The Dreaded Yoga Finger Touch

It comes with five minutes left in the yoga practice.  The work is done, the teacher has called for shavasana, and I have splayed out on my mat with an eye towards total relaxation...at which point, out of nowhere comes another sweaty finger bumping up against mine.

Bumping into people is par for the course in most studios I've frequented.  The most popular classes pack people close together, so some contact is inevitable.  I've taken more feet to the head than I can count.  Hell, tonight, on the way to one pose, I completely bumped into the instructor's, er, posterior.  It didn't phase either one of us, because both of us know the deal.  In modern American yoga, some level of accidental contact is just going to happen.

Yet shavasana seems like it should be different.  Ashtanga's primary sequence is an allegory for life, and shavasana literally translates into English as "corpse pose."  It is the pose where, if you've practiced well, you may be able to do nothing and be nothing and be utterly content.  The self can dissolve, and you can be at one with your surroundings.  If some sweaty dude is rubbing his digits up against mine, how can I possibly deal?  How can I possibly let go?  My natural reaction to the accidental finger touch has always been to jerk away ASAP.

And yet...

And yet...

We aren't separate, not a single one of us.  Zen is a factually correct way of looking at life, because there is no stable self, no stable Bryan, just a billion quarks and neutrons and cosmic stardust that shifts and changes entirely in every instant.  What is physical contact if not a reminder that the self is boundless and shifting?  Someone touches me, and everything about my existence seems to change.  My thoughts change.  My heart quickens.

And as for corpse pose, who's to say that death is lonely and isolated?  What if death really is the fall back into everything, where our consciousness merges and dissolves and unites with the universal?

What if, when we die, someone is there to hold our hand?

Tonight, I didn't move my hand, and neither did she.  As I fell into shavasana, I tried to project all I had learned and hoped to learn.  I tried to share whatever calm I have managed to gain in my life.  I tried to let her know about the time when I practiced and fell into shavasana and realized that God was real.  I hoped that the physical connection between us could help her along her way.  I tried my best to make that physical contact into a form of service.  And it felt great.

Of course, I still have a ways to go on my path.  Next time, if I'm REALLY advanced, I might even listen to what the person touching my hand is trying to say to me.