Restorative Yoga

Restorative Yoga is a therapeutic application of the yoga practice designed to reduce the effects of chronic stress. It is recommended for any time that you need to restore your body or mind. There are asanas, or postures, that are considered restorative, and there are entire practices that are considered restorative.

What makes a pose restorative? 

Baddha Konasana (butterfly pose)

Props, passive traction, relaxation and time are the characteristics of a restorative pose. 

For example, if you sit on the floor in Baddha Konasana (butterfly pose), with the bottoms of your feet touching and your knees apart, you will need to engage some muscular effort in order to maintain the integrity of the pose. 

If you recline onto a bolster and supporting your knees (resting butterfly pose), however, you will be able to release all your weight into the floor or props, creating a stretch that is very passive and uses mostly gravity and your own body weight to maintain the sensation.

Supta Baddha Konasana
(resting butterfly pose) 

The resting butterfly pose is an adaptation of the butterfly pose, and the use of props to support your joints encourages passive traction in your body.

This passive traction encourages a gentle release of tension and tightness related to chronic stress.  

These poses are typically held for a while (5-20 minutes each) in order to induce a relaxation response in your nervous system.

What makes a practice restorative? 

A practice that induces your relaxation response for an extended period of time is considered restorative. Your nervous system is continuously analyzing your external and internal environment to determine if there is any threat. 

When your sensory input quiets down, your nervous system initiates your relaxation response, 

what Judith Lasiter calls the “rest and digest” mode. Therefore, a restorative practice is one that seeks to reduce your sensory inputs. 

To make this happen in your external environment, you will need a warm, quiet, dimly-lit space with no worry of interruption. Traditionally, the practice has minimal verbal instruction, no music and a warm climate. In my person experience, people with cancer need soothing sounds and touch to help them stay present and turn down the volume of their thoughts. 

To make this happen in your internal environment, you may need to prop your joints dramatically, because you will want a very mild level of sensation so as not to trigger your nervous system. If you are in a pose that requires you to “do” something, like engage your muscles to hold your body in place, then your internal environment will send sensory inputs to your nervous system, restricting you from fully relaxing. One of my student’s dubbed this practice the “fancy nap” for its qualities of doing nothing.

No matter how foreign it may be to practice doing “nothing” for 5-20 minutes in each pose, you feel the benefits right away; after understanding the practice, some of my students use just one pose to relax on their own, like Instant Maui or Legs Up the Wall, both depicted below.

Instant Maui pose

Legs Up the Wall pose

Announcements

• Please see my schedule page for updates coming in September; 2 NEW classes for cancer survivors, and new locations!
• Sunday, September 15: Basics of Pranayama and Chanting; this 1-day workshop is at Mind-Body Zone in Fremont; see the Events page for more information.
• Share my blog with others, and invite them to sign up. This is one of the best ways I have to get news out to you all!
• Remember, if you can't make it to class, you can always pop in my DVD, Healing Yoga for Wellness, available online at www.amazon.com and www.eBay.com, and in stores at Breathe Los Gatos, Pacific Healing Arts, Cancer CAREpoint resource center and Kaiser Mind-Body-Wellness center.
  

Lessons From the Intersection

"Would you be interested in teaching stress-relieving yoga to staff in a psychiatric ward?" When I received this question, I immediately said yes. How wonderful, I thought, to support people who are deep in the trenches, dealing with mental illness day after day.

And then the email came that told me the class would be a mix of staff and hand-picked patients.

And when I actually taught the first class, it was all patients with just one staff member, quietly typing away on her COW (computer on wheels).

A lotus flower blooms over several days, rising out of the
dirtiest water at dawn and sinking back down at sundown

I was warned to not touch the patients or let them touch me, and I was told that there may be some outburst during class, which is why a staff member would be with me the entire time. I grew a little apprehensive after hearing this. We had limited props and space; originally, we had discussed holding the classes in a secluded courtyard, but the logistics of that idea were too great a hurdle to overcome. I did find a room with a door that could be closed to shut out the hospital traffic and noise - to some degree. Once I did that, I found myself alone in the room with the patients. But by that time, I had begun to see them without any fear. Most of them were very spacey from the medications they were on; occasionally, they interrupted the class with questions, laughter, tears, stories, songs, jumping jacks, karate kicks and other behaviors that arise when our mental filters disappear. In between it all, we breathed, stretched, moved a little and relaxed (somewhat) quietly.

I learned three priceless lessons from teaching this class over the past year:

empathy,
humility and
non-attachment.

Don't I know you?

A funny thing happened as I returned week after week: I started to recognize people. Not in the way you might think, because I rarely saw the same person more than once or twice. I started recognizing the people I had seen only once. I thought, I think I know him, or, I've probably passed her on the street at some point, or, have I taught him yoga, or, I might be related to her.

"I never thought I'd find myself in a place like this," a patient told me once. "But I could feel my life slipping away and I was afraid it would only get worse." I knew that feeling. I had been there at times. A darkness that's insatiable, as the Indigo Girls phrased it in their song, "Closer to Fine." I had felt that darkness at times, the pull of the black hole that covers me in a silent blanket and simultaneously loudly chants over and over in my mind to just be still and let myself be replaced by all the pain, sorrow and suffering. Or the too-bright confusion of overstimulating days when anxiety and fear make leaving the house an unsurmountable challenge... Something always pulled me back from those days, though. Family, friends, humor, stubbornness. Yoga brought me even more tools, and as I balanced my emotions more and more, yoga helped me experience less and less of these dark days.

