Welcome to a short but potentially very deep restful Shavasana.
So to lay down in Shavasana,
If you haven't done that already,
You want to be very slow and mindful about how you position your body.
If you have any pain or ache in your lower back,
I recommend that you either fold your legs and have your right foot under your left knee and vice versa.
Or you can put a bolster or a pillow under your knees and this way lower your.
.
.
Extend your lower back.
And if your head tilts backwards without any height under it,
Then you can put some kind of blanket or something that is touching your shoulder heads,
Supporting your head,
But not going under your back.
And another very pleasant thing to do,
And notice by the way that just getting yourself in the right posture is already part of the meditation,
As long as you do it mindfully and intentionally.
And so another pleasant thing to do is to roll out your upper arms in such a way that you feel your shoulder blades are positioned more underneath your ribcage.
And this will actually support your chest and you will be able to breathe a bit deeper.
And if you haven't done so already,
I invite you to gently close your eyes on an exhalation and feel the touch of the upper eyelids with the lower eyelids.
And allow your eyes,
The eyeballs,
To sink deeper down into the sockets.
And in fact you can sort of make contact with the entire kind of soft tissue in your head and allow it to all sink more to the back of your head.
And spread that intention through your entire body.
Allow the gravity of the earth to simply pull closer the soft tissues.
Let your face relax more and more.
And in general just allow a kind of winding down to happen by itself.
And of course you can help this process by inhaling deeply through your nose if possible and then when you exhale you can sort of let go with the exhalation.
So you can do that a few times if you want to sort of inhale deeply.
And it's extra pleasant to do it long and slow and full and gentle with the inhalation.
And then maybe even longer,
Pleasant,
Full exhalation.
And just letting go into into spacious relaxation as you exhale.
And some part of the body might not relax so easily.
That's totally fine.
Typically the fingers or the hands will hold some tension.
Just allow that to be there.
And just breathe with whatever is here now in the moment present for you.
And of course the idea is to lay very still.
But in Shavasana it tends to be helpful to do a few micro adjustments in the first few minutes.
So that's totally fine.
Maybe you want to check if your head has indeed now rolled back a little bit.
So you can tuck in your chin slightly but make sure that you don't close your throat.
And maybe your lower back is kind of arching a bit too much.
And then you can even grab your buttocks with your hands and actively extend your lower back.
And then gently lay down again your buttocks.
And if you have done an adjustment then you can sort of reinvigorate the relaxation by breathing deeply and then letting go again completely.
And the true intention of Shavasana is to really let go completely.
So don't keep on fidgeting.
At some point you also want to just accept how the body is.
And so for the last about four minutes let's just lay still here with the sounds in the background in complete inner stillness.
If thoughts come let thoughts be there.
And just enjoy the spacious relaxation.
