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I've written out a very clear, very simple and VERY effective 10 minute yoga sequence that you can do standing next to your desk without a yoga mat! Put on your favorite music, set aside 10 minutes, and move your body! This sequence helps you to unite body, mind, and breath so you can proceed with your work day feeling more awake, clear-headed, focused, and maybe even a little more joyful!
2020 has been no joke. We all have experienced it in different ways, but it feels safe to say that for many of us there has been a huge increase in stress levels.
There’s a lot going on.
There’s always a lot going on, and everything is always in a state of flux, but when we’re all sitting at home it’s harder to ignore it.
You want to know what you can do that takes only thirty minutes and will take you from feeling like a stressed mess to feeling like an ocean of bliss?
R E S T O R A T I V E Y O G A !!!
I’ve hardly wanted to practice Vinyasa or Hatha in the last few months. All I’ve wanted and needed is Restorative or Yin Yoga.
Read on to learn what a restorative yoga practice could do for your life, and then watch the video below to experience it for yourself!
After practicing restorative yoga I feel C A L M, S P A C I O U S, K I N D, J O Y F U L, S O F T, O P E N, and READY for whatever is next whether that’s a difficult conversation I need to feel cool calm and collected for, wanting to feel connected on a deeper level to friends and family, getting work done with a focused and clear mind, getting a deeply restful night’s sleep, or just living my best life!
How does restorative yoga help me with all of the above?
Restorative yoga will shift you out of your sympathetic nervous system (fight/flight) to your parasympathetic nervous system (rest+digest).
In 2017 the WHO estimated that “by 2020, stress-related disorders will be the second leading cause of disabilities in the world”." Wow. Did they have a psychic working for them? Did they know that stress would sky-rocket in 2020?
We know it’s important to take time to relax, but the question is: do you know HOW to relax? How to relax in a way that leaves you feeling restored? That boosts your immune system? That makes you feel like a delicious puddle of bliss?
How often do you have time to relax and you reach for a bottle of wine that might make you feel less than fantastic after, or reach for your phone to mindlessly scroll through social media only to bombard your mind with photo after photo of what other people are doing with their lives which then sends you into a self-comparison spiral, or maybe the moment you are done with work you are planning for what you have to do the following day.
We need moments of silence.
We need moments of nothing.
We need moments to just be.
When practicing Restorative Yoga you take a shape with your body, sometimes flat on the floor and sometimes propped up with lots of pillows and blocks and blankets, and you hang out there for anywhere from 5-20 minutes and just let yourself BE. That’s the key. Letting yourself BE instead of making yourself DO. There’s nothing to DO.
The time you spend practicing Restorative Yoga might be the only time of the day that you allow yourself to really rest, that you allow yourself to feel supported, that you allow yourself to L E T G O.
Ideally you want to set yourself up with enough props in each pose that you feel fully supported, super comfy, and you can fully surrender your body weight into the props and into the ground.
With a restorative yoga practice you will learn to soften your mind and to soften your body. As your body softens you will have more room for breath. As you take deeper breaths (in particular longer exhales), you will activate your parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). When you activate the PNS you can finally relax. When you relax your body softens even more. When your body softens more your breathing becomes easier…and so on and so on…until you melt into a puddle on the floor ;)
It’s time for you to take a break, give your weight to the earth, and let yourself be. Learn to be soft with yourself, kind with yourself, and to just be with yourself. Life is hard. It just is. It’s full of struggle, suffering, and the unknown. But there is also an opportunity to create more space for peace, for joy, and for bliss.
One roadblock some people encounter when practicing restorative yoga is that we are so used to doing, taking action, working, and planning that sometimes we don’t quite know how to relax. If you find that your mind won’t stop going, that’s totally normal. This is a practice. As you practice restorative yoga, yin yoga, or meditation over time you gradually get better at being with your thoughts and feelings and softening into the present moment. Over time you will also get better at detecting habitual holding patterns of tension in your body and mind. Eventually you will notice the tension in your body even when you’re not practicing yoga and you can mindfully let go throughout the day. Relaxing is a practice.
On a meditation retreat I did at IMS last year I kept repeating this phrase to myself:
(I love a nice alliterative phrase).
