“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.

Meaning: benevolence, friendliness, amity, kindness, good-will, and an active interest in the well-being of others.

Metta is considered one of the sublime attitudes of an enlightened being, the first of the Four Immeasurables, Brahmavihāras (“Divine Abodes”), which also include: compassion (Karuṇā), empathetic joy (Muditā), and equanimity (Upekkhā). While Metta meditation practice is often associated in Buddhist communities, the first mention of practicing with kindness appears in the Chandogya Upanishad, one of the oldest of the Upanishads, found within the Samaveda.

Further, the Brahmavihāras also appear in The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali as a guide on relationships with others:

*1.33 In relationships, the mind becomes purified by cultivating feelings of friendliness towards those who are happy, compassion for those who are suffering, goodwill towards those who are virtuous, and indifference or neutrality towards those we perceive as wicked or evil.

(maitri karuna mudita upekshanam sukha duhka punya apunya vishayanam bhavanatah chitta prasadanam)

Metta Meditation has been a part of my practice for many years. It helps me to settle anxiety, calm busy thoughts, and ease the times I find myself caught up in negative self-judgement. Metta is a perfect response when I feel helpless to help in a situation; when I cannot assist directly I can at least send loving-kindness to those suffering. When Chozen Bays, Roshi, was still my teacher she would say that Metta is the only tool you need in any situation.

Metta meditation practice is done as a set of phrases you repeat mentally or aloud, often with the breath. I was taught to repeat each phrase on an exhale.

The phrases are repeated in four rounds. The first round is to generate loving-kindness for the self. This is quite literally a meditation example of “putting on your own oxygen mask first”; you make sure you’re ready to offer Metta to others before proceeding.

Second, you offer loving-kindness to a person you are fond of. Third, you consider someone you feel neutral for; the cashier that helped you at the grocery store, for example. For the fourth round you focus loving-kindness on a person you have difficulty with; letting us practice offering goodwill despite having negative feelings about a person.

There are many different suggestions for scripts to use for the phrases. Some are more detailed, for example these from Jack Kornfield:

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.

Another of my Zen teachers, Hogen Bays, would use only two phrases. It is this more simple approach I’ve continued to practice with over the years. The phrases I use in my practice now are:

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

That word “Happy” can catch people. Some days we don’t feel ready for happy or ready to wish some people happiness. Rather than judging ourselves harshly for struggling over a word, we can chose to use the word “Content” instead. As Chozen Bays noted during the loving-kindness retreat I attended, contentment really is happiness after all.

Through the process of deepening my own practice with Metta, I began thinking about how to incorporate this practice in healing myself. While having a practice that lets us open our heart to the world is deeply beneficial, this practice can be used as a way to reconnect with the body. I began incorporating it while teaching yoga movement to help students manage the negative self-judgement that arrises, to help heal the relationship with the body directly.

As I started to explore applying the phrases of Metta to my chronic pain, to the toxic messages I absorbed as a child, and to the abuse and sexual trauma I’d experienced across the early years of my life, I experienced a growing comfort with my body, my back pain, and with my trauma history. Turning Metta inward opened it up for me, offering me insight for my own healing and in my work with others.

Some of us live with a condition that causes chronic physical pain and creates limitations; we can offer loving-kindness for a body that works especially hard. Using the lens of Metta we look deeply at the physical pain the body experiences; offering tenderness instead of flinching away from discomfort.

Many of us were taught to judge our bodies or how we view the world harshly, we need a way to temper the voice of the Inner Critic or the felt sense of unease and unhappiness held in the body. Metta provides space to be curious about our bodies and our insight into the world, instead of critical.

For those of us who’ve experienced the violation of our bodily integrity through abuse, sexual trauma, or domestic violence, Metta can offer a way to befriend the body again. We can cultivate loving-kindness for the very anxiety, fear, and anger we still experience, held in our bodies.

In doing this work to befriend the body, I’ve changed the phrases I use. Instead of offering the energy outwards to others, the loving-kindness energy is sent inwards, directly to the body.

May I be free from the anxiety and fear I have about my body (I feel in my body).
May I feel peaceful and happy about my body.

It can be tough to offer yourself loving-kindness. When I first started this practice I found it so difficult to offer it to myself that I worked my way around to it, offering it to everyone else ahead of me as a kind of warm-up! Chozen would advise me to picture myself as a small child. Hogen even suggested visualizing myself as a tiny kitten, so in need of love.

During some meditation sessions, instead of offering myself Metta, I’d find myself disassociated from the present moment. My struggles with offering myself loving-kindness opened my eyes to the depth of trauma I’d experienced from my family of origin. This was part of the impetus to begin work with a therapist who specialized in trauma recovery and used EMDR, which really set me upon the path to healing.

I still struggle with shame. I’ve come to realize shame underlies most of my anxiety and all of my negative self-judgement. When I’m deep in a struggle with shame I am certain that I don’t deserve loving-kindness. Of course, that’s exactly when I need it most.

I’ve learned to respond to those shame messages as a signal to stop and do Metta meditation, as soon as I can. I’ve sat and meditated in all kinds of places, including a bathroom stall! I recognize that I need to turn down the toxic messages that can still bubble up from the past before they overwhelm me, so any place is a good place for Metta practice!

The more we befriend our body, treat it like a treasure and an ally, the more resources we have for healing ourselves and others. The more curiosity we can have for those things like fear, anger, and pain, the more spaciousness we will have around those experiences, rather than being overwhelmed by them. Metta practice is a valuable tool for this journey, may it help us all to find peace.

May our practice together be meaningful.
May our practice together bear fruit.
May the fruits of our practice benefit others.

Metta Prayer;
for Everyone Who’s Been Abused

May we be
Freed from
The misery
Of shame.

May we
Be released
From the thought
That somehow
It was our fault.

May we
Rest in the
Truth that we
Never did
Anything
Wrong.

May the too many
Who’ve experienced
Abuse in any way
Be free from
Anxiety and fear.

May we all
Be peaceful.

May we all
Be happy.

*Thanks to Swami J for the translation of the Yoga Sutras.