It is widely recognized that we are a culture of death deniers. Not for us the burning of our corpses on open fires, the contemplation on the inevitable demise and dissolution of our oh-so-precious bodies. And yet everything we fret for is soothed by this very inevitability.

      In our yoga practice we practice for our death. We rest in śavāsana and set aside the tick-tock of the brain machine, dropping instead into the stillness. The only pulsation that still remains in the steady throb of life, not ours.

      How could our heart beat be ours? Do we have any say over its rhythm? Do we regulate the peristaltic chugging in our gut? Do we track our wrinkles with sage recognition or do we tremble at our own mortality?

      Perhaps the greatest secret is the most obvious. When we live as though we are going to die, we have learnt it. And that goes on and on.