How comfortable are you with death? If you’re like many Westerners, you may not be very comfortable at all—or you may not give your own inevitable final rest much thought.

Even if you’ve practiced yoga and enjoyed the usual class conclusion of savasana—sometimes affectionately known as a “yoga nap”—you may not realize that “savasana” means “corpse pose” in Sanskrit. There’s good reason to embrace the concept and consider our mortality, though. As the authors of a March 2026 article in the journal Frontiers in Public Health write, “rather than being morbid, savasana practice could both guide death education and revitalize a love of life.”

In “Turning Toward Mortality: Yoga’s Savasana as a Salutogenic Practice for Engaging with Death Anxiety,” IAYT-certified yoga therapists Lori Rubenstein Fazzio, Anne Pitman, and Shelly Prosko suggest corpse pose as an accessible, cost-effective way of increasing our ability to face mortality with conscious awareness.

Overcoming suffering

Building understanding in this area is especially important in societies where we don’t like to think about death—and where we maybe even have a “cultural obsession with prolonging life,” as the authors put it. Spotting modern manifestations of what yoga philosophy refers to as abhinivesha (fear of death, or clinging to life) is easy: The common practices of expensive, aggressive (and ultimately futile) medical care at the end of life and using embalming and makeup to create a lifelike appearance for funeral viewings are just two examples.

Yoga philosophy holds that clinging to the physical form of life is one of the five kleshas, or mental afflictions at the root of suffering. In contrast, as the authors note, “A consistent and compassionate practice of contemplating death via savasana offers an opportunity to cultivate greater awareness and acceptance of one’s mortality.”

Practical support for impermanence and uncertainty

These yoga therapists suggest viewing savasana “not as a literal rehearsal of dying, but as a symbolic exploration of impermanence and letting go.” They describe some of the many concrete reasons for undertaking what can seem like an esoteric practice:

End-of-life research focusing on yoga, mindfulness and meditation notes that these practices can help manage anxiety and depressive symptoms, appetite, fatigue and insomnia. They also may improve perceived stress, inform an accepting attitude toward pain, inspire confidence and self-efficacy, foster compassion and empathy and cultivate a nonjudgmental attitude to whatever arises in the present moment. Spiritual support, when facing death, has been shown to improve quality of life, spiritual wellbeing, insight and inner peace for terminally ill patients. … Practices that help people face their fear of death can reduce death anxiety and may improve advance care planning outcomes.

Long before we reach the palliative-care stage, cultivating familiarity with the truth of impermanence is a valuable practice that supports agency and may inspire conversations that help us prepare for death in practical, emotional, and spiritual terms. Although yoga therapy is not intended to replace medical care, C-IAYTs can offer support for this exploration with respect and consideration of clients’ varied spiritual and religious beliefs. A conscious practice of savasana—deep, intentional rest—is one of the ways this discipline can offer embodied support for all mortals.

Read the full article to delve into how and why yoga’s savasana may be a valuable practice for facing our mortality and engaging with death anxiety.