The One Posture the Manuals Give to Rest

Every other posture in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika is a seat to be occupied or a shape to be achieved. Shavasana is the exception. Lying flat on the back, the text says, resembling a corpse, and the purpose Svatmarama gives it is the removal of fatigue and rest for the mind. It is the only entry in the classical posture chapter whose stated function is recovery.

The Gheranda Samhita carries the same shape under the name mritasana, the death posture, which is the same idea in a different word. Shava is a corpse and mrita is the dead. Neither text softens the image, and the atlas does not soften it either: the posture is named for a dead body and both manuals say so directly.

The candour is characteristic of the corpus. This literature discusses death constantly, both as the thing the practice claims to defeat and as the state a practitioner is asked to model. A tradition that promises a body free from ageing and death also asks the practitioner to lie down and be a corpse for a while, and it names the posture accordingly rather than reaching for a euphemism. That is worth stating plainly in a reference entry, because English language presentations of the practice frequently rename it.