How Restorative Yoga Saved Me

Divya Kohli tells us how she came to find support and nurture through restorative yoga

I remember my first yoga class like it was yesterday – even though it was pre-millennial, back in 1999. I remember the day (sunny early evening in June), what I was wearing (my work office clothes), and even the smell of the particular incense in the room above the local pub where the yoga class was taking place. The vanilla-spice was in stark contrast to the beer fragrance downstairs.

My first “restorative” yoga class is less clear. Because it wasn’t called that, and it wasn’t a ‘thing’ back then. Does that matter? In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter at all of course. However, restorative yoga saved me. Here’s how.

I came to yoga via what we call Hatha yoga. Hatha means ‘sun-moon’, representing how this approach is about balancing polarities in our body, mind and spirit, the outcome of which is fulfilment, or contentment and equilibrium. When yoga really started taking off in the West around the 1980s, Hatha came to represent ‘a general physical practice of yoga’, but nowadays it’s used more to point to a ‘traditional way’ of practising yoga, and it’s considered a ‘slow practice’, encompassing body and mind, postures and meditation.

I had forays into Ashtanga, then into Iyengar. Both serve many well, and bring deep, powerful benefits, but did not work perfectly for me, so I dropped both. I continued on with Hatha. When I practice Hatha, to this day, I feel safe, secure and connected to something bigger than myself.

Then, after ten years practicing yoga and several years after qualifying as a yoga teacher, I discovered ‘Yin’ yoga. This was through a chance meeting with Paul Grilley, a now, world-renowned teacher’s teacher of Yin, in a café in a London yoga studio. He was over in the UK from the Far East, from where he was then based, to deliver some training. I was and still am really interested in eastern philosophy, so after discovering what Paul taught, I went away and explored ideas of yin & yang and the Tao (which says everything has a dark and light side and is made up of both). This of course has much synergy with Hatha yoga. Also at this time, I was experiencing fatigue and pain from a chronic health condition called endometriosis. The slow, long holds that typify a “yin” yoga practice (floor-based, and being in postures for minutes at a time) suited my energy levels and physical needs at the time. I practised yin almost every day after that for a couple of years until finally I decided I wanted to become a teacher.

Yin also helped re-motivate me in my meditation practice.I brought meditation right into the heart of the postures I was doing as well as managing to reignite my daily morning meditation practice. I made sure to complete a teacher training course with Paul the next time he was in the UK and have taught yin yoga (at least once class a week) ever since.

So that’s the Hatha and Yin bits. Where does Restorative come into things?

For friends reading this who aren’t sure what Restorative is, it has become a style of yoga like Yin, Flow, and others. It’s characterised by using props (items) to support the body while in floor-based yoga postures. Its aim is to restore energy and mind to balance. You don’t need to do anything while in a restorative posture, not even focus on your breath or meditate. You just let go. The whole practice is about support.

I remember that well before YouTube started showing “restorative-type” yoga videos, and yoga studios had Restorative on their timetable, an highly experienced teacher from New York, formally an Iyengar teacher, came to London to deliver a weeklong programme of technical based workshops for yoga teachers. I had a VHS tape of this teacher, from back in my early days of discovering yoga. I was excited that she was coming over and offering this weeklong opportunity to practice with her. However, I was not feeling my best. And the energy I did have I kept sacred and preserved for the teaching of my classes.

Anyway, back to that time and while not feeling my best, I didn’t want to miss out on seeing this New York teacher. I noted that at the very end of the week of her programme, there was one 1.5 hour class, which she called ‘Come back to Yourself’. It had a brief description that basically said it was a ‘deeply relaxing’ session so I booked it. I went along, and over the ninety minutes she got us into four different postures, for which we used all the blankets available in the studio and one bolster each. My conscious mind didn’t so much as switch off or sleep, as rest deeply into a place of its own. I came out of that session, left the studio and entered the melee of central London feeling like I did some thirty years previously, when I was a little girl, sitting in the back garden of the family house in the sunshine, feeling at one with the grass, the oak tree and all of nature. Furthermore, a pain I’d had in my shoulder for weeks – had gone.

After that session, I started investigating ‘Restorative’. At that time (we’re talking around 2009ish), there wasn’t much around. No videos or books. I hadn’t heard of Judith Lasater– who came to be to Restorative what Paul Grilley is to Yin. Judith, now seen as the mother of modern Restorative Yoga, has since released best selling books and taught courses that have led to the popularisation of Restorative in the yoga world. As far as we know today, the roots of what we call restorative yoga are from practices that were adapted by traditional Hatha and Iyengar teachers in southern and south east India to help students reduce their stress, and to help patients who were recovering from a physical or mental health issue.

I remembered and wrote down whatever I could from the session I did with the New York teacher. I then found myself ‘adapting’ Yin on the days I was tired, or in pain, and making the practice more restorative. And I re-read ancient Indian texts (what we refer to as the Vedas, ancient Indian scriptures that philosophize on the meaning of life). Within a few months, I was waking up in the morning, meditating, and then doing restorative yoga. If I had the energy, I would then do Hatha yoga. If I didn’t have the energy, I’d save Hatha Yoga and Pranayama (yoga breathing) for later in the day or evening.

After six months of regular restorative yoga practice, I noticed subtle yet radical changes in my being. Lower stress levels. A sense of ongoing contentment, even in difficult situations and phases. My relationship to my chronic health condition had changed: moving from frustration, pain and resistance, to acceptance and even nurturing it. What had been a burden, turned into what felt like looking after a rescue pet! I was undergoing more surgeries and saw more health experts, and tried more of this and more of that, removing this, and adding that (as we humans do when we are suffering with something), but I can honestly say, nothing helped as much as restorative yoga did. This is true to this day.

I have since done two extensive teacher trainings in Restorative Yoga, and have an advanced accreditation in teaching it. I was lucky enough to study with a fabulous teacher (Sue Flamm) who embodies Hatha within the Restorative. What I have found is that learning and studying restorative yoga not only makes me a better teacher of it (hopefully), but also deepens my understanding and connection to Yoga as a whole. Restorative has helped make me a stronger Hatha Yoga teacher (in helping to keep my energy in balance)), and a more patient Yin Yoga teacher.

In recent years, there have been other… shall we say… major challenges in my personal life. Restorative has been like a dependable companion through these times. There have been times, such as post surgery or when in bereavement, that doing Triangle pose was either emotionally or physically impossible. But then something I’d read from the Vedas would come to me, and soothe my mind and bring me to a place beyond the yoga posture.

Yoga props and sequences play a major part in Restorative yoga, and a good class takes this into account and works intelligently with both. I always ask that students use props

But I would add that attitude, and inner wisdom are just as key to the practice – as much as a bolster and blanket, if not more so.

Restorative yoga has been proven to heal physical and mental ailments and reduce stress, but ultimately, I’d say, it’s a gentle pathway back to the source: like when an innocent child sits next to a tree on a summer’s afternoon, and feels whole and content.

Divya will be teaching Yoga for Stress and Fatigue Support on Saturday 15th May, 2.30- 4.30pm, a livestream workshop hosted by Yogaloft.