luminous Recovery Yoga podcast. So I hope you find that valuable. I hope that's something that maybe you will want to have.
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You could print it out, you could share it, you could you. Take some notes for yourself. So with that being said these changes feel really good to me, so I hope that they are a valuable asset to you as well. So with that being said, this week's episode gosh. , it's always something I'm going through myself, like I'm sharing with you life as it's happening for me.
So one of the things that really popped up for me this week is Savasana. Shavasana is the final resting pose that we take at the end of yoga practice. If you've ever been to a yoga class, like pretty. Anywhere. Everywhere we end with Shavasana, I've never personally, for as many years as I've been practicing yoga, I have never been in a yoga class where Shavasana was not offered.
It is always offered. So Shavasana is our final resting pose. It is the [00:06:00] pose where we rest, where we settle our body. At the end of the practice, it's. . It's somewhat a meditation, but I don't even really think of Shavasana as a meditation, because even meditation requires a certain level of focus. Shavasana.
translates. It's a Sanskrit term, corpse pose. So literally the posture of Shavasana is to lie still like a corpse where the breath is almost undetectable, where the movement has ceased. It's funny because. Like most of the yoga poses that you generally are familiar with were emulating animals, right?
Like up dog down dog gosh, crow pose. Pigeon pose, right? So many of the poses are named after animals. And so I think it's funny that our final resting pose is corpse pose. It's, Dead right corpse. So anyway, that's weird. But what's interesting about Shavasana [00:07:00] is that it's actually probably the hardest post to practice because it doesn't require anything.
It doesn't require any strength building, it doesn't require flexibility, it doesn't require rigor and. as a person who has a background in practicing and teaching power yoga, Shavasana. It was funny when I first started practicing yoga, I remember saying to somebody, oh, I'm actually not here for that
Who says that? I do? I said that. Oh, I'm actually not here for that. Whatever the hell that even means. But yeah, I wasn't there for Shavasana. I was there to do some yoga, to lose some weight to who f-ing knows what Carrie was doing there that day. But I had proclaimed that [00:08:00] I'm not actually here for that.
So it's funny because Shavasana is something that I still struggle with. I struggle with. and I'm really starting to see that, which is why I'm like, I need to cut down on some of the things that I'm doing. Like honestly, I look at my schedule most weeks and I'm like, what can we take out? Why have I jam packed my schedule to the point where I literally have to ask myself, well, when were you planning to eat?
When were you planning to shower? When were you planning to? Anything like anything. That actually is for me, I find. That is the hardest part to work into my schedule. So rest is really a challenge for me, and I've been seeing that more and more lately where I just jam pack it in. And I know I've talked about that on this podcast before, how I just jam pack it in.
And one of the things I'm really looking at is what is my relationship to rest? So last weekend, or I don't know, whenever, [00:09:00] weekend, November 13th was my birthday, and I had planned the weekend off to rest because that was literally the only gift that I wanted for myself because I had not taken a day off in weeks.
Weeks. And. , I realized that the one thing I needed to give myself as a present for my birthday was some rest. So I did that. I gave myself rest and it was really great and I realized how, when I then re-approached work at the end of the weekend. I felt a little bit of invigoration, like I felt some like enthusiasm to do some things, and I haven't felt that enthusiasm in a while.
I've I'm tired a lot, like I'm tired a lot, but I'm not resting very much. And so one of the things that really is my work is to. Rest because the work is not work. The work is easy. Work [00:10:00] is easy for me. Yeah go rigor jam, pack it in one appointment to the next, do this thing, do that thing.
That's not hard for me. That is very simple for me to do. It's just to go. But the work is rest. . My topic today is Shavasana, because Shavasana is like one of the most pivotal poses that we practice in a yoga practice. This might be like yoga studio folklore or something, but it's one of those things like hashtag shit yoga teachers say.
But one of the things yoga teachers say is that , and I don't think that this is made up, but you know that the reason we even have the whole practice is to get to the rest that like we can't really appreciate the rest. Or rather the poses and the rigor of the practice helps us to appreciate the rest.
Like really we like the idea behind Shavasana at the end of the yoga practice is that we physically wear our bodies out so that we can rest. because when we work the body, when we get the bo like [00:11:00] almost like getting that like jittery energy out, when we work the body, we can rest, right? So sometimes in order to rest, we have to work the body down, get some of that energy out, and then, it's rest.
