I Lay Awake
Savasana (corpse pose)
I lay awake.
I can no longer take for granted
Night long sleep.
No starry-eyed Bo Peep,
I do not mind
But stretch and fold and wind my limbs,
Find things to do
While torso twists and screws at ease,
Finds asanas so new
No book has shown them.
Flow so pleasing, so unchosen,
Something else within knows
The interior that flows
From limb to joint,
Anointing every ligament
With unforced flexibility
To an advanced degree,
An integrated game.
It is a yoga without name.
It isn’t fun to lay awake,
But later on, insomnia run
Its course, one
falls asleep,
Rem, deep.
A scone & milky coffee trick
To wake,
The energy enough
To stake a claim
From recent dream to active day.
Balasana (child's pose)
Ardha Bhekasana (supported half frog pose)
Supta Baddha Konasana (reclining bound angle pose)
Pawanmuktasana (wind-relieving pose)
Savasana (corpse pose)
Asanas, called yoga poses or yoga postures in English, are body postures. Patañjali, a notable scholar of the Samkhya school of Hindu philosophy who lived perhaps between the 2nd and 4th centuries and wrote the seminal "Yogasutras," a collection of 196 aphorisms on yoga, defined an asana as a position that "is steady and comfortable" and insisted that being able to sit for extended periods is one of the 8 limbs of his system (long with abstinence, observances, breathing. withdrawal, concentration, meditation, and absorption).
ReplyDelete"Counting sheep" has long been a suggested method of inducing sleep.
Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep,
And can't tell where to find them;
Leave them alone
And they'll come home,
Wagging their tails behind them.
Little Bo-Peep fell fast asleep,
And dreamt she heard them bleating;
But when she awoke, she found it a joke,
For they were still a-fleeting.
The 1st verse 1st appeared in a manuscript from ca. 1805, and additional verses appeared in a version of "Gammer Gurton's Garland or The Nursery Parnassus" in 1810. The melody commonly associated with it was 1st recorded in 1870 by James William Elliott in his "National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs." From the 14th century, "to play bo peep" was a euphemism for being stood in a pillory, but the phrase was often used in connection with sheep. (A 15h-century ballad contained the lines "Halfe England ys nowght now but shepe / In every corner they play boe-pepe.") By the 16th century "bo-peep" was a children's game (probably a variant of peek-a-boo), which William Shakespeare referenced in "King Lear" when the Fool rebuked his master for unwisely giving away his authority, "And I for sorrow sung, / That such a king should play bo-peep, / And go the fools among."