Kayotsarga, literally the "abandonment" or "casting off" of the body, is a Jain meditative practice of standing or sitting in complete stillness, wholly detached from the body and its concerns, as a discipline of non-attachment and inner absorption. The practitioner assumes a fixed posture, classically standing erect and motionless, arms held slightly away from the sides, gaze steady, and remains without movement for a set time, withdrawing attention from the body so entirely that it is, in the ideal, as though set aside. The name captures the aim: not the mortification of the body but the release of the soul's identification with it, a turning inward that loosens the grip of the physical self.
Kayotsarga is a component of several core Jain observances, including the essential daily duties and the rite of repentance, and it is closely associated with the ascetic ideal embodied in the great meditating figures of the tradition, the tirthankaras, who are depicted standing in exactly this posture of motionless absorption. By stilling the body completely the practitioner aims to still the mind and to weaken the passions and attachments that, in Jain teaching, bind the soul with karmic matter. The practice thus expresses in a single bodily discipline the central Jain conviction that liberation is won by progressive detachment from the body and the world, and that the soul's freedom begins with ceasing to be ruled by the flesh.