LEARNING TO SLOW DOWN, SOFTEN, RELEASE AND RESTORE
“When we lose touch with inner stillness, we lose touch with ourself. When we lose touch with ourselves, we lose ourself in the world. Our innermost sense of self, of who we are, is inseparable from stillness.”
I have decided to write about Restorative postures and how to bring them into your daily routine.
21st June is International Yoga Day, hence I have decided to write about RESTORATIVE POSTURES and how to bring them in your daily routine.
In today’s lifestyle, our lives have way more become busier than ever with a hectic and stressful schedule. There is a greater need for us to take regular time to stop, slow down, release and restore.
Modern day life has us running around firing on all cylinders and in “fight or flight” mode (activated by the body’s sympathetic nervous system) most of the time. The effect of this is, it increases our blood pressure, speeds up our heart, raises blood sugar levels, elevates levels of stress hormones such as cortisol, causes problems with our digestion and redirects blood away from our internal organs. All this is making our body function less effectively with faster and shallower breathing.
This doesn’t sound so great.
The problem is that the stress and relentless pace of modern life leads to people being in this state most of the time. That is when the problems with our body and mind start to happen.
Restorative postures can combat the effects of all of this running around at high speed by kick-starting our “rest and digest” or para-sympathetic nervous system and bringing our whole system back into more harmony. This makes our body to rest, recover, and regenerate itself.
Activation of the “rest and digest” or relaxation response helps to lower blood pressure, slow our heart rate, boost immune function, restore good digestion, reduce our anxiety and stress levels and improves our sleep.
Restorative yoga is an incredible way of helping to heal the whole body and mind. In activating the para-sympathetic or relaxation response it helps to balance the whole nervous system and sets up the whole body for deep healing, growth and repair. Specific sequences of restorative poses can be used to help with numerous issues, including relieving back pain, menstrual and menopausal symptoms, stress, anxiety and depression, digestive disorders, insomnia, exhaustion, headaches and asthma.
These slower practices of restorative yoga can help us to find that inner harmony in our minds, bodies and lives. In addition to learning how to take control and assume responsibility, a person also needs to learn when and how to let go, to surrender, to go with the flow and not resist or fight it. Letting go versus taking control — this is, of course, just another version of being versus doing.
The beauty of restorative postures is, all you need to do is learn how to go in this and set up the pose and then simply be there, tuning into your body, your breath and exploring what happens when you slowly release your habitual ways of holding.
Since restorative postures are meant to be held longer, they have time to really penetrate our bodies’ organ systems, including our mind and emotions, and thus creating significant shifts in both physical and mental health.
So why not take some time out to let go, slow down and just see what happens? You may soon find yourself wanting to carve out time to do this every day!