Restorative Reset with Sage Rountree

“Feel the shift.  The shift in your body.  The shift in your breath.  The shift in your spirit.”

-Sage Rountree

What is restorative yoga?  It is the practice of slowing down and letting go by coming into passive stretching.  It can be beneficial for people who deal with insomnia, stress and overwhelm, and can simply be: relaxing!  Restorative yoga classes generally have 4-5 poses that are held for 5-10 minutes. These poses use lots of props to help support your body so you can achieve deep relaxation.

In Sage Rountree’s Restorative Reset class, she encourages you to take the full hour of class to relax into each pose.  When we do this we activate the parasympathetic (or the rest and digest) which is housed in our peripheral nervous system.  Throughout our day, we are engaging with people, making decisions, and can be busy with to do lists, work, kids, you name it.  By actively engaging with our peripheral nervous system, we are asking our body to release any ideas about where it needs to be.

In this style of yoga, we are working with our sense of proprioception (where we are in space) to allow the nervous system to stop taking in information and begin to restore, rest, and digest.  This is important for our overall health and wellness, as well as mental clarity. The mind is a part of our central nervous system (along with the spinal cord) which is protected by our skull and the vertebrae.  In restorative yoga, the time we spend dropping into stillness can increase our neuroplasticity, which is a change our brain so that we can create new neural pathways. When we come into the rest and stillness of restorative yoga we are literally creating change in the brain and more choice in the system!  How great is that?  

Grab some props, sit back, relax, and enjoy this practice in a quiet space in your home.