So I find that the rest is really hard for me. And one of the things I'll even say to students during Shavasana is, , in a society that is so deeply demanding of us. Right? I mean, think about what cars make possible for us these days. There was a time where if we were mostly on foot or horse and buggy or cars didn't go very far, like you couldn't jam pack your schedule the way we do nowadays.
Like really the way that we're able to move through society because we have these very powerful machines in our driveways, cars and cell phones, and the things that make everything move faster. We could jam pack our days in ways that probably. Physically impossible a hundred years ago. If you had to walk everywhere, you could only do [00:12:00] so many things in a day, or like when electricity wasn't a thing, once the sun went down, what more could you really get done by, you could do candlelight. I don't know, I'm, maybe I'm making this up, but I feel like this really speaks to me that like our modern life, Creates opportunity for us to jam pack it in so that we could get a lot more done in a day.
And the trouble there is that it makes it really hard to rest because the truth is we could just keep going and going and going. And so what I say to students during Shavasana is that, in a society that is so deeply demanding of us rest. is a revolutionary act. Like rest is the resistance.
Rest is the, the thing that we could do to fight fascism. If you wanna fight fascism, take a nap, , like it's modern life. That is, it's productivity, it's industry. It's. It's coffee. All the [00:13:00] shit that just keeps us going and going. If you wanna be, in resistance, take a nap.
And yet I can't seem to get that through my head. I can't seem to take that lesson on. It's one thing for me to tell students like, yeah, rest is revolutionary. And do you see my ass taken a nap? Like lately, I have been napping. I will say that I have been napping lately. That has been something that I've had to build into my day.
But the reason I nap is because I wanna keep going and I'm like, I hit a wall around two or three o'clock when I get up at four 30 in the morning to start my day. So yeah, I need to nap so that I can get through the day. But am I resting just for the sake of rest, not. . So I've been really thinking about rest.
And what really prompted my thinking today was that I went to a high intensity interval training class. And what I loved about it is that you do these really intense spurts of activity [00:14:00] and then you must rest. It's okay rest. And I found myself really enjoying the activity. because I knew I would get to rest.
Like I could go hard for a minute knowing that I was gonna get 45 seconds of rest and I started to have this like awareness as the workout was going on, which was like, I am much more productive when I rest to I can work. hard work is, does not come, it's not a struggle for me but it's the resting part.
But what I loved about this high intensity interval class was that knowing rest was coming. , I could give it my all. Like I could really go for those moments of high intensity knowing that I would get to rest. And so I had this like revelation for myself today about, what makes a high intensity interval training class so powerful is that you're doing these moments of rigorous activity and you pair it with [00:15:00] rest.
And that really is the heart of the yoga practice too, is we do this, we do these poses that are, they do have rigor. Like we're stretching the body, we're breathing, we're moving, we're doing these things, and then we rest. So I really got that today in a new way doing this different activity.
Like it just clicked in my brain in a different way where it was like, God, I need more rest. Like I just do. I need more. It's funny, my therapist will say to me, what is your Shavasana a practice like right now? And I'm like, what are you asking me? What the, what does that mean? And it's a great question.
What is my resting practice right now? And that's actually like the heart of what I'm even getting at here, is that Shavasana requires as much practice as any of the other poses. And that is what I forget. I forget that I need to practice rest just like I practice everything else. Like the heart to me of yoga is practice what yoga has really taught.
At the heart of [00:16:00] it is how to practice, how to be a practitioner, how to show up for something each day, each moment, each time. Pose to pose, breath to breath, moment to moment, and how to practice. And I would say before I started practicing yoga I didn't have that skill of practice. Like I could start so, or I could try something and I could do it for, a short period of time, but inevitably that thing would always kind of fall off.
And it wasn't until I started practicing yoga that I started to really understand the heart of practice. And so Shavasana is really where I need to put my attention. It's where I need to put my drishti, my gaze, my focus is unrest because. Today what I realized is if you're doing a 60 minute high intensity interval training, which is what I was doing, you can't just high intensity for 60 minutes like the body, like at a certain point you're like, for me, I'd have an asthma attack.
That was the [00:17:00] other thing is I didn't have exercise induced asthma. And normally when I'll just go to the gym or I'll do something, what I find is that I go from zero to 60 very quick. All of a sudden I'm at resting and then I like go really crazy and then all of a sudden I'm having an asthma attack.
