“Why do we do Restorative Yoga?”

Recently a student asked me this question at the beginning of a class. They added, “I mean, it feels good, but what good is it?”

Restorative Yoga is unlike any other approach to yoga. There’s no balancing, litttle strengthening, and only a bit of stretching. A class may never leave the floor. How is it yoga?

I responded that Restorative Yoga is when we practice resting. While movement is a part of yoga, so is learning to rest. Restorative Yoga helps rest in a way that restores the mind / body / spirit system.

The second and third of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras explains why we undertake the practice of yoga.

1.2: Yoga is the settling of the mind into silence.

1.3: When the mind has settled, we are established in our essential nature, which is unbounded consciousness

More often, the third Sutra talks about how we dwell in our true nature, “Then the Seer (Self) abides in Its own nature.”

When we look deeper into that word, “abide”, particularly in how it has been used across other spiritual traditions, and we come to the belief that to abide is a kind of deep resting. When we’re settled, we rest in such a way that we connect with our essential nature, our True Self.

Why do we need practice resting?

We now live with constant connectivity, we’re always on and alert for the next thing to react to. The lines between work time and personal time are blurred for many people as we’ve become more public in our lives and always connected. In our society we’re rewarded for “going the extra mile” and encouraged to give “110%”.

As a result, we’re lousy at resting. We sleep, but we go from one state of sleep to the next with little to no actual rest. What sleep we do get is usually inadequate to the needs of real rest. People fall into bed, writing one last email, only to awake exhausted, checking a device for what disasters transpired during sleep.

Living this way is not only physically exhausting, but creates mental fatigue and constant low energy. Despite incessant signals to rest from our body and mind, we continue do more. We live in a culture that values productivity, contributors, sending a strong message that your value as a person is measured by how much you’ve done and what you earned.

We’re told to both work hard and, ever more commonly, play even harder. This unsustainable model keeps us in a state of hyperarousal. Our Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) works overtime to help us be alert to threats to our way of life and we channel the urge to fight or flee into the energy to keep being productive, keep reaching the next goal.

The more activated the SNS is, the harder it becomes to rest. Resting becomes elusive, just ask anyone who has ever struggled with insomnia. It can feel like we’re stuck “on”.

If we don’t learn how to drop out of the high alert state into real rest, our bodies and our mental-emotional state show strain. Fatigue can become standard until we are forced to stop through crises, physical or mental, or both. No longer able to fight or flee, we go into the third option of the SNS, we collapse.

When do we truly rest in a way that heals and restores us?

The path for healing for this state of hyperarousal lies in the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS), the “rest and digest” system that enables the optimal state of resting in the essential self.

The PNS supplies the energy that repairs torn muscle fibers and breaks down the contents of the digestive system into the nutrient components needed throughout the body. It is also the system that repairs and creates new connections in the brain as well as increases production of both gray and white matter.

This energy, the energy to repair the whole mind / body system at a cellular level, is also the energy that powers our creativity. That idea about stress fueling creativity turns out to be inaccurate. When we’re stressed, our systems are focused on keeping us alive not on how to write a novel, paint watercolors, or solve a problem. It is the rest state of the PNS that allows for the full flowering of our creativity and curiosity.

Our understanding of the the SNS has created medications to suppress reactivity, helping keep various mental states, like anxiety and depression, from becoming overwhelming. However, there is no medication to turn up the the PNS. That’s where Restorative Yoga comes into the picture.

A Restorative Yoga session will have gentle movements and fully-supported postures held for several minutes. In these held positions the students practice resting. To encouraging settling rest they might take some large in-breaths with long exhales, then return to a natural breath. In my classes I remind students to feel movement in the body on the in-breath and practice letting the body relax into the support of the props with the exhale. Just that, inhaling gentle awareness and exhaling into a state of effortlessness.

In this state of resting in awareness the PNS energy arises and we experience healing on all levels. During Restorative Yoga the less the student actually does, the less effort they make, the more beneficial it is for them, the more activated the PNS becomes.

Rarely in life do we get maximum results for the least effort, but in Restorative Yoga this is exactly how it works. We slow down in order to fully recharge; explore ways to step away from reactivity and into calm abiding . We practice believing ourselves as worthy of nurturing and stillness.

