Involuntary GULPS in Savasana

Today I had a top ten yoga class with Peggy, from Iyengar Yoga Detroit. This "yoga nun" challenged me, I sweated, we tried some new stuff, fine tuned some old stuff and laughed out loud. It was great. So when it was time for Savasana, I knew something golden was going on.

For the past several month I have noticed that I am forced to swallow in Savasana. The thing with Corpse Pose is stillness, complete and utter stillness in mind and body. That's what makes it the hardest pose in the yoga dicipline. Chitta vrtti nirodhah - cessation of movements in the consciousness; this is Yoga Sutra 1.2. The practice of stilling the body makes it easier to still the consciousness. This is one way to describe meditation. But it is not stillness if my esophagus convulses.

The first time it happened I thought, "I'm swollowing my spit, I don't want to choke on saliva," and that very well may be the case. The throat is a part of the digestive system. But I think something else is going on too, and I think it is tied to fear.

In the cartoons, when you see Goofy going into a blubberingly brave situation, he takes a huge gulp to collect his courage. This is an act of swallowing down his fear. Peggy taught me today that the throat muscle group is an area of action. It is also the part of the physiognomy which houses the fifth chakra, the Visuddha Chakra. Among the Visuddha chakra's many correlations, speaking and storytelling are functions of it, which makes laymen sense when you think about where your voicebox is. I, personally, have crippling fears when it comes to finding and using my voice.

Lying in Savasana today, feeling strong and confident, I noticed that gulp coming on. I chose stillness instead. I reassured myself that my breath had a path into my lungs and out again, so I was safe. Through fighting the instinct to swallow, I began to feel sensation moving upward. Energetically, something was going on. There was energy moving through blockages in my tongue and throat. I could feel both the "energy" and the "blockages" distinctly. The energy was slow, flowing like blue mercury, with thin swirls of red, yellow, and orange. It progressed in the most minuscule amounts, no more than a tablespoon at a time spread out as thin as paper. Every so often a star-grain of electric energy would pop through with the liquid, then it would all float to my head as if it evaporated. The blockages were rock-like, but malleable, like dried clay that was slowly being wetted.

I felt fear. I also felt that the more I fought the instinct to react to fear, the energy would become more powerful and healing. The longer I fought off the reactive impulse, the greater the energy would grow. I felt increasingly blissful. Not full on bliss, mind you, but I was moving in that direction. I wonder what I would have felt if I had had more time to lie there, practicing.

Eventually I did have to swallow. Some things you body just does. It takes a long time and a lot of disciplined practice to learn control over your subtle internal functions. But I am learning! Aren't we all?