"We have an ancient body subjected to a modern problem: living with chronic stress."
-- Judith Hanson Lasater
The practice is rooted in Iyengar Yoga, developed by B.K.S. Iyengar who initially experimented with supporting the body with props to create a practice that was more accessible to those with illnesses or limited mobility.
Restorative Yoga offers various modified, supported yoga postures in a calm, comfortable yin environment. These postures gently encourage the spine to move in different directions – forward bends, back bends and twists – helping to create balance.
When practising Restorative Yoga, the aim is to move into a state of ‘being’ rather than ‘doing’. If you look at your typical day, you will find that most of it is dedicated to doing something – juggling responsibilities, giving of yourself as an employee, employer, parent, sibling, spouse or friend, doing your job, performing house-hold chores, paying bills, taking care of admin, all the while thinking and analysing as you go. In addition, life has gathered such speed with the use of technology, that most of us now multitask at levels we’ve never seen before. And with the exponential use of social media, the internet and a lot of our day-to-day activities moving into virtual online space, we find ourselves frequently ‘plugged in’ and ‘switched on’.
This type of lifestyle creates a lot of tension and stress on physical, mental and emotional levels. We often don’t recognise the typical signs as stress and we keep going. We ignore recurrent physical pain, interrupted sleep patterns, and dismiss feelings of anxiety, accepting a lot of them as being normal... [read full article here]