Śivasaṃhitā 3.119

The verse closes the description of sukhāsana with a sweeping declaration: it is sarvaduḥkhapraṇāśanam, the destroyer of all suffering. The posture’s very simplicity stands in deliberate contrast to the magnitude of this claim. Far from being a preparatory or minor āsana, sukhāsana is presented as a complete practice with soteriological reach.

The compound sarvaduḥkhapraṇāśanam repays close reading: sarva (all, every), duḥkha (suffering, literally the «ill-fitting axle-hole» of a wheel), and praṇāśana (annihilation, from the intensive prefix pra- + naś, to perish). The semantic interplay is deliberate — the āsana of sukha («good space», ease) is precisely what destroys duḥkha, its etymological opposite.

The verb proktam («it is declared», «it is taught») marks the formal closure of a technical instruction in hatha literature. Its placement here as the final word on sukhāsana signals that the text regards this posture not merely as a physical arrangement but as a vehicle for liberation from existential discomfort — a quiet but radical claim.