Restorative Yoga: Just Laying Around?

It's so much more...

At first glance, restorative looks like a lot of laying around. And it is, but with some very important purposes. Remember, chronic tension is just that--chronic. You hang on to it when you are "relaxing" and when you are sleeping. It's more a problem with the brain's patterns and body-awareness. It sounds strange, but we need to teach our brains and our bodies how to really relax. They forget how to do that. 

We all know that relaxing is great. But, is it great for just the moment, or is it great in other deeper ways? Is it great for our emotional self, or is it great for our physical self too? 

Restorative yoga is a passive practice and there's minimal to no muscular effort involved in the poses. The poses are supported by bolsters, blankets, blocks, and straps. The idea is to allow the body to fully and deeply relax in ways it ordinarily does not do. Because poses are typically held for two to 20 minutes, the body learns to melt into the pose and open up. Flexibility is increased and tension is decreased. The body learns to release its grip.

Restorative yoga is not just about flexibility, however. There's much more going on at a deeper level that benefits our nervous system, heart, other organs, and our mental health. These are changes that affect our health and well-being in longer term, more systemic ways. 

To off-set our culture's influence toward a chronic and low-grade "fight or flight" response in the body, we need to practice some sort of conscious control of relaxation to sooth our over-stimulated nervous systems. Deadlines, screen light, stressful relationships, hurried schedules, and the constant ping of communication by our phones keep our sympathetic nervous system stuck in high gear. Restorative yoga helps the parasympathetic nervous system do its thing: slow our heart rates, lower our blood pressure, and stop the release of stress hormones.

Cortisol, a stress hormone, is essential to support the body's ability to meet the demands of stress. It also fluctuates during the day and night, helping to wake us up and get us ready for sleep. Chronic stress keeps cortisol levels high and unable to return to normal. This leads to problems in many things from cognition, bone density, sleep, immunity, thyroid function, abdominal fat storage, and even the ability to heal wounds. In fact, a study done at the University of CA in San Diego showed that subjects who participated in a restorative yoga program lost over twice as much subcutaneous fat and over twice as much weight as subjects who participated in a general stretching class. The restorative yoga participants also enjoyed a reduction of IL-6, and inflammatory maker associated with disease, such as cardiovascular disease. They also enjoyed and increase in adinopectin, which regulates fat metabolism and glucose levels. There's the difference between laying around propped up by pillows and blankets learning how to let go, and active stretching.(1)

Many of us are experiencing the oh-so annoying hot flushes of hormonal changes. In an eight week pilot study, participants practiced restorative yoga just one time a week. They saw a 30% reduction in the number of hot flushes. And even though they still experienced some flushes, the intensity of those flushes were reduced by 34%.(2) Hey, we'll take it! 

Practicing restorative will help you to make an important shift in how you think about body movement. There are two sides of the spectrum- vigorous and calm. Both our muscles and our nervous systems need to have the ability to move from one side of the spectrum to the other appropriately. Those who work hard must learn how to relax hard! Otherwise, we become stuck in "high gear." 

If better attention, energy levels, cognition, bone density, sleep, immunity, and organ function, and less hot flashes, stress, and fat storage are appealing to you, and you would like to score those things by laying around on cute bolsters, under cozy blankets and eye pillows, then I think you're going to love what's in store for you!

(1) Kanaya, A., Araneta, M., Pawlowsky, S., Barrett-Connor, E., Grady, D., Vittinghoff, E., ... Cole, R. (2013). Restorative Yoga and Metabolic Risk Factors: The Practicing Restorative Yoga vs. Stretching for the Metabolic Syndrome (PRYSMS) randomized trial. Journal of Diabetes and Its Complications, 28(3), 406-412.

(2) Cohen, B., Kanaya, A., Macer, J., Shen, H., Chang, A., & Grady, D. (2006). Feasability and acceptability of restorative yoga for treatment of hot flushes: A pilot study. Maturitas, 56(2), 198-204.