It's a great pleasure to welcome you to this 10 day mini-course specially designed for you and your curvy spine!
Living with scoliosis since childhood, I have experimented with many methods and healing modalities, including a range of different yoga approaches, and I have to say... discovering Restorative Yoga was life-changing for me!
It quickly became my favourite at-home practice, a practice i would go back to anytime i felt the need to soothe, rest, reset, ground, come home to myself, honour my body and spirit, take a break from the world... you name it!
It is my absolute favourite practice to teach, and I am so happy to share it with you via this online course. I hope it will benefit you at least as much as it helped me -and continues to- on my healing journey!
Have you ever felt that your lifestyle demands of you to rush and run and push through? To achieve and perform? To satisfy the needs of others before you attend to your own? Do you ever feel stressed out and wired, caught between that fight or flight mode that keeps you going and a mental or emotional exhaustion that craves rest?
You are not alone, this is the load of modern men and women... our lifestyle and demands of society often pulls us out of that healthy balance between rest and action, between our sympathetic and parasympathetic mode, the 2 branches of our nervous system.
And then, comes Restorative Yoga. An amazing practice that helps counteract all the stress, tension, and pressure we are experiencing in our lives at both physical and mental/emotional level, and bring some deep restorative and constructive rest to our whole being.
Restorative Yoga is not about performance, action, movement, or control. It is about letting go, surrender, release, and just being. There are poses though! But they are supported by a lot of props such as pillows and blankets so that your body can stay in the shape of the pose without having to hold itself. Being fully supported, it can experience a sense of safety and relax even further. We stay in the poses for a long time, anywhere between 10 and 30 minutes depending on the practice, to allow us to really settle into the practice and the restorative aspect of it to have a profound effect.
A Restorative Yoga practice for scoliosis follows the exact same principles. But it uses additional props to further support the needs of the curvy spine, and to allow it and the whole body around it to relax in the most beneficial way.
The most challenging part of introducing Restorative practices in our lives is often simply to allow ourselves to slow down, and make time and space for our self care. I hope this course will make it easier for you to explore this new way of supporting your healing and wellbeing, and make it a part of your lifestyle. Enjoy!
The mind body connection
Yoga practices seek to achieve Union, an experience of Unity between mind and matter, the world within and the outside reality, a state of wholeness that ultimately brings a sense of peace and harmony and allows us to have better, more compassionate and loving relationships with ourself and with others.
The most powerful tool to experience this state of harmony and wholeness is found within our body: our incredible nervous system. Our nervous system is incredibly intelligent and connects experiences of the mind (thoughts and emotions) and experiences of the body through a loop of retroactive feedback and communication. Everything that is sensed in the body is the product of the brain in one way or the other. and the bodily experiences in turn induce responses in the brain that can then adapt and change.
Our nervous system can easily get out of balance and out of control and it translates in both our mind, emotions and bodies. It can manifest as exhaustion, pain, disregulated sleep and digestion, difficulty concentrating, slow recovery time, weaker imune system and many more.
Restorative yoga helps regulate our stressed out nervous system by activating its parasympathetic branch, the so-called "rest and digest" mode. A regular practice promotes deep rest both for the body and the mind, calming the nervous system at a deep level and ultimately helps recover a state of harmony within, with many positive side effects, such as improving sleep, lowering stress and anxiety, reducing deep-lying tension and even pain...
Living with scoliosis
Living with scoliosis comes with its load of challenges. These range from physical ones (pain, posture, tension, low endurance, impaired respiratory function...), to mental and emotional ones (stress, anxiety, fear, shame...).
Most treatment approaches to scoliosis focus on correcting the curve (or stopping its progression) and impose on the curvy spine, and the person owning it a rather constraining lifestyle, involving in worst cases invasive surgery, casts and braces designed to hold and push the spine into a different position and shape. Other milder approaches focus on corrective exercises. What all these approaches have in common is that they impose on the body a regime where the curve has to be fought against, forced into something it is not, against what is natural to it. While these approaches may be hugely beneficial depending on the case, they can also contribute to stress, tension, and pain, both at physical and mental/emotional levels, at subtle and even subconscious levels.
My experience is that the curvy spine also (and maybe most importantly) needs to be loved, embraced and honoured... not constantly fought against. Our curvy spine needs the support of our nervous system. And a nervous system that is wired to constantly fight against or resist what is natural will not be able to provide soothing, nurturing support to our curvy spine, and to our whole being, body and mind.
With Restorative Yoga, we don't try to correct, force, push or fight anything. We don't even try to do anything at all. The focus is on being. In a passive, observing, non-judgemental way. In each and every practice we offer our whole being peace and compassion and the deep constructive rest so needed to support our health and overall wellbeing.
What you need
-A mat or carpet
-Several pillows/cushions
-A yoga belt (or anything rope-like)
-A chair/stool
-2 yoga blocks (can be replaced by books/firm boxes/pillows)
-Padding props (rolled up towels, blankets, pair of socks etc...)
-Eye pillow for extra coziness (optional)