Savasana

I am not writing an anatomy book, nor a dissection manual, though I use nomencIature of anatomist when it is more clear than everyday language. This book/writing is not about scientific knowledge. If you want to learn detailed anatomical information, there are tons of great books you can choose from. This is just A story of my personal experience facing cadavers in dissection labs, and a story about how that experience has affected my perception of who I am, how I relate to everything, especially to my body, in this lifetime.

I once read about a meditation technique where you lie on your back and imagine your body gradually decomposing until it becomes a skeleton. I heard that in Buddhism there is a meditation method in which one observes one’s own body both from the inside and outside while observing an actual corpse decompose. I liked this meditation method because I interpreted it as a training to realize that all material existence in this world, including one’s own body, is a mere phenomenon, just like a decaying corpse. 

When we experience unbearable trauma, our body and consciousness may become dissociated in order to protect ourselves. The body becomes a thing that performs a specific function, and becomes separated from the ”I” consciousness.

Once I had sessions with a Zen psychology therapist. He often asked me, “What do you feel in your body?” I looked up at the ceiling, looked around the room and always looked for the answer outside of my body. “Can you feel your feet on the floor?” he asked. Of course I could feel my feet physically touching the floor, but that was completely disconnected from what I was feeling mentally. 

I didn’t have much knowledge about my own body. So even when I meditated on a corpse, I couldn’t visualize it very well, and I had no conscious connection to my body, so the corpse quickly turned into abstract bones. I couldn’t understand how complex and delicate the human body was, and how it was related to my very existence.

Through the gross anatomy training, I gradually recovered the connection between my self and my body. Every time I stood at the dissection table, I felt like I was slowly regaining my humanity. It has been more than 10 years since I was initiated into human dissection, and I have spent over 1,500 hours in dissection labs. Now attending an annual dissection workshop is like a Zen practitioner regularly practicing at a temple. 

I see it as my spiritual practice. It prepares me for the reality of death and dying, and reminds me of the meaning of living this moment. 

Savasana in yoga is said to be a pose where you lie on your back and imitate a dead body. When we go to a dissection table in a dissection lab, we face a donated body that is quietly in Savasana pose. It is the last pose we all will take.

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