Almost every religion or traditional culture has one day that is a day of rest, renewable, evaluation. For many this day is Sunday, for some Saturday, the point is not what day it is, but how you use that day. This day is sacred and can help speed along whatever cycle of healing you are in at the moment.

As a typical type A personality the concept of rest is something I still struggle with. I was never able to grasp the concept of how it could be beneficial in anyway to ‘waste your time’ in rest. I am one that to often pushes when I shouldn’t, feels proud of consistently sleeping less then five hours, and boasts that I strive on stress.

Guess what………I don’t, no one does.

I never was able to fully understand the healing power of letting your mind wander, letting your body release until I started yoga. For the first month I did yoga I would leave the class as soon as we started “corpse pose” or “savasana”. I couldn’t stand the thought of having to lie there like that, why would you want to do that after a perfectly good workout.

One day I had a teacher ask me why I consistently left before this pose, “is it too challenging for you?” she asked. Well, that did it, too challenging?…..ha……..nothing is too challenging for Laura “Yoga superwomen”. So I started to stay, just to prove that lying on the ground like a dead person was not too challenging.

At first I was uncomfortable, I was tense, I was jittery. Slowly as I forced myself to stay day after day, I begin to experience the miracle of this pose, the miracle of letting go. When you let your mind release, when you don’t force it to think, something happens that is indescribable. I suddenly started realizing new benefit from my practice. I would feel more at east through out the day, more content.

We all need that moment to release, I have come to realize that it is only by letting go of our thoughts for just a moment that we can better hear what our bodies are truly telling us. In the world today we have mixed messages coming from so many different sources, it is so hard to weed through it and figure out how it all applies to us. BTD, in its essence, helps us do this is many ways. I have found that this release of the brain is another way we can better hear and understand our inner needs.

Yoga Pose of the Day: Savasana