Incorporating Shavasana in real life!

 I remember when I was in school, I hated Social Studies. Especially during exams, I hated the preparation part, memorizing all the stuff. I used to get super bored while studying. My boredom would get so bad that it always turned into depression. My mom, who was practicing Yoga back then, would try to soothe me and make me do Shavasana. Even though exam time was approaching and I wasn’t finished with my studies, she would make me stop looking at those boring books, cribbing about their existence in my life. She would just ask me to lie down, leave all the thoughts I would have, and leave everything. She’d ask me to imagine that there’s nothing, literally nothing, around me. She would ask me to empty my mind completely. She helped me meditate and make sure those frustrating thoughts are at least reduced if not completely gone away. And after some time when I would get up from Shavasana, I’d get some energy to think about the next steps. These memories still feel fresh. After school was over, this never happened much until recently. 

In the last few years, every now and then I used to feel depressed. Some days were great, some decent but the majority of them were filled with boredom and mild depression. I tried to distract myself from those thoughts and tried to feel good. It was like I’m pushing myself to feel good about something that I’m not really enjoying or feeling good about. It took me a long time to realize that I should not distract myself but just take things slow, remove things from life that I’m not enjoying. Although we are a working parent couple, I started leaving work where it was. Whenever working on something office work or household work, I asked myself - can it wait? Can it wait until tomorrow? If it could I pushed it to the next day. While doing so, I realized there are so many things I just had imposed on myself. I slowed down a lot. And nobody noticed it except me. I removed every task from TODO that could wait. Some tasks were something that I was able to enjoy but somehow started piling up. But I still pushed them out. When my TODOs reduced and almost became empty, I could think so clearly on what I want, what my next steps should be. I just realized that this was one type of slow Shavasana that I incorporated into my life! One more time and it helped.

P.S. My mom/my parents never pressurized me to get good grades. It was me imposing something on myself and got me into that situation. That’s what I was doing in my life too.