When we allow ourselves to rest in this complete way, we are not only taking steps to repair our whole mind / body system, we’re also abiding in our essential nature.

I first learned about Mettā meditation when I practiced with a Zen Buddhist community. One of my teachers at that time, Jan Chozen Bays Roshi, believed that loving-kindness practice was the best thing you could turn to in any situation. Anxious for yourself, Mettā is the right choice. Anxious for someone else? Angry? Despair for a mass tragedy half a world away? Outrage and sorrow and children being shot in school? In all these situations, Chozen would remind us, Mettā is the right response.

 Mettā, loving-kindness from Pali, is considered one of the four sublime attitudes of an enlightened being, the Brahmavihāras, which also include compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity. Applying Mettā to our own lives helps us to treat ourselves and others with greater compassion. Starting from a place of self-care and friendliness within ourselves gives us the resources to offer compassion and love to all living beings.

While Mettā meditation is usually associated with Buddhist communities, it arises out of the rich tradition found in Vedic texts. The Upanishads discuss the virtue of Maitrī, also found alongside compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity, being the the first of the Four Immeasurables, the Apramāṇa. These become the Brahmavihāras in Buddhist practice. Practicing the virtue of Maitrī is also encouraged in Jain texts and was included by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras.

Mettā gives focus to our natural responses and helps us to be soothed enough to respond more fully. If we find ourselves still unable to respond, we can use Mettā practice to hold ourselves gently rather than fall into negative self-judgement about our inability to somehow to rise to the occasion as we think we ought to.

How do do Mettā Meditation: 

For you practice you will find a comfortable, seated posture. I’ve also found this to be a rich practice to bring to walking meditation as well as something for my busy mind to do while I’m riding on public transportation, stuck in traffic, waiting in lines, etc.

You will do four rounds of offering Mettā.

1. For yourself.
2. For someone you care for (personal love).
3. For someone you feel neutral to (impersonal love).
4. For someone you have a difficult relationship with.

The phrases used during each round may vary and you can change things to suit your specific practice that moment. I personally use two phrases for most of my Mettā meditation practices.

May I be free from anxiety and fear.
May I be peaceful and happy*.

For the second round the “I” would change to the name of the person you care for. The third round you would identify the neutral person, e.g., “May the cashier at the market be free from anxiety and fear.” In the third round you would again use the name of the difficult person you are directing  to.

Chozen would remind us that some days that word “happy” feels too difficult to work with. Rather than berate ourselves for being unable to wish happiness to someone we perceive as doing great harm, we should instead change that wording to, “May that person be peaceful and content.”

I often like to end classes with an inclusive set of Mettā phrases:

May all living beings be free from anxiety and fear.
May all living beings be peaceful and content.

Mettā Variations:

There are lots of variations of these phrases, find or create ones that resonate for you. Here are some additional examples to consider.

From the Metta Institute: 

May I be happy.
May I be well.
May I be safe.
May I be peaceful and at ease.

From Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield: 

May I be filled with lovingkindness.
May I be safe from inner and outer dangers.
May I be well in body and mind.
May I be at ease and happy.

A Traditional Tibetan Buddhist Prayer from Padmasambhava Buddhist Center:

May all beings have happiness and the cause of happiness.
May they be free of suffering and the cause of suffering.
May they never be disassociated from the supreme happiness which is without suffering.
May they remain in the boundless equanimity, free from both attachment to close ones and rejection of others.

This has meant that my home practice has been even more important. It wasn’t my intention to open the year with 3 posts about creating a personal practice, but since this year has begun with so many cancelations due to weather, it makes for an obvious choice of topics!

These days I’m teaching 12 classes a week. Mondays through Fridays I get up, feed our companion animals, and get ready to teach. I don’t have to leave especially early, but have to be mindful of traffic. I try to catch a moment of sitting meditation before teaching. I teach at least one, but some days 3 or 4 classes. In the evening I write in a daily journal, do some movement, often to soothe the efforts of teaching & commuting, and more seated meditation. When this schedule is thrown off by a foot of snow in a city that only sees snow like this once a decade, or some other reason, it shows.

Practice helps me maintain my equilibrium and focus. The practice of teaching expands this, adding additional elements that come into play when you’re facilitating the learning and practice of others. When I forget a piece, I feel the distractions of this world more deeply and fret. I also make mistakes.

