90. Restorative Yoga That Actually Restores

The first time I felt true parasympathetic rest, I was ten minutes into legs up the wall during a restorative workshop, and the entire outline for my book The Athlete’s Guide to Recovery dropped into my head, fully formed. I had no idea this state was even available to me for free—and once I felt it, I understood why so many well-meaning restorative classes miss the mark.

Telling students to relax doesn’t make them relax. The nervous system doesn’t respond to verbal instructions—it responds to conditions. In this episode, I’m naming the most common ways teachers accidentally short-circuit a restorative practice, even when the props are perfect and the lights are dim.

I walk through the difference between a class that looks restful and one that actually delivers rest, what parasympathetic activation requires, how to hold space during long holds without filling silence, and how to plan a restorative sequence using the 6–4–2 framework as your structural checklist rather than a Pinterest mood board.

Get the free guide Best Savasana EVER, which shows you how to set up the Six Supports that inform every restorative pose: https://www.comfortzoneyoga.com/savasana?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show_notes&utm_campaign=ytc_e90_czc

This episode is a preview of the June Comfort Zone Conversation, Restorative Yoga That Actually Restores, on Thursday, June 25 from 2 to 3 p.m. Eastern—a free hour for members of the Zone, my community for yoga teachers. If you want the full framework with CEUs and a complete pose library, that’s inside the Fundamentals of Teaching Restorative Yoga course.

Listen now and bring your next savasana, gentle class, or full restorative offering up a level.

