Permission To Relax
“If you have no time to rest, it’s exactly the right time” – Mark Twain
A few months back I was privileged to sit in a room full of yoga teachers from Brissy and interstate and learn from the ‘professional relaxer’/restorative yoga teacher Lizzie Lasater about the art of rest. During my week training I became aware of a few thoughts or beliefs I had about giving myself permission to relax, and I wanted to share with you guys…my guess is these thoughts may be familiar to some of you too?...
“Don’t rest, you’re being lazy if you take a nap in the middle of the day”
“If you slow down you will miss out”
“I don’t have time to relax”
“Oh ill just finish this thing (the dishes, that last email, hang the clothes) and THEN ill relax”
Sound familiar?...
I have to admit coming into the restorative yoga teacher training I hadn’t had a lot of experience with this modality of yoga. From the outside looking in I can see how the practice may look like you’re not doing much but lying on your mat as oppose to the image of yoga we have all become accustomed to seeing (think Instagram famous yogis wrapping themselves into a pretzel, which is cool totally, but for some of us not a realistic or healthy goal).
What I found particularly in this past week battling a bit of the Brissy 'flu' that's going around is doing ‘nothing’ on my mat, supported by all of the props imaginable and creating stillness and silence in my day has provided me with healing not only for my body but I can feel my nervous system and my mental state just coming back into balance with each pose. I do live a pretty high energy lifestyle, travel a lot, run a small business, wear many hats as most of us do and I’ve just fallen in love with this modality of yoga as it’s helped me give myself permission to pump the brakes for a second.
So I just wanted to share that I’m super excited about this new restorative yoga knowledge I’ve soaked up, in fact you can come and chill out with me every Tuesday 9.15am in my 'Relax' class at Inna Bliss Camp Hill (yummy mixture of breathing exercises, meditation, restorative, moving meditation etc). Doing this training with Lizzie certainly has changed the way I teach and I'm so grateful to her for creating space for me to investigate those silly thoughts I had about rest and know that now I’ll be 'saying yes to rest' a lot more often.
“almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes…including you” – Anne Lamott
