The Savasana Challenge
Do you dedicate time for deep rest each day? Sleep doesn't count.
Way back in 2014—that was almost a decade ago 😮—I hosted my first 12 Days of Relaxation Challenge on my blog, YouTube Channel, and Facebook page. As with all creative work, the product is cringe-worthy—video quality, my baby teaching voice, audio, etc.
After running the 12 Days of Relaxation Challenge for three years I (oddly) moved away from teaching relaxation and focused more of my burnt-out energy on active asana practices, building and leading teacher trainings, and selling my soul to yoga studio communities. 🤦🏻♀️
Now that I’m coming around and finally seeing the light (again), I felt it was time to resurrect the 12 Days of Relaxation challenge as an ode to my younger (wiser?) self and decade-old good ideas.
This go-around the focus is all on Savasana.
The silliness of a Savasana Challenge
I’ll be the first to admit the irony of hosting a Savasana Challenge. You should never have to feel challenged to rest. But, in fact, it’s really hard to take time for yourself these days let alone give yourself permission to lay down on the ground and do nothing.
Savasana is not productive and it’s not supposed to be, making it the most confusing and challenging of all yoga poses out there. Why would you even do it? You can’t feel the burn, there is no stretch, and you get no satisfaction from sweat dripping off your nose and puddling at your feet. Instead, in Savasana you get to feel all the feels everywhere while your mind runs rampant through all your worst fears and anxieties and your back may start hurting. Who wants to dedicate time to that? 🤣
All kidding aside, Savasana is perhaps the most important pose in any yoga class and here’s why: You need the rest to balance out all the activity. If you think of the yin and yang symbol there is always an equal amount of each energy present. It’s not 75% yang and 15% yin. It’s 50/50. You need both to create the whole. You can’t have one without the other. If you have all activity and no rest, then you no no longer have a beautiful yin/yang symbol but a completely deformed, abstract shape that represents how your body and mind will feel when you fail to honor this very basic law of nature.
This concept isn’t confined to a yoga class. You need rest to balance out all the activity in your day regardless of whether or not you’re practicing asana or engaging in exercise. You also need a good amount of it to truly heal. And you might not be getting enough rest from sleep alone, either because you’re bad at going to bed early, you have to get up way too early, you suffer from insomnia, you generally sleep poorly, or you just have kids.
I do think it’s appropriate to challenge you to practice Savasana for twelve days straight because it’s highly unlikely you’re going to practice Savasana intentionally on your own without this motivation. We all need accountability to do the hard things in life, and unfortunately, finding time to rest is one of the hardest feats facing women in the modern age.
Your Savasana permission slip
Let me give permission to you right now. If it helps, I’ll make it a dare.
I DARE YOU TO PRACTICE SAVASANA for the first twelve days of December.
Why now? Simple. This is one of the busiest and most stressful times of the year, especially for mothers. No better time than now to make yourself rest. Because you need it. You might not want to take time out of your day to rest. I get it. You might argue that you don’t have time (you do). Never in the history of woman did someone take the time to rest and regret it. (I mean, there’s probably an example somewhere in history of some woman falling asleep and missing out on something big, but you get the point.)
Are you supporting your inner firefighters?
The point of Savasana is to rest—all of you. You rest your body by lying down and (attempting) to let go of all muscle tension. You rest your mind with different strategies to focus on something other than your wayward mind. These points of focus can be the breath, a mantra, or a point to focus your gaze. The body and mind are intricately interconnected so when your body starts to settle your mind settles as well. You rest your soul and spirit by getting out of your own way, releasing your ego, and getting to know who you really are. You glimpse your inner light and your connection to the collective consciousness, that feeling of universal oneness that permeates every cell of every being on the planet.
When you let yourself really rest, you turn the sympathetic nervous system off and allow the parasympathetic nervous system to come online. You enter into a “rest and digest” state that allows all of your internal bodily functions to do their jobs and return the body/mind to homeostasis.