This week it was a pre-made pizza crust.

Knowing I wasn’t going to rush out to teach on Thursday morning, I instead sat down to work on a project on my computer after feeding our animal companions. I rather thoughtlessly skipped that morning moment of mindfulness and dove right into the noise of the internet, then onto some house tasks since we wouldn’t be going anywhere all day. It certainly felt productive.

By evening, I had a headache, felt anxious from reading too much news of the day, and hadn’t really eaten well. We were foraging out of the freezer and fridge, I’d decided to make a kind of “taco pizza” with a pre-made crust, some leftover taco filling, corn, and refried beans instead of sauce. Of course I’d used the cardboard that was supporting the crust while putting on all the toppings. I looked at the directions and realized that I could pop it into the oven, then do 15 minutes of sitting meditation while it cooked. Perfect!

A few minutes into my attempt to settle my mind by following my breath my spouse yelled to me, ““Hon, did the directions say to cook the pizza on the cardboard it came with?” 

I was so distracted that I put the whole thing in there, cardboard and all! My wife wouldn’t normally interrupt my meditation time, but this was pretty exceptional. I paused my timer and ran to the kitchen. As I  rescued my pizza she asked, “Have you practiced today?”

I laughed and mentioned my decision to use the pizza cook time as a meditation timer, for the first time all day. To someone who lives with me, it is pretty obvious when I skip practice.

Luckily it was a very minor mistake, one that gave us a good laugh. There wasn’t a fire and my pizza was fine, really pretty tasty. It is the perfect demonstration of how consistency in our practice makes all the difference. I skipped the morning centering I do and spent the day fighting distraction, only making it worse as the day wore on.

Classes are great, you get a better understanding of the postures, the breath work, and meditation. You get to practice with the insight of someone without all the same baggage you will have about your own practice. When you don’t have a class, when you are thrown off your schedule, when you’re in a secluded retreat by yourself, your Sadhana, your personal practice, is what sustains you. It is those times when you take the bits and pieces from class and distill them into what meets the needs of your whole self.

Practice isn’t something we take a vacation from, it is the means by which we keep the energy of information flowing and integrating.

Photo courtesy of Christie Koehler, 2017

We must go down to the very foundations of life. For any merely superficial ordering of life that leaves it’s deepest needs unsatisfied is as ineffectual as if no attempt at order has ever been made.

In the week I read this, I decided to add in a focus on the Root Chakra, Muladhara, to my Yoga classes.  The Root Chakra; a felt sense of stability and security, the ability to discover our strength, and to stand our ground. Our basic survival needs rest within this energy. It is our foundation.

In a Yoga class, where we can get focused on the body itself during Asana practice, it is easy to think of Muladhara as reflecting our physical strength and stability. The powerful image of an elephant is the animal associated with this Chakra, along with the Hindu God, Ganesha. However, when I think of it the foundation of our very survival, the strength we find to survive and thrive, makes for a rich exploration.

In thinking of how each of us needs a sturdy, steady foundation to build upon, it felt completely related to the Root Chakra.  For so many people, myself one of them, our childhood did not lend itself to providing the tools for  building a good foundation and as adults we learn to do it. We rebuild, build our own sturdy foundation. Along the way we have to learn, relearn, and unlearn tools that helped us survive as children.

What is the felt sense of what we call stability? Is it possible to connect to it when challenging physical balance with a pose like Warrior Three (Virabhadrasana III)? Where can we feel the strength we call upon to choose to care for ourselves, to take a step towards connection and love?

The foundation we build lets us explore, discover, and connect to our world, to our own true self, and to the Divine. While our physical strength may not always be where we want it to be, it is our foundation of personal strength that allows us to keep moving forward anyway.

Benefits:

• Expands the lungs and chest
• Calms the mind

Contraindications:

• Breath retention is not recommended for those living with glaucoma, untreated high blood pressure, or for women who are pregnant

Technique:

• Sit comfortably in sukhasana
• Draw a breath in deeply until no more air can be drawn in
• Hold the inhalation in for as long as possible, working upwards to a count of 15
• It is good to engage both the Jalandhara (throat) and Mula (pelvic floor) Bandhas while holding the inhalation in Antara Kumbhaka
• Gently release the air through the nostrils and begin again, completing several rounds