I used to watch a lot of law and crime tv shows and movies. Inevitably, there would be a death. Sometimes the deceased would be shown lying in state in a(n open) coffin. And more often than not, the deceased would be shown lying on his or her back with arms either crossed atop the chest or by his or her sides. This deceased-person posture is fairly standard across cultures.

One may conclude from this that the living want to put the deceased in a state that maximises the comfort of the deceased as he or she will be spending eternity in such as state. That is, the living consider that the most relaxed position for eternal sleep is with one’s arms by one’s sides or crossed atop one’s chest. (I do not think that the dimensions of a coffin fully explain the pose as both poor and rich – consider Ancient Egyptian pharoahs – are placed in the same pose i.e. even though rich people who can afford a much larger coffin that could possibly accomodate a sleeping-on-one’s-side pose, they still end up buried in the standard deceased person’s pose.)
So, my question is: why don’t the living sleep in the same position?

Many people I know prefer to sleep on their sides, or on their stomachs and sometimes on their backs. And even if they do sleep on their backs, their arms are often not by their sides or across atop their chests but their limbs are flailed in various positions. That is, one can argue that the living persons sleeping positions are less than ideal to achieving total relaxation as embodied in the standard deceased person pose.

Is it because we, the living, subconsciously prefer tension and vexation and this manifests itself in our sleep posture?  I don’t think proposition is too far-fetched given that Buddhism (amongst other philosophies) says that to live is to suffer.

Have you consciously thought about this at all?  Or has it been a “natural” (i.e. subconscious) thing for you to sleep in a vexed position?  It’s something which has kept me up at night.