Imagine a bunch of firefighters running around inside of you when you’re fully rested, finally getting the chance to put out all the fires you’ve caused by running around ragged all day long. If every stressful moment in a day equals an internal fire, here’s my “fires-started” list so far today:
🔥 Running late for a lunch meeting with a friend
🔥 Getting annoyed at technology because it wasn’t working the way I wanted it to and I couldn’t figure it out
🔥 Hating my body a little bit because I feel like it’s betraying me with all these weird health issues
🔥 Getting even more frustrated that I’m running late when the “fuel level low” light clicks on the moment I pull out of the driveway
🔥 Other people being stupid drivers
🔥 My husband not clearly telling me that I need to pick up lunch for two people, not one
🔥 Have to be the one to deliver the bad news that one family member doesn’t have lunch even though it wasn’t my fault
All before 2pm.
All those little frustrations and annoyances during the day are like little stress bombs going off in the body. Without dedicated time to rest, the body’s internal mechanisms—firefighters, if you will—don’t get a chance to put out all the fires. The fires fester and grow out of control and then there are too many fires burning in too many places for the body’s innate healing system to respond appropriately and fully to the emergency taking place inside of us every day. The firefighters recruit “the media” to send warning signals in the form of “symptoms,” but if you’re like me you don’t really listen. More fires burn and eventually you get sick.
It’s at this moment when you realize, perhaps it would be a good idea to rest. And so you do and you get better and remember how incredible rest is in your life. And then you forget and go right back to existing as you did before. Or maybe that’s just me?
The 2023 Savasana Challenge
The thing is, rest can be prevention too.
In Savasana you give yourself the space to let those hard-working internal firefighters do their job. And you can actually feel it when they finish the job. It feels good to be deeply rested with no internal fires. This is the space where creativity flourishes, where possibilities are endless, where aging ends and you get to feel your absolute best—you get to feel your whole Self.
Unfortunately, it takes more than the standard three minutes you might get—if you’re lucky—at the end of a yoga class to access this deep rest.
So this is what we’re going to do in this challenge. We’ll slowly work our way up to practicing Savasana, resting, for 30 minutes over the course of the next twelve days.
Here’s the schedule:
Day 1: 1 minute
Day 2: 3 minutes
Day 3: 5 minutes
Day 4: 7 minutes
Day 5: 10 minutes
Day 6: 12 minutes
Day 7: 15 minutes
Day 8: 18 minutes
Day 9: 20 minutes
Day 10: 23 minutes
Day 11: 25 minutes
Day 12: 30 minutes
Each day I’ll send out a new audio teaching to paid subscribers to guide you through your Savasana. In the beginning you won’t experience much deep rest, but the strategies that we use each day will build upon one another until we get to the last few days where you will experience truly transformational, deep, beautiful, inner peace.
You’re welcome to follow along as a free subscriber by timing yourself based on the schedule above.
If you want access to the guided practices, the accountability, and daily reminders to practice, and the ability to chat about your experiences with me, upgrade to a paid subscription today! Just $10 will give you access to this challenge plus all the great bonuses I have planned for December. I appreciate you supporting and valuing my work as an independent yoga teacher and writer. 🙂
We get started December 1. Are you ready to rest?
When Savasana isn’t so peaceful
I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge that Savasana is a very intense posture. That might sound silly because you are literally lying on the floor doing nothing, but this is a VERY vulnerable position to be in physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. For people who struggle with anxiety, this pose can be triggering and absolutely debilitating. If that is the case for you, I see you.
There are many things you can experiment with to help you bring more relaxation into your life. Try a different posture that doesn’t have you lying flat on your back with your eyes closed. Use props like bolsters and blankets to create comfort. Don’t close your eyes. Listen to a guided meditation while you’re resting to give your mind something to focus on. Choose a breath strategy, a mantra, or hum to focus your mind. You don’t have to like Savasana and it might be really hard to do, but deep rest is so important and I want you to be able to find a way to access the benefits of deep rest too without triggering anxiety or other trauma responses.
Find what works best for you. Ask yourself what will help you feel safe. Maybe it’s to do Savasana in your bed. Maybe it’s to listen to music. Maybe you need to be around other human beings or maybe you need to lock yourself in your room alone. Whatever it is that you need, set yourself up for safety and comfort and remember that this is your practice, not mine and you know your body/mind best.
There’s something about collective energy
Savasana is like most things in life…it’s better with friends! Powerful shifts start accumulating in the energetic fabric of the universe when more of us embrace deep rest as our natural birthright. Invite your friends and family to participate in this challenge with you. Be the role model in your social circles that stands up (or lies down) boldly to proclaim that rest matters.