What is Restorative Yoga?

Weekly classes are held on Friday nights, from 5:30–6:30pm, with Beth Tascione.

Restorative Yoga combines gentle, mindful movements, stretching, restorative poses and guided relaxation. The poses are held longer and use props to encourage deep relaxation. It’s perfect for those who want to reduce stress or have physical concerns or injuries.

We recently asked some of our teacher’s the question, What is Restorative Yoga?

Here’s what they shared…

Life is busy, there’s no doubt about it. But practices like restorative yoga show us another way – they offer us a respite from the busyness of life.  The restorative yoga practice, like Savasana, reminds us that we don’t always have to be doing, producing, consuming.  In fact, in this practice we don’t really “do” anything. 

Restorative yoga is a very nurturing and nourishing practice. It literally restores us physically, mentally and emotionally.  In this form of yoga, we use yoga props – lots of yoga props.  We lie down in their support and we breathe. We experience that just breathing and being is enough. We experience what being completely supported and deeply rested and relaxed feels like.  This is the antidote to stress.

Support and comfort are essential so our body can be relieved of the job of supporting itself, allowing it to move into a state of rest.  Darkness, warmth and time, as well as giving ourselves permission to rest are other key factors in inviting deep release and relaxation.  And thusly, we allow our nervous systems to move into parasympathetic dominance, which is a fancy way of saying, we move into a state of rest and recovery, which is so important to our overall health.

Stress, responsibilities, and general busyness are always going to be a part of life.  But how we choose to navigate them is up to us.  With tools like yoga, particularly the more still practices like restorative yoga, we are better equipped to manage our stressors with resilience and grace.