Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign hello and welcome to Deep in your yoga practice. I'm Lauren Leduc, the owner and founder of True Love Yoga in Kansas City, Missouri. And today I wanted to deepen our practice by talking about restorative yoga. When I first started yoga, I tell this story, I think in episode one maybe, but I was in the hospital for an eating disorder. I wasn't allowed to really exercise. But one of the nurses was a yoga teacher. She offered a yoga class and I thought it was a great chance to move. But instead what I found was a sense of deep restoration and peace. So my first experience with yoga was really restorative yoga. I didn't have a name for it at the time. Over the years, I hadn't really returned to that style. I found Hatha yoga and practiced that for a long time and eventually Vinyasa Yoga, which became such a love in my life. But as I began really taking my healing journey seriously, about a decade after that first class I ever took, restorative yoga also became a part of my practice. And it was so very different than, I suppose, the mentality I'd been conditioned for in my life. We live in a culture that glorifies busyness and productivity. And in all honesty, in all honesty, I love those things too. I'm a person who has a lot of energy, I like to stay busy. But I don't feel balanced or complete without the restoration that is needed to fuel that kind of life. So restorative yoga offers this beautiful counterbalance that is completely necessary for most of our lifestyles. And it's different than Bedrot. We're not just laying unintentionally scrolling our phones or watching tv. Restorative is this intentional invitation for spaciousness, rest, relaxation, restoration so that we can feel so much more connected with ourselves. So again, it really was how I was introduced to yoga long ago.
[00:02:26] And I got a glimpse into yoga's and restorative yoga's healing potential at that time.
[00:02:35] And over the years it has become an important part of my practice.
[00:02:40] Probably something I don't practice quite enough, but something that I have a day deep appreciation for because it is so lovely and so necessary and so helpful. So what is restorative yoga? Restorative yoga is a deeply restful practice that uses props to support the body in long held passive poses. So this is different than Yin yoga. It's not deep stretching. It's more this practice of releasing effort. So we lay on things. I say we lay on bolster blocks, we use eye pillows, blankets, sometimes sandbags. We are guided into these deeply relaxing postures. And if they're not relaxing, we use props until we get to that relaxed place, and then we have several minutes to let go. So it's not dynamic, it's not moving. It doesn't require intense breath work. It's really the opposite of that. In yoga, we talk about Sarah and Sukha. I have an episode on that, meaning effort and ease. And so much of modern yoga is focused on effort, on the stira.
[00:03:53] And restorative yoga offers an antidote to that. It offers deep, deep ease. So again, it's not yin yoga, although that's a different type of passive yoga. Yin targets deep connective tissue and involves gentle stress on the joints. Restorative is about full support and no stress. And again, you might see props in the practice, such as bolsters, blankets, blocks, eye pillows. For those of us who are restorative yogas, the more props, the better. Sometimes you'll see chairs as well. So there are some really important key reasons why we need restorative yoga. One is nervous system support.
[00:04:34] So, like I said, our world values busyness, energy.
[00:04:39] Many of us are holding a lot of stress and might spend a lot of time in fight, flight, or freeze, or sympathetic nervous system. And restorative yoga, through its techniques, offers us an opportunity to be in our parasympathetic nervous system, which is rest and digest. It helps balance chronic fight, flight or freeze states, helps us let go of tension, and it also encourages vagal tone, or toning of the vagus nerve, which supports emotional resilience and even immune function. So it takes us from kind of high rev down nice and low. And this is really important sometimes in yoga, when we talk about the parasympathetic nervous system, it's as if the sympathetic nervous system is bad. It's absolutely not. They are both very important parts of us, and they're very necessary for navigating life as a human on this earth. But when we are able to go between both, it helps build resilience and helps build what we call our window of tolerance. So we can tolerate the sympathetic states more and tolerate the parasympathetic states more and find equanimity within both. It also encourages emotional healing. So restorative yoga, instead of being really movement focused, focused, gives us the time for emotional release and introspection. It's different than meditation because meditation requires a point of focus through it. And yes, emotions and thoughts and things like that come up. It's part of the process. But restorative is more like shavasana. In that we're really encouraged to just be, to be in the spaciousness, to let anything arises that arises and to, to create the space for that. I know in my life as a busy mom, I don't often have the space that I would like to process experiences from my day to day life. I was having a conversation with somebody this morning at the studio and at the time I'm recording this, it's our 10 year annivers nursery. It's a big milestone and they asked me how I feel about it and I couldn't even answer because I haven't really had the space to process just yet. And restorative yoga gives us that space to process all the different experiences of our lives in a very comfortable and safe space. Also with a trauma informed approach, meaning a teacher who's skillful with knowledge of the nervous system and, and how to use language and all of that. It gives us this really, really safe space for processing and emotional healing. There are great physical benefits as well to restorative yoga. It helps reduce cortisol which comes with being in our sympathetic nervous system all the time. And it helps reduce inflammation actually as well. Since we go into rest and digest, it aids in digestion. It can.
