Full Stop.

Even the mind needs one.

The yoga instructor announced that we were about to attempt the most difficult yoga pose ever.

I immediately paid attention.

Finally, something interesting.

Until then, it had been an ordinary online yoga class.

The instructor was in the studio, while the rest of us were scattered around our homes, each on our own little patch of floor.

There was no camera on us. The instructor couldn’t see whether we were performing a perfect downward dog or simply lying on the floor wondering what happened.

We could type into the chat if we had a question, although most of us preferred the ancient yoga principle of remaining silent unless absolutely necessary.

Following the instructor on the screen had its own challenges.

When you’re sitting upright, everything is fine.

Then the instructor says, “Now lie down and look at the ceiling.”

You obey.

And suddenly the screen is somewhere behind your head, and the person demonstrating the next pose has disappeared from your field of vision.

You have two choices.

Trust the instructor.

Or lift your head slightly to see what she’s doing, thereby immediately violating the instruction to relax your neck.

I usually chose trust.

And hoped for the best.

So when the instructor announced that we were about to attempt the most difficult yoga pose ever, I immediately paid attention.

What could it be?

Something involving my legs behind my head?

A complicated twist requiring the flexibility of a Himalayan yogi?

A pose in which one somehow becomes indistinguishable from a pretzel?

Perhaps something so advanced that ordinary practitioners like me were expected merely to admire it.

I waited for the revelation.

“Shavasana.”

I nearly laughed.

Shavasana?

The pose where you lie down on your back, close your eyes and do practically nothing?

I had always considered that the reward for surviving the difficult poses.

In fact, if someone had asked me to demonstrate yoga, I could have demonstrated shavasana immediately.

Lie down.

Close your eyes.

Breathe slowly.

And, if necessary, accidentally fall asleep.

I was good at this.

I had privately suspected that shavasana was yoga’s way of keeping people interested.

“You’ve done enough stretching. Now lie down and don’t move.”

Finally, a pose designed for my level of commitment.

But apparently, I had misunderstood the entire thing.

The instructor then explained what I had completely misunderstood.

Shavasana wasn’t about forcing the mind to become blank.

Apparently, we can’t control every thought that wanders through our minds.

Thoughts will come.

Sounds will come.

Feelings will come.

The idea is not to fight them.

Just let them pass.

Don’t chase them.

Don’t hold on to them.

Don’t start a conversation with them.

Simply notice them and let them go.

This sounded wonderfully simple.

Until I tried it.

I closed my eyes.

I breathed in.

I breathed out.

A thought arrived.

Did I lock the car?

Fine.

Let it pass.

Another arrived.

Why did I suddenly remember that email from three days ago?

Let it pass.

My mind was becoming remarkably efficient at producing thoughts for me to practise letting go of.

And then came another thought:

Am I doing shavasana correctly?

That one was particularly unhelpful.

The real problem wasn’t that I was having thoughts.

It was that I kept following them.

One thought led to another.

Another led to a memory.

The memory led to a question.

The question led to a plan.

And suddenly I was no longer doing shavasana.

I was conducting a board meeting.

My body was lying perfectly still.

My mind, meanwhile, appeared to have called an emergency session.

I began to understand why the instructor had described this as the most difficult pose.

The body knows how to lie down.

The mind knows how to wander.

The challenge is not to stop the wandering.

It is to stop going along for the ride.

Perhaps that’s why we spend so much of our lives feeling mentally exhausted.

We don’t just have thoughts.

We follow them.

We argue with them.

We replay them.

We improve them.

We worry about them.

We sometimes even have conversations with people who aren’t in the room.

And while the body may be sitting quietly, the mind is travelling everywhere.

Yoga, at least in that moment, was asking for something quite different.

For a few minutes, I didn’t need to solve anything.

I didn’t need to plan anything.

I didn’t need to improve myself.

I didn’t need to chase every thought that appeared.

I could simply notice it…

and let it go.

And perhaps that was the real lesson.

The key wasn’t to try harder. It was to resist less.

Trying harder to stop thinking is still thinking.

So I stopped trying.

I breathed.

I let my body sink into the mat.

A sound came.

I let it be.

A thought came.

I let it pass.

A feeling came.

I didn’t need to do anything about it.

And quietly, I told myself:

I am healthy.
I am happy.

For those few moments, that was enough.

Of course, I haven’t suddenly mastered shavasana.

My mind continues to file appeals.

A thought arrives.

Then another.

Sometimes they seem to have invited friends.

And occasionally, just when I think I’ve finally stopped following thoughts, my brain helpfully asks:

Was that a thought I was supposed to let go of?

Clearly, I still have some work to do.

But I now understand something I had completely missed when I first heard the instructor.

The hardest part of shavasana isn’t getting the body to stop moving.

It is giving the mind permission to stop participating in everything.

Not a full stop to thoughts.

A full stop to our need to chase every one of them.

Perhaps that’s something we could all use occasionally.

We spend so much of our lives doing.

Working.

Planning.

Remembering.

Worrying.

Holding on.

Perhaps, every now and then, we need to stop trying to control everything and simply let a few things pass.

To breathe.

To let go.

To resist less.

And notice that, for this moment at least, nothing is missing.

Which is quite a lot to discover while lying flat on your back with your eyes closed.

And if that isn’t yoga…

I’m beginning to suspect I’ve been doing it wrong all along.

FULL STOP.