I came up with this phrase when I realized that every time I got lost in thought (concepts) my body would contract, but when I connected with the present moment (reality) my body would relax. In restorative yoga, and yin yoga, meditation, and in every day life I practice this again and again. I notice my body is tense, perhaps take note of what “concept” or thought was in my mind, and then I consciously relax my body. I do this all day long, and I know I wouldn’t be as good at letting go as I am if I didn’t have practices like Restorative Yoga in my life.
When you’re able to carve out 30 minutes follow along with the video below. You’ll just need a couple of pillows and a nice little corner of your home to get cozy in.
If you take the class and enjoy it let me know in the comments on the video (and subscribe to my channel!), or come back here to let me know what you thought!
If you love listening to music during class try this playlist I made especially to go along with this video! Start from the beginning and play all the way through if you like music during meditation and savasana, or start on the second song when you take the first pose and turn it off before savasana.
Wishing you deeper breaths, and greater joy.
-Eve
Part 1
Whether you’ve gone to your parents home, someone else’s home, are hosting, or have even fully escaped social activities over the holidays take 20 minutes to drop all thoughts of a to-do list, to-bake list, conversation topics to avoid list, haunting memories of holidays past list, naughty or nice list, and take a respite that’s just for you.
If all your holiday celebrations are over this could be a particularly nice time to rest, reflect, and let everything settle.
If you have a yoga bolster + blocks- awesome! If not- grab a few pillows and a blanket, find a cozy corner, light some candles, and let’s get to relaxing!
For a little info on yin yoga check out my last post.
—Hold each pose between 3-5 minutes. You can set a timer. I’d recommend the app Insight Timer for having pleasant sounding tibetan bells as your alarm.
—make sure you are comfortable enough to hold the pose for a few minutes, but that you still have just enough sensation to keep it interesting. Only move if there is pain or your body invites you to go deeper.
—As you hold the pose focus on breathing, softening the body, softening the mind, and surrendering the body to gravity as you allow yourself to rest on the earth and on the props.
—Scan the body for your habitual holding patterns (where you normally hold your tension)—the usual culprits are the jaw, the space between the brows, neck, shoulders, and hips. In yin yoga we don’t contract the muscles. See how much you can let go and just be supported by your bones.
YIN POSES
Pause in a seated kneeling position for about a minute between each pose to bring your spine back to neutral and feel the echo of the pose in your body.
Dragonfly
Saddle
Supported fish (knees bent and knocked together or legs straight. Bolster length wise under spine, or blocks, or pillows/folded blanket)
Twisted Roots (reclined twist).
In the future I will go even more in depth into Yin yoga but for now here is what you need to know:
Yin yoga has its roots not only in the yogic practices from India but also in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Taoist yoga. Just like TCM uses acupuncture to help unblock Qi/energy by inserting needles along meridian lines (channels in the body through which energy flows) the practice of yin yoga unblocks energy by applying pressure to those same meridian lines. (If you’re familiar with yogic “nadis”, meridians are essentially the same thing).
Yin yoga accesses the fascia, connective tissues, tendons, and ligaments instead of the muscles (which we access in yang yoga styles like vinyasa). We do this by entering the poses without warming up and holding the pose for 3-5 minutes which is the amount of time it takes to rehydrate the connective tissues and restore flexibility.
In the 3-5 minutes we hold the pose we only move if we are in pain and need to modify or if the body begins to open up and allows us to sink more deeply into the pose. Otherwise we find stillness and surrender. In Yin yoga we have the opportunity to allow, accept, and be (as opposed to do).
Sometimes when we come out of a yin pose we feel a bit stiff and achey- this is normal. Exit the pose slowly and take a minute to just sit and feel the effects of the pose.
A COUPLE OF MY THOUGHTS ON YIN YOGA…
People who practice yoga often talk about having an experience of a “yoga high” after practicing and I have to say that the particular yoga high I experience after a yin yoga class is what really got me hooked on this approach to yoga.
After ten years of trying different meditation techniques I finally figured out how to approach meditation after diving deep into yin yoga. Yin yoga taught me how to be with discomfort and observe my experience without needing to change it. This profoundly shifted my meditation practice, and my whole life.
Have you tried yin yoga? what did you think?
Stay tuned for the first in my 20 minute self care series!!