[00:07:52] It said that it can help with fertility and immune function as well due to stress reduction and it can support recovery and healing. So it's really great for injury or illness or fatigue. So I wouldn't say wait until those things happen to try restorative yoga. Do it as a balance to your everyday life. But if you are recovering from something, restorative yoga is such a gentle reintroduction to your physical practice and gives your body that space to calm and relax, to release inflammation so that you can start your journey of healing. Also from an energetic and philosophical layer sort of. Yoga taps into Apana vayu which is a grounding downward flowing, releasing energy. So it's this exhale, it's this letting go. It connects us with ishwara pranidana which is surrender and to ahimsa which is kindness or non harming. It encourages this shift from doing to being, from sira or effort to sukha or ease. So what does a restorative practice look like? It might include three to six poses held for five to 20 minutes each. So you can be in a posture for a long time.
[00:09:17] It might begin with some kind of grounding practice like gentle pranayama or body scan. And it might include postures like supported child's pose, a child's pose over a bolster, maybe laying Back on a bolster for recline bound angle pose, legs up the wall is a wonderful restorative posture.
[00:09:38] Twists on a bolster, supported shavasana with a blanket over top of you.
[00:09:44] It includes very gentle music or silence, dim lights, very slow pace and if a teacher is offering hands on assists it would be a very grounding touch. It is really great to do before bed and also great for times of transition or illness or burnout. So anytime you need to essentially restore restorative yoga is here for you. You might start your own restorative practice by exploring one or two poses before bed or maybe after work when get home and need a little bit of time to release. You can always use household items if you don't have props, so couch cushions are great. Pillows, bath towels, belts. If it's some kind of posture that requires like a strap, you might go on YouTube and find a very short guided practice online. And I'll also mention that we offer restorative yoga at True Love Yoga Monday nights at 7:15 with Marie and that is both on online and in person. We also have restorative classes in our online library so you can go there for beautiful 60 minute grounding restorative yoga practices or you can sign up for a class and join us in person. We love offering restorative yoga and it is for anyone at all. So anyone experiencing stress now, fatigue or emotional overload or just anyone who wants to relax. I know I often feel like a sense of tension in my body and restorative yoga breath work, yoga nidra, these kind of lunar slower practices in yoga are such a great way to release that it's also great for any yoga teacher seeking to balance high effort classes with recovery. For athletes who are looking to recover from their training or any highly active person in general, anyone healing from illness or injury, and honestly, literally everyone.
[00:11:44] I'd say it can be more difficult for those of us whose minds are always going, whose bodies always want to move. But it is such a good medicine for us people include myself who feel this need to move and do all of the time. We need that time to soften and relax and process or else we do burn out. There are a couple misconceptions I'll talk about from restorative Yoga.
[00:12:11] One is I'm not doing anything. So how is this yoga? Yoga is not acrobatics on the mat. It can be for sure, but yoga is a deep philosophical system and way of life. Restorative yoga is one of the ways that we express that. It's also a side of yoga, the more lunar cooling, feminine side that's often left out. It's left out not only in yoga, but left out in our lives. So it's really important to restore balance by honestly doing nothing. You might be worried that you'll fall asleep and you might, and that's okay. We encourage it and you might think that it's not intense enough to count. And I think that that misconception really reflects our cultural bias toward productivity. Rest is productive, especially for your nervous system and for your long term health. We don't want to run ourselves ragged and then be forced to rest. We want to incorporate it regularly into our practice, into our lives for equanimity and health. So I invite you to carve out some time this week even for one restorative posture. Maybe child's pose on top of a bolster or blanket. Maybe sign up for our class at True Love Yoga online or in person and see how it feels to try out this different form of yoga that is so deeply healing. We do dive deeper into restorative yoga in my 300 hour advanced yoga teacher training. So if you are a yoga teacher looking to expand your offerings, we will explore its philosophy and sequencing and how to teach it confidently, even hands on assists through restorative Yoga. So I'd love for you to join me for that. And I want to remind you that restorative yoga is not a luxury. It's a vital practice for healing and resilience. And I invite you to reflect on this by thinking or writing down. Where can I surrender more in my life? Where can I offer myself more support? If you loved this episode, definitely reach out. Maybe share this with someone who could use more restorative yoga in their life. Or maybe use it as a reminder to thank your restorative yoga teacher for offering you this other side of yoga that is so deeply healing and beautiful. Until next time friends. Om Shanti Om Peace.
