Savasana in Sanskrit

Namaste friends, welcome once again Swagatam to this show on the yoga postures with the Sanskrit pronunciations and writings. I have with me my dear friend Julia. Thank you Swagatam to you too. Today we are going to look at one of the most difficult and yet one of the most important poses, the Shavasana. It's a very difficult pose they say because to allow yourself to die consciously to let yourself relax and let go is not an easy thing. You and I know that. So today we are going to see the Shavasana. They say that in every one hour of practice it's a good idea to include five minutes of Shavasana. So the word Shavasana literally is corpse pose. Shava meaning the corpse. In transliteration it looks like this. Shavasana and as I said it is composed of the two words Shava plus Asana. The beauty of the Sanskrit words is again that there is an experiential quality to the sound of the words. So I think if one just says the word Shava, Shava at a subtle energy level probably it helps us to do this kind of letting go of oneself. In Devanagari this particular word would look like this. Sh, that's the palatal show we have. Shava plus Asana. Shavasana. If you combine the two together it becomes the Shavasana. Shavasana. This is a good place to point out to you once again the way the Sanskrit vowels combine with each other to form a new sound. So we have the Shava which ends with the vowel a and the next word starting with the vowel a which is the long of the short a. So a a and when they come together we get a what they call the euphonic combination or the phonetic combination which is the a. So let's see what they look like in this Devanagari script. Sh, so far we are exactly in the same place. Now to make the vowel a, add that particular vowel on to the V, we just have to add that stick. That will give us the V. There we are. Shavasana. Shavasana. Want to say that? Shavasana. Looking at it again there. Shavasana. Just to draw your attention again, the s with the accent is the palatal sh and the simple s without any other sign is the dental s. So Shavasana. The English equivalent is the corpse pose. Now it's time to practice the pose to see what it looks like. Julia could I ask you to show it to us? There. So Shavasana. Say that and try and feel that letting go of yourself. Shavasana. Try saying that. And now once really fast. Shavasana. So that we also know what it sounds like together. Shavasana. Very good. Thank you. Wake up. Thank you.