“All yoga is restorative” could be better said as “Yoga is always restorative” because when a yoga class leaves you feeling shaken, it isn’t yoga. Exercise, fitness, ego, some yoga business / bottom line decisions are often not what we would agree as being yoga.
A class is a place of learning which means that one will come across the discomfort of growth. We often say ‘yoga is a path and it is a state’. The classroom-learning of yoga is a necessary path but the state of yoga takes time to develop.
This article puts forward the idea that the state of yoga is mostly not present in a standard hatha yoga class. (Most western yoga is hatha yoga: asana and pranayama based) Therefore the restorative nature of yoga is also not present for the person, yet. You just have to look at the marketing material most yoga classes use to get a clear indication of what is going on: the ubiquitous rows of tightly placed mats. The student is put in a limited space, lined up and treated like everyone else in the class, made to fit in, put in an unnatural environment, expected to follow instructions and made to appear more like an economic unit than a blossoming, fully connected and enlivened spirit.
For some students their ‘yoga’ practice can even be completely devoid of yoga if the student/ self or student / teacher relationship is not right. The challenges of learning are best done wrapped in the attidue or context of yoga’s essence: wholeness, freedom, friendship, love, joy, beingness, nature, support, honesty, simplicity, lightness, beyond ego into fullness, and regular acknowledgement of the unlimted and eternal.
Those learning about the body and energy flow, and about the mind’s influence with and by the body, will sometimes make learners mistakes, as is expected and necessary. They will go too far, get injured, fry their nervous system, face strong emotions, exert their will on the body, and all the things that a student must learn to then move toward knowledge, wisdom and mastery.
I must note here, that for many yoga practitioners, what is learnt in yoga does not often translate into daily life where it could have its best impact, instead it is discarded until the next yoga class. This is odd to me.
If I learn that the hip opening and thigh-enlivening of Warrior Two makes my energy flow big and full and I feel my nervous system and breath become more integrated and whole, and I feel I AM MORE WHOLE, then surely I would want to use that. Like when I find myself in my kitchen worrying about my disintegrating friendship and the shame and self blame that I probably should throw off and disown because it is wrecking my day and my nervous system. So Warrior Two is there as a friend, a saviour, and I grow even more affection for it. Right there in the kitchen. I learn this pose’s grace as my neuroception informs my interception. With this information my past memory of the pose’s gifts make it an obvious choice I freely offer myself.
All yoga restores us to our sense of wholeness. The phrase 'sense of wholeness' is not an idea. It is a felt experience that a yogi must have. Sometimes wholeness is the result of 10 minutes in Child’s Pose over a bolster, sometimes it is a sun salute series throwing off the malaise of a dull and spiritless day. Sometimes it is saying sorry to someone or being open to a hug.
Sensing and Wholeness are both vital in the vocabulary of a yogi. Perhaps that is what I was most wanting the yoga Australia member’s circle to walk away with.
Being uncomfotable is an important part of yoga. Staying in a pose when the first reaction is to get out, or staying still when that habit is to fidget... these are moments when our idea of ourselves and reality move from being small to being full of possibility. They reform what was the past self, into what is possible now and into the future.
Possibility implies the unknown and the soul speads its wings in the spaces that are not yet charted.
Newness, freshness and a releasing of past beliefs, attitudes and postures are signs that yoga is happening within the person.
The essense of yoga is the mind being seen for what it is - a cycle of raga and devesha - and going beyond mind. Behind thought is pure, expansive consciousness. Underneath the fluctuations of mind is stillness. There is nothing to be known in stillnes, but we tend to take back into the world with with us a little note to self, a lesson, that says “relax, all is an illusion of sorts”. That is where we learn the play of opposites, the trap that we navigate throughout our lives. We may learn to choose sattva over the other two best friends/ frenemies: rajas and tamas. We may even become sattvic. A quietly, radiant being. Self restorative in our choices.
A class is not a space for the state of yoga, but a place to learn how to get there. It opens tiny little doors inside us that we may chose to keep open if we attent to them properly, treasure them, take them home and begin the process of ownership.
With true ownership, yoga is always restorative.
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Reference to my past teachers on this topic: Leigh Blashki, A.G. Mohan, Sophie Lefevre Bunn, Patanjali, Buddhism, Louise Simmons