So one of the things that did not happen today was that I did not have an asthma attack because I rested, like I did a hard thing and then I rested. So it wasn't, it didn't even induce my. my asthma. And so I just it really clicked for me today, like how important rest is for productivity. And you know what, you've probably seen Instagram memes about this and Facebook posts about this.
And we wanna talk about rest and yet, It's still really hard and one of the things I've learned is that going on social media is not rest. Like one of the fallacies that I have fallen into is oh, I just wanna relax. I think I'll just hop on Instagram. Not restful. What is your [00:18:00] relationship to social media? That's something that I've had to ask myself. What is the relationship to social media? So I'm asking you that, what is your relationship to social media? How much time are you actually spending on there? And do you go on. With the idea that it is restful.
That's just a question that I have. So I'm asking you this as well. What is your relationship to rest at this time? Do you feel balanced in the amount of work and rigor that you bring to life? Does that balance with how much rest that you're getting? Or conversely, I don't know, are you resting? A lot and not getting work done.
Like in other words, is there a balance of rest in your life? And that's the question that I'm asking myself. And for me the imbalance is that I'm not resting enough. I'm doing too much high intensity and not enough downtime and it's causing asthma attacks. If [00:19:00] we're, know, like I love this idea that how you do anything is how you do.
So that whole 60 minute high intensity interval training class was like my life in a nutshell right now, which is that if I bring rest to my high intensity, I don't have an asthma attack. I don't lose my breath, I don't break down an exacerbation like, which is how I feel lately. Like lately I feel like that, like I'm like, like just trying to catch my.
And so let me tie this into recovery quick, because that's really what I do in this podcast is I like to talk about yoga, how it relates to my life off the mat, but also how it really ties back to recovery. I personally am in 12 step recovery, but you don't have to be in 12 step recovery. To me, recovery is just the act of making ourself.
The act of calling our spirit back from all of the places where we left it. And for me the recovery, like literally the rest is the recovery, [00:20:00] like recovering, if we're talking about this high intensity interval class, the recovery was that one minute of rest. And so for me, the recovery is.
Well, one, being able to have these conversations with myself because there was a time when my level of self introspection was not. Really, like it was thereish, but I didn't have the ability to ask myself these questions and then to actually respond to them to make changes in my life based on that information that I was, doing from that self-inquiry work.
So for me, the recovery here is being able to ask myself this question and then actually look at my schedule and say, we're taking something out. Like we have to pick the thing on, on today that you're not gonna. And like that is the recovery. The recovery is that I can say, oops, I'm so sorry. I overscheduled myself today.
I made a mistake. There was a time when I could not admit that I [00:21:00] made mistakes. There was a time when if I said, and this is actually still true for me, where I'm like, well, I signed myself up for this thing. That means I have to do it until I. , I am not great at seeing that I can make a new choice, or, oh, I made a choice.
Turns out that wasn't a great choice. Let me re choose, let me switch this up. Let me say oh, this isn't working. Like I tend to look at something like, well, I said I would do it now I have to do it forever. And so for me, the recovery is being able to say, oh, this isn't working for, I need to make a new choice.
And seeing that I even have choices. We have choices. We could always be making new choices. So that is really what, like why Shavasana is part of my recovery practice. It's literally how I recover from work, which is resting, but [00:22:00] also having the self-esteem to say, I get to.
I get to do this even if it means having to disappoint somebody or disappoint myself, or, oh, I can't do everything. I plan today, I get to rest. Why? Because I'm just a human being. Just one. Just one person. So what is your relationship to rest? What is your relationship to social media right now? What can you take?
like where are you looking at your life? And you're like, Ugh, there is this thing that I'm not really admitting that I don't enjoy doing, and it's taking more life force energy than I want to give. What can you take out? That's my question for you today. Where is, what is your Shavasana practice like?
Like my therapist asks me, what is your Shavasana practice like right now? What is your resting practice? . So that is where I'm at right now, is I am establishing my resting practice and [00:23:00] I'm noticing that the work for me is the rest, that is the recovery. That's where I need to recover is rest. That's actually gonna be our yoga practice today.
We're gonna take two poses and then we're gonna rest and we're just gonna lay there and. . Notice what that's like for you. Like just to lay there like just to be still eyes closed or open. You choose, but what is it like to just exist for the sake of existing without having to earn your keep? Right?
As a human, we don't have to earn rest. It's just like you're a human. To rest like we have to sleep or like literally we could go psycho, like it's a psychosis when you don't sleep, like your brain starts to do crazy shit. So we're gonna rest on the [00:24:00] mat today and we're gonna practice rest. I want you to really be in the practice of rest.
