Restorative yoga helps you to gradually release these through a passive, gentle softening and allowing, rather than an active stretch or forcing. The breath can guide us to the core of our being – the essence of who we are.Ģ) Restorative yoga helps to release tensionĪs you try to relax in the postures you may feel the places where you’re holding tension. The breathe is the foundation of our life, and how we breathe reflects how we are living – holding, tense, restricted and unaware or free, yielding, open and soft, and all shades in between. It's designed to release muscular and mental tension, calm your nervous system, and ease you into deep relaxation.” “Restorative yoga is the most gentle, relaxed and slow type of physical yoga you can do. This not only benefits the mind and nervous system during the session, but if repeated regularly over time can help to correct unhelpful breathing patterns so that our involuntary day-to-day breath becomes more optimal. Restorative yoga allows the breath to become naturally slower, deeper and more relaxed, as we allow the body to be completely still. It can become a pattern – along with other unhelpful patterns such as holding our breath or reverse breathing (not taking in enough oxygen when we inhale) – and this can become chronic, which is a vicious cycle as it then keeps the mind stressed and the nervous system aggravated. It’s a normal part of the short-term nervous system response to danger. When we’re stressed, we switch to short shallow chest breathing rather than full breathing using the diaphragm (the main breathing muscle). The primary focus of restorative yoga is the breath. You can benefit from restorative yoga if you want to feel less tense or stressed and want to deeply let go and relax – both physically and mentally. You still stretch the muscles – with forward folds, backbends and spinal rotations, as other forms of yoga also have – but in a restorative yoga sequence these are passive, relaxed, supported stretches, unlike active and dynamic forms of yoga such as hatha, ashtanga and vinyasa flow.Ī restorative yoga sequence encourages a state of deep relaxationĭone correctly, with the guidance of an experienced, knowledgeable and supportive teacher who is specifically trained in restorative yoga, it is deeply comforting and is more than just relaxation of the body it uses the physical body to also access the mental, energetic and nervous systems, to have a deeply restorative effect and nurture you at all levels of your being. It’s a soft awareness, sensing that all those things are there, but without getting caught up in thinking about them. While it is deeply restful, you are at the same time aware of your body, breath and surroundings. It is not meant to make you sleep (though it can prepare you for better sleep later). Restorative yoga takes you into a state of relaxed awareness. It allows the natural breath to become very soft and subtle, and soothes the nervous system until it deeply relaxes. It is staying in the postures for this length of time – which means you only do four or five postures in a one-hour class – that helps to passively release chronic muscular tension, and soften and relax the body. The second is that the body is fully supported and comfortable, so that you can let go of tension in your muscles, breath and mind. It takes this long for the nervous system to move out of a frazzled state – the fight-flight-freeze reaction – into a deep relaxation response. The first is holding the body in each position for 12 or more minutes. Two things in particular make restorative yoga very different to other styles of yoga. Props include bolsters, yoga blocks, cushions and blankets. Props are used to support the body, so that it can fully relax and lie in the various positions for 12-15 minutes each, while the muscles are passively stretched. For a start, unlike other yoga, it’s done mostly lying down. Restorative yoga is the most gentle, relaxed and slow type of physical yoga you can do, designed to release muscular and mental tension, calm your nervous system, and ease you into deep relaxation. Yoga teacher Jacqui Gibbons outlines more of the benefits it offers, plus explains a full restorative yoga sequence and suggests the props you need to practise it safely and securely. Restorative yoga is a type of yoga that encourages deep relaxation, calm, and better sleep.
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