Restorative Yoga – The Relaxation Response

Restorative Yoga – The Relaxation Response

Restorative Yoga has wonderful benefits to improve health and balance in our bodies. It has been promoted as one of the best natural ways to help gain relaxation to enable our bodies to have the chance to heal. If practiced correctly restorative yoga can help your immune system to fight minor common infections like cold and flu symptoms and can have fantastic benefits when used to aid recovery to serious illnesses as well.

Restorative Yoga – Managing Fight or Flight Response.

The great gain that Restorative Yoga brings us is that it enables our body to rapidly move out of the control of the part of our nervous system that controls our ‘flight or fight’ response. The fight or flight response is considered to be a primal reaction to sudden build up of stress. Simply explained it is when you are faced with a sudden stressful situation like a confrontation or threat, you feel fear or uncertainty, your body releases hormones and you will instinctively choose one of two options;

• Fight – take on the challenge but usually in an emotional way.
• Flight – to get yourself away from the situation as quickly as possible.

Restorative Yoga when practiced effectively transfers the fight or flight response to another part of our nervous system which controls our resting response to life. This has massive benefits as it helps overcharged biochemicals filled with the stress hormones, (adrenaline and cortisol) to drain from our systems It also rests our over worked adrenal glands and improves our body’s immune system. In our quick paced lives we’ve far too few chances to rest and go back to a balanced place in our body. If we don’t rest  properly we cannot heal properly and our bodies can find it very difficult to recover and stay well.

Just how much Restorative Yoga do you need?

Take a moment to consider your own life and physical health. Are you experiencing a quite a stressful period? Have you recently been sick or suffered a loss or are dealing with an ongoing emotionally tricky situation? If the answer is yes than you could help yourself enormously by making around 75% of your yoga practice Restorative in its focus.

It would be advisable to perform fewer postures and stay in these well supported postures for much longer – allow your body really let go. Allow five to ten minutes in each posture as you soak up the support from the floor and the props. For example, instead of doing a challenging posture or pose just go to the wall and do Waterfall where you have your legs up resting at the wall and your pelvis supported by a cushion to elevate it. Stay in this posture for  at least five minutes as you breathe steadily and calmly before you come down. Ensure that you allow a very good 20 minute relaxation at the end of the session instead of usual five to ten minutes.

How Restorative Yoga can help during changing seasons.

Are you just feeling a bit run down or tired? If you are feeling a bit tired or just generally run down or perhaps the season is changing make Restorative Yoga about 10 – 20% of your practice. Give yourself a extended relaxation than normal and do one or two postures in a supported fashion as you do your yoga class. If you give yourself this treat for a couple of weeks your body will quickly come into balance and fight off any pending colds or flu symptoms and move into the new season well prepared.

To find out more about Restorative Yoga visit What is Restorative Yoga?

Yoga and Pilates Tips hope you have enjoyed Restorative Yoga – The Relaxation Response.