How could we just practice resting the body, even if it gives us the jitters inside? Even if you're like, oh, this is make me nervous. Just rest. We're just gonna rest. So that'll be our yoga practice today. We'll take a couple poses and then we're gonna rest and we're gonna rest together. It'll be like group nap time.
Like how fun is that? Like when was the last time you just napped with another adult? Just like for the sake of it, just to lay there together, me and you just resting. So we're gonna rest. And check out that pdf. It's fun. Think of it as like your fun journaling prompt. You can answer these questions that I've asked you today in this episode and take a moment to really consider it.
What would happen if you did that? If you just took a moment to consider it and consider this [00:25:00] PDF that I'm putting together for you? An additional gift, a resource, something that you can have to. Help this soak in a little bit and explore your relationship to rest. So anyway, I love you. Thank you for listening.
And with that being said, let's take it to the map. Okay. Welcome back. Now we will move into our yoga practice. It's gonna be very simple. Today we're gonna do a couple of poses just to wiggle the body, just to move around a little bit. We're gonna rest. So begin on all fours and we'll take some rounds of cat cow.
Put your hands in front of you. I say take your hands just a little bit further forward than your shoulders just to take some of that deep bend out of your wrists. Sometimes that 90 degree angle over the wrists produces a little too much tension, so let's try to eliminate some tension today. Just begin by wiggling the hips from side to side, [00:26:00] just creating some movement in the low back
and the hips.
And then drop your belly. Lift your chin and your chest. Cow pose.
Round your back. Tuck your chin to your chest. Cat pose.
And then do it again
and continue to move through some rounds of Cat Cow. I like to emphasize intuitive movement. So it's not really about just taking the poses, but more moving your body in a way that feels creative to you.
You can wiggle from side to side. Circle your neck, and your tailbone. [00:27:00] Just move your body, move with the natural rhythm of your breath and the curvature of your spine.
Just a couple more rounds.
Try this. Look over your right shoulder, look behind you, and then look over your left shoulder
and take another round of Cat Cow.
Downward facing dog. Lift your tailbone to the sky.[00:28:00]
Walk your dog out a little bit. Bend your knees, pedal, your legs sway from side to side.
Pick up both heels. Drop your heels over to the right,
back to the center. Drop your heels over to the left,
back to the center. Come back to all fours. Make your way to your back. I actually have a bolster here that I'm gonna use, and I would love to encourage you to use a pillow or something soft underneath your knees. That could be a rolled up blanket. If you have a [00:29:00] bolster, that's awesome. You could put pillows under your knees.
You could even put yoga blocks under your knees. But find something that just gives you a little more ease, a little more tlc. Tender loving care a little more. A little extra touch. Lift up your shoulders. Slide your shoulder blades underneath. You gently pull your chin towards your chest.
Allow your fingers to be just completely weightless. Your feet completely weight.
If it's comfortable to you, close your eyes
and in this pose we're practicing corpse pose,[00:30:00]
almost lifeless,
so we're just gonna lie here.
Don't worry about if you're doing it right.
Don't worry if it goes quiet and you're like, oh no, did I miss something? You didn't miss anything.
Just start to let your body settle into the.
Allow your breath to become light and easy.[00:31:00]
Notice how you. As your body begins to settle.[00:32:00] [00:33:00] [00:34:00]
Take a long, full, deep breath.
And empty it.
Wiggle your fingers and your toes,
and circle your ankles and your wrists.
Take a big, full body stretch.
Pull your knees to your chest, and if it's comfortable, roll over to your favorite side[00:35:00]
and gently lift yourself up to a seat.
Bring your palms to touch at the center of your chest, and just take a moment and notice how you feel.
Bring your palms, your thumbs to the center of your forehead. And bow your head towards your heart
and honor of you and me and this practice that we share. [00:36:00] I bow to you sweet friend, and say, no must. , thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Luminous Recovery Yoga Podcast. I hope that you heard something today that helps. And don't forget to download your free PDF so that you can review this episode and maybe even answer some questions that might help bring some things together for you.
So I look forward to seeing you next time. And remember, we'll be doing these episodes every two. And I'll see you soon. Sweet friends, thank you for listening to the Luminous Recovery Yoga Podcast. If you'd like to support the show, please consider joining my Patreon or leaving a comment and review. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or YouTube,