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Transcript

0:00

Can I tell you something? Years ago, when I was deep in Ironman triathlon training, I was carrying the kind of fatigue that made me look forward to dental visits because they meant I got to lie down for 45 minutes. I was already a yoga teacher. I was teaching active flow classes and classes for athletes. I knew what hard work felt like. What I didn't yet know was what real rest felt like. I signed up for a restorative workshop mostly because I was that tired. About 10 minutes into legs up the wall, two things happened. First, the entire outline for my book,"The Athlete's Guide to Recovery," dropped into my head fully formed. Second, and this is the part that changed how I teach, I realized I had no idea this state was even available to me for free. I hadn't found it in shavasana or in meditation, and it wasn't what came at the end of a long run. This was a different place entirely. That was the moment I understood restorative yoga isn't just a softer version of any other practice. It is a different category of work. The difference between a class that says rest and a class that actually restores comes down to how well you understand the nervous system you're trying to talk to. I'm Sage Rountree, and this is Yoga Teacher Confidential, Secrets of Becoming a Great Yoga Teacher. Today, we're talking about restorative yoga and previewing the June Comfort Zone Conversation, where we're going to spend a full hour together on talking about restorative yoga that actually restores. This episode is a taste of what we'll dig into. We'll cover the most common ways well-meaning restorative teachers might miss the mark, what the nervous system actually needs to drop into rest, and how to hold space during long stillness without filling it. If you're a teacher who wants endings of classes that your students rave about, or if you've been curious about adding restorative yoga to your offering but you aren't sure where to begin, this one's for you Let me start with the most common pattern I see. This shows up in classes from brand new teachers and from teachers with 20 years of experience, which tells you something about how easy it is to miss. A teacher loves the idea of restorative yoga. They've taken a class or several classes that felt amazing, so they decide to offer one. They look up some shapes. They prop their students up. They dim the lights. They tell everyone to relax, and then they wait. Here's what happens. Their students fidget. Some fall asleep in a way that feels more like collapse than rest. Others come out of class saying it was nice, but they're not exactly clamoring to come back. The teacher senses something is off but can't name what. The thing that's off is right at the foundation. Telling someone to relax does not actually make them relax. There's a bumper sticker I love. It goes something like, "Never in the history of calming down has anyone calmed down by being told to calm down." The nervous system doesn't respond to verbal instructions. It responds to conditions, and this is the piece most of us were never taught. Restorative yoga isn't just a vibe. It is a practice with a specific physiological target, and that target is the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest, digest, tend and befriend side of the nervous system, the side that turns the volume down on cortisol, the side that slows the heart, the side that softens the breath, and the side that gives the immune system room to do its job Most of our students, and we as yoga teachers, live in sympathetic mode. They drive to your class while they're answering work emails in their heads. Even in an active class, heck, even in a yin class, there is still a layer of effort, a layer of sensation, a layer of the mind tracking what's hard. Restorative yoga is supposed to be the practice where all of that gets to drop, but that drop just doesn't happen on command. It happens when the body trusts that it is safe enough to let go, and that reframes the job. In a restorative class, we're not leading anyone anywhere. We are building the conditions, the physical setup, the environment, the energy of the room, and then letting the nervous system downshift on its own timeline. That's what separates a class that calls itself restorative from a class that actually is restorative. In 20-plus years of teaching, I have noticed that the skills you build teaching restorative yoga will transfer to every class you teach. Once you learn how to read a nervous system at the room level, once you can tell the difference between a student who's settled and a student who's pretending to be settled, your shavasanas in every other class get better, your transitions get smoother, and your silences stop scaring you. Restorative trains precision, presence, and the ability to hold space without filling it. Those are skills your active classes desperately need too. And then there's what the practice does for the students sitting in your room. Most of them aren't under-stimulated or under-stretched. They are over-revved. They live in sympathetic dominance, and they don't know that there's another setting, just like I didn't know there was another setting. The first time someone experiences true parasympathetic activation in your class, not sleep, not just a long shavasana, but the actual shift, it can be pretty emotional. I have had students cry, and I have had students laugh in disbelief. I once had a student come up after class in tears and say, "I didn't realize I could get myself to this state of peace without paying for a massage or drinking a glass of wine." That really landed with me because that is exactly what a good restorative class offers, an experience of deep rest students realize they're capable of generating with support on their own. That moment at the wall I told you about at the top of the episode, that is what real rest does. It doesn't just refill the cup, it widens the cup. It turns it from an espresso shot mug to a giant cappuccino bowl. The outline for that book, "The Athlete's Guide to Recovery," showed up in my brain fully formed. That's twice this has happened, that I've received this download in the context of a yoga class. It showed up because my nervous system finally had room to think, not because I was trying to write a book. And until your students have experienced that for themselves, they won't even know to want it. Here's the part I want every teacher to hear. The world your students are walking back into is not slowing down. We are not collectively heading into an era of less stimulation, fewer notifications, or gentler news cycles. The capacity to access rest, to know what it feels like, to find the door back to it, to come home to rest, that is becoming one of the most important skills a yoga teacher can offer her students. Restorative yoga is not a fluffy add-on