“What a great [restorative] class that was on Saturday! My body, especially my left hip thanks you. After class, I was talking to [another student] about it. She told me that some people do not like restorative classes– not as rigorous, vigorous, or whatever. I was really surprised because I had the opposite reaction. I thought it worked for me because it put my body in such different positions. It helped me to isolate this place on my left hip, buttock, joint, or whatever structure that is causing me so much trouble.”
This was great feedback for a yoga instructor to receive from a student; indeed feedback is what it is all about in a restorative practice:
The resistance to slowing down, listening quietly to the body is an endemic tendency with many go-go-go people. Some yoga practitioners have a rather narrow understanding of what they wish to achieve in a yoga practice: if it is not a sweaty “workout” it can’t be a worthwhile practice. Of course sweaty, invigorating practice has its place! Very much so! A fiery, rajasic practice has many benefits, strengthening our bodies and our wills in many ways.
By contrast, a restorative practice balances us out with a more sattvic, contemplative yoga practice, experiencing the body/mind complex in a radically different way. This can balance out our rajasic nature, which tends to be highly charged and zealous in its efforts, by bringing a cooling, calming, quieting influence by soothing the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems in the body, and through cultivating the equanimity and dispassionate awareness of our higher witnessing self. Then your whole being begins to radiate with a more coherent and conscious light!
What this student is discovering is wonderful: yoga is indeed a practice of mind and body union, so that you become more able to isolate, (i.e. bring healing focus and awareness) to specific areas of the body which are calling for you to bring them back into wholeness–in fact, back into holiness.
The first step for some yogis is allowing this subtle process to unfold, and it is not easy for many who are focused on “doing” a practice rather than simply “being” during a practice. But most practitioners come around to experiencing the benefits of a restorative practice if they can just make that effort of allowing the space and time to hold their bodies in gentle awareness in the postures, sometimes called “effortless effort”. This is all part of the process of evolving into our wiser selves!
Even those yoga students who are resistant to a restorative practice– some consciously and some unconsciously–usually reap some profound benefits from a restorative asana class, sometimes to their own surprise!
Om Shanti Om