An expression kept forming in my mind as I left the ward: there but for the grace of god go I. For these patients, this treatment, this practice, this situation was what was pulling them back.

Deep Bows to the Teacher

Once, I attempted to help a woman who was really struggling; she told me she thought she was having a panic attack, and I could see that she was shaking, her breath was stuttering and she was wobbly on her feet. She was the only one who showed up to class that day, so we talked and walked a little as I attempted to get her to breathe a little deeper. After a few minutes, she left. When I saw her again, some weeks later, she was a different person - calm, steady on her feet and easily communicative. She told me she had been going through withdrawal from her anti-anxiety medication (ironically) the last time I saw her. She was so much better when I saw her the second time and I knew I had nothing to do with it, although she was very grateful that I had tried to help. I attribute yoga for changing so much about my life, but there are limits. No amount of breathing or standing poses or mantras would help her that day, just patience. Even yoga has its limits, and sometimes life is the guru. Namaste, Life.

Letting go

If I am honest about my thoughts when I first received the invitation to teach this class, I will say that my ego perked right up. You want me to teach this challenging class? Well, of course! Who else is "qualified", but me? (My ego sounds like a 10-year old, or a Steve Martin Saturday Night Live skit, depending on the situation.) But when my 10-year old ego stepped onto the ward and started to lead the class, we both quickly realized that she wasn't going to last. With regular interruptions from the staff (the original space was right out in the open) and no eye contact from the patients, my ego felt deprived of respect and attention and soon slunk away. There were classes where I felt like it was a waste of time for me to come, and that the staff only saw my class as a mild distraction for their patients. But then I remembered that it wasn't about me and if just one patient gained some insight about their breath or their tension, it was more than worth it. I challenged myself to walk the find line between caring for the patients and letting go of any results from my teaching. The patients came and went. Sometimes they stayed for the whole class... sometimes they didn't. Sometimes they followed my instructions... sometimes they made up their own. Sometimes they met me with disdain, fear or apathy... sometimes they smiled and relaxed. As my teacher, Tias Little, once said, "To live at the intersection of radical okay-ness and discernment, that is life's challenge."

Occasionally, we lose our way from that intersection, and we teeter dangerously off the edge. I'm so honored that I was able to share what I know about yoga, and that the patients were able to share what they know about living.

Announcements

• Please see my previous post about schedule changes coming in September.
• Sunday, September 15: Basics of Pranayama and Chanting; this 1-day workshop is at Mind-Body Zone in Fremont; see the Events page for more information.
• Share my blog with others, and invite them to sign up. This is one of the best ways I have to get news out to you all!
• Remember, if you can't make it to class, you can always pop in my DVD, Healing Yoga for Wellness, available online at www.amazon.com and www.eBay.com, and in stores at Breathe Los Gatos, Pacific Healing Arts, Cancer CAREpoint resource center and Kaiser Mind-Body-Wellness center.
  

Defining Yoga

When I tell people I teach yoga, they mostly respond with variations of the comment,“Oh, you must be very flexible.” Westerners often associate the word yoga with physical postures, but this is a very limited definition of yoga. For example, if I used this same approach with a music teacher, I might say, “Oh, you teach music? You must be very good at tuning an instrument.” Do not mistake all of yoga with asana – the Sanskrit word that refers to the posture or pose; that is only one part of it, just as a musician tunes his instrument, but that is not all of what he does to make music. 

Asana practice allows us to “tune” ourselves in preparation for the larger practice of living.

Photo credit: Chris Lombardi

Yoga refers to a joining of ourselves with a larger network, and you can define that network by your frame of reference. 

For example, if you narrow your focus to yourself, then a yoga practice will help you become more aware of your own sensation, breath, thoughts and emotions; if you widen your focus to include your relationships, a yoga practice will help you identify your patterns of behavior when dealing with others, and will help you cultivate compassion and equanimity in your relationships; if you expand your focus to view your community, a yoga practice will help you become more socially aware, ecologically sensitive and active in changing your world; if you focus on your relationship with a divine higher power, yoga can help you deepen your religious beliefs and spirituality. Asana practice alone cannot do this, but a yoga practice can.

Yoga reminds me that I always have a choice, no matter what my present situation. Whatever action I take (including non-action), I choose it with awareness of my sensations, my breath, my mind and my emotions.

When I explain to newcomers that my yoga class is like visiting a buffet, where some dishes are appropriate for you and others you might pass up today, they often giggle, but it is true that you have options in your practice. There is always the breath that you can feast on, and there is always awareness of your breath, body, thoughts and emotions that you can sample at any time. During times of stress, joy, pain, peace, laughter and tears, you always have a choice. Your life's journey will present you with many opportunities to choose, although you may not like your options, and you might mistake these choices for no choice. Don’t be fooled, you always have the power to choose, the option to breathe, to feel and to connect, which is what I define as yoga.

Announcements

• Please see my previous post about schedule changes coming in September.
• Share my blog with others, and invite them to sign up. This is one of the best ways I have to get news out to you all!
• Remember, if you can't make it to class, you can always pop in my DVD, Healing Yoga for Wellness, available at www.amazon.com, Breathe Los Gatos, Pacific Healing Arts, Cancer CAREpoint resource center and Kaiser Mind-Body-Wellness center.