to your schedule. In fact, I would argue it is the most relevant thing you can teach right now. The question is whether you have the framework to teach it in a way that actually delivers. Let's get practical. Here are the pieces I want you to take into your next restorative class or into your next deep Shavasana in an active class or workshop First, set expectations before they walk in. I say in the Professional Yoga Teacher's Handbook, satisfaction equals expectations minus perception. If your restorative class description says gentle yoga with props, students arrive expecting gentle yoga. If it says, "You may fall asleep, and that's perfectly okay," all right, now they arrive with permission. Be specific about what restorative is and isn't. It isn't yin yoga, and it isn't gentle yoga. It's maybe doing three to five deeply supported shapes held 15 to 30 minutes. Yes, 15 to 30 minutes each with the explicit goal of doing nothing. Here's an aside, because lately people have been teaching restorative with shorter holds, and while that is a very sweet practice too, it really takes time for the nervous system to settle into each shape. So my operative definition of restorative yoga is holding for at least 10 minutes, probably 15 minutes or longer. You know this from guiding Shavasana, a longer Shavasana in your classroom. After seven or eight minutes, perhaps you can really sense it's like your students have fallen off the continental shelf into that interesting parasympathetic state. So we want to hold our restorative poses to get them all the way out there into deep ocean. Second, build the conditions for restoration. Soft, warm, dark, slow. Every surface your students touch is cushioned. You'll spread a blanket out over the mats. The room is warmer than your usual. Aim for the upper 70s if you can control it. The lights are low. The shades are drawn. The transitions between each shape are super slow. If a student isn't sure whether they need the extra blanket, the answer is always yes, they need that extra blanket. I like to tell them to take the upgrade. Let me upgrade you. Third, plan the sequence for your restorative class or workshop using a framework, not a Pinterest board. I use the same lens for restorative yoga that I use everywhere else, the six-four-two framework. Six moves of the spine, flexion, extension, side bend each way, twist each way. The four lines of the legs, front, back, inside, outside. And the two core actions are stabilization and articulation. In a restorative class, you're not going to hit all of those in one session unless it's a very long workshop, like two hours or more, and you don't need to. A fold, a backbend, and a pair of twists or a pair of side bends, that is a very complete meal in the restorative context. Sometimes one backbend and one forward fold is enough. Fewer poses held longer beats more poses held shorter every time. That's how we get off that continental shelf into the really deep ocean of parasympathetic reset. Fourth, and this is the one that takes the most practice, we as teachers need to learn to hold the space during the long holds. And this is where many new restorative teachers or just new teachers in general can panic. There is so much silence. The instinct is going to be to fill it. Don't. Your job in a 15-minute hold isn't to keep talking for 15 minutes. It's to stay present. It's to scan the room. It's to notice who needs a small adjustment, another blanket, and to let the practice do the practice. A few well-timed cues, a few breath reminders, and otherwise, you are a steady, quiet presence at the edge of the room. That presence is the teaching. That's the holding space. Fifth, mind the exit. Students who have actually dropped into parasympathetic mode cannot just jump up and run out at the end. Give a gentle call back when it's near time to start moving out of every shape. Bring them out the same way you would bring someone out of Shavasana, slowly, in stages, in their own timeline. We're going to go deeper on all of this in the June Comfort Zone Conversation. Comfort Zone Conversations are free calls that I host at Comfort Zone Yoga, which is my virtual yoga studio focused on teacher development with a big teacher community on the free side of over 2,500 yoga teachers. I'm calling this month's call Restorative Yoga That Actually Restores. We're going to spend an honest and a practical hour on the four things that most often... Octopus. On the four things that most often separate a class that looks restful from a class that feels that way, the setup mistakes that quietly prevent students from settling, how long students really need in a pose and why cutting it short really changes everything, what to say and what to stop saying so your cues support rest instead of pulling students out of it, and how to read the room and adjust when something clearly isn't landing. That call is Thursday, June 25th from 2:00 to 3:00 PM Eastern. It's free inside the Zone, my community for yoga teachers. You can join us at comfortzoneyoga.com. Even if you can't make it live or you're catching this after the fact, RSVP anyway. I'll record it, and you can listen whenever works for your schedule. Or if you're hearing this way after the fact, you can catch it on YouTube And if you want the full framework of how to teach restorative yoga with CEUs, 20 CEUs, and the Pose Library, that is what lives inside my Fundamentals of Teaching Restorative Yoga course at Comfort Zone Yoga. It is self-paced, it includes plug-and-teach class plans, and it is designed so that you could sub a restorative class next week and feel really solid doing it. You can find it at comfortzoneyoga.com/restorative and at the link in the show notes. Remember, restorative yoga is not gentle yoga plus props, and it isn't yin yoga with longer holds. It is a different practice aimed at the nervous system itself. The teachers who get the best results in restorative classes are not the ones with the most gorgeously plotted sequences. They are the ones who understand their job. Their job is to build the conditions for the body to feel safe enough to rest, and then to zip it, zip their mouths, and get out of the way. If you can offer that to your students, you are giving them something so rare and so needed, an experience of rest they can learn to find on their own and a door back to themselves whenever they need it. It's samadhi. It's bliss. Come hang out with us on Thursday, June 25th, 2 o'clock Eastern for the Comfort Zone Conversation, where we'll go deep on all of this. RSVP for free inside the zone at comfortzoneyoga.com. If this episode was useful, I would love it if you would share it with a teacher friend, and a rating or review on your podcast app of choice always helps other teachers find us here. Thank you so much for joining me for Yoga Teacher Confidential. I'm Sage Rountree, and I'll see you next time.