Online & in-person
$62 Early bird, use promo code LAST, exp. 5/11.
$72 Regular
Join Leslie and Richard for a deep dive into Savasana with a twist. Most of us spend our days trying to extend our lives, i.e. looking both ways before crossing a street, putting our seatbelt on and checking expiration dates on our food. Nonetheless, nothing we do, not even yoga, can help us escape life’s inevitable end. Yoga can help prepare us to face our fear of the inevitable, maybe even embrace it so that we come to appreciate the preciousness of each day we are alive.
- Find a renewed appreciation for the beauty of our time on the planet
- Increase personal agency around end of life decisions
- Delve deep on what really matters to you
- Realize a new perspective on a very old pose and how it can help you
be more comfortable with the inevitable
Yoga is meant to bring us more awareness and gives us tools to manage the challenges of being human. This workshop is designed to manage the anxiety we all have around dying and to be more comfortable with these types of conversations.
There will be a short lecture on the history, practice, symbolic message of this often misunderstood pose. Then we will do a series of short practices with a savasana. Each practice will begin with a thought provoking question around your own death, like what are some of your regrets in life, or what do you want your legacy to be, who am I. After each practice, you will be given time to journal about each question. We’ll conclude with a group discussion and of course a final (FOR THIS WORKSHOP) savasana.
Leslie and Richard have been talking about the power of savasana for a long time. They got the idea to do a whole book about it and to include some of the teaching of yoga around accepting death. This workshop is a result of many hours of conversation and we hope to pull it all together for a book before we die!
Hear what others are saying:
“The workshop on Savasana with Leslieji and Richardji was a beautiful, poetic experience, the pose as a metaphor, a rehearsal for the final act in one’s life explored ever so lovingly and thoughtfully. I loved everything about it : the way ‘doing’ and ‘being’—asanas, breathing and Mudras—are all woven together with various versions of Savaasna serving as knots, creating a dynamic and at the same time a contemplative space for the body and mind. Leslie’s every prompt for the journal gently filled in the practical aspects. At the end, I left the mat with an awareness that I hope to carry with me to the end, an understanding released in a deep sigh that silently says, ‘all done.’ Thank you so much, dear Leslie and Richard, for designing such a beautiful workshop that captures the philosophical heart of yoga in the one asana to live and die for.“
– Sarada, class participant
“I took Leslie Howard’s and Richard Rosen’s “The Last Savasana” workshop in February 2024. I had experienced a lot of loss in the last months of 2023 so this was a great way to look at my own “end”.The prompts we were given were fairly simple. But in the asana and/or breathing practices that followed, during which time we were instructed to think about the prompts, life became a little more complicated. This led into a period to “journal” about the prompts and our responses to them.It was a safe place to explore end of life issues….regrets, guilt, shame; how one might envision their last days; and finally one’s LegacyLeslie and Richard a great facilitators and this was an afternoon of introspection well spent. Can recommend this workshop with high praise and gratitude.“
–Sandra S. class participant
Leslie Howard is an Oakland-based yoga teacher, specializing in all things pelvic. She leads workshops and trainings nationally and has written a book about caring for the female pelvis, Pelvic Liberation. In 2022, after losing a long time student, she took a deep dive into the subject of death. She has 60 hours of Death Doula training, runs a regular Death Café (a place to come and talk about death) and is volunteering in hospice for Kaiser Oakland. Her teaching is informed by over 3500 hours of yoga study with senior Iyengar yoga teachers. She considers Ramanand Patel her most important influence and mentor. She has designed two very successful studies for UCSF on how to use yoga to alleviate incontinence and pelvic pain. To learn more about Leslie or for some online education opportunities visit: www.lesliehowardyoga.com
Richard Rosen, E-RYT500, began his practice of yoga in 1980 at the Yoga Room, in Berkeley, CA. Two years later he began a two-year teacher training course at the B.K.S. Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco, from which he graduated in 1983. In 1987, with his good friend Rodney Yee, he opened the Piedmont Yoga Studio in Oakland, CA, which operated until 2012. Richard has written numerous articles and reviews for national yoga magazines, and is also the author of five books, four of them published by Shambhala: The Yoga of Breath (2002), Pranayama: Beyond the Fundamentals (2006), Original Yoga (2012), a book on traditional yoga practice based on the seventeenth century Gheranda Samhita (Gheranda’s Compilation), and Yoga FAQ: Almost Everything You Need to Know about Yoga–from Asanas to Yamas (2017). His fifth book for Shambhala, Yoga by the Numbers, is due out in the Spring of 2022. Richard lives in a 115-year-old bungalow in beautiful Berkeley, CA.