Restorative Yoga and Red Wine: The Art of Slow

Do you ever find yourself cranky, irritable, impatient, flustered or burned out? What is this emergency? What is this rush to get things done? Racing around the Universe, helicopter parenting, looking after elderly parents and relatives, babysitting the grandkids, running errands, making doctors’ appointments. Stressing about the five back-to-back appointments to have? Maybe squeezing in some grocery shopping, frantically hoovering, dusting, washing, ironing and other housework. Or digging and weeding, taking kids to play dates, piano lessons, guitar lessons, karate, muay thai. Planning renovations, school runs, school holidays, parents and teachers’ nights, school appointments. And the most tedious of all, cooking the bog-standard dinner for the night, and for the rest of your life.

If you think you already go slow and steady, ask yourself, how long does it take you to clean your gnashers before bed. Do you scrub up and down like you are scrubbing and scraping the kitchen sink? Or do you do the full two minutes slowly and carefully? Does your mind wander onto other things, looking at the grime on the sink handles, or the hair in the plughole? Is this just another thing to tick off on your list?

The “to do” list is never ending. No wonder people are short-tempered and burned out. Where is the time and energy to put into your relationship, which underpins the value and the happiness of family life. By the end of the day, it can be that all your attention is taken up by doom-scrolling on your phone.

Instead of “quality” time, have some “slow” time.

The art of slow is paying attention to what you are doing as you are doing it. Give 100% attention to the task at hand. Lower and lessen the speed and panicky hysteria of your daily life. Be in the moment. Be aware of your headspace, and what it is doing. Silencing that monkey chatter is no easy feat. Mindfulness and yoga can help slow down your life.

Yoga comes in many different practices. If you want speed, Vinyasa flow is great. If you want stretches, then Hatha yoga is the go. There is also the godawful Bikram yoga, hot steamy yoga in a small room full of hot sweaty people all doing “down dog” bum to nose. I believe there is also Naked yoga, but I’ve never tried that. But if you want slow mindfulness, slow cooked yoga, then Restorative yoga is for you.

In a darkened studio, lit only by a few strategically placed soy wax fragrant candles, with traditional yoga music caressing your ears, and whispering gently into your soul, while you lie down on a soft yoga mat, an island in a sea of cushions, bolsters and a blanket. Then you are invited to move the bolster under your lower back to do a supported bridge position and hold it for a few minutes. Then we were invited to (not asked to, or demanded of, but invited to, so you have a choice here, because you are in charge of this.) then you are encouraged to lie on your back, place both knees to the side with your head in the opposite direction, arms outstretched and to stay there for a few minutes. No, it doesn’t get any harder than that. So how does this work?

I came away from my first session as through I had done a light gym work out on leg day. You have to “relax” your bones, “settle” your muscles so they “hang” and it is in this hanging that a miracle seems to work. The stretches feel wonderful and restoring, placing your body exactly where it should be, stretched, relaxed and marginally uncomfortable until your bones settle and you feel as though you could go to sleep in this position. You have to allow your body to rest, to breathe, rather like a resting a perfect chicken roast before you eat it or allowing a bottle of red wine some breathing space before you drink it. I call it sloga, or slow yoga. So how does it also settle your mind?

Coming out of this after 90 minutes was like waking up after a restful eight hours. What I noticed most was that when I was driving home, I drove at the speed limit listening to some soft gentle music. I had put on my seatbelt with awareness of how it felt across my body, how the strap was cutting across my neck, how my feet were positioned on the brake and pedal. Not world-changing stuff, but it gave me enough headspace to become more aware of my surroundings, being able to read the room that little bit smarter. That my thoughts were lighter, more empathic, more compassionate, that I didn’t have a raging bushfire in my head, that I no longer felt the need to bite someone else’s off. And the effects were lasting.

So a few days later, I was able to meditate with a lot more ease, without forcing thoughts away with brute strength, I just let them fall from the sky, noting them, but not engaging with them. So that dealing with the day was also slow and mindful. Planning, emailing, booking, relatives visiting, baking, raking leaves, writing, feeding the cats, were all done deliberately with purpose. I was able to stay on task, forget fewer things, get distracted less, produce less fight/fight/freeze hormones. I even watched TV without the need to google who was in this and what had they been in before. I stayed in that uncertainty. I made the decision to keep my mobile phone on silent for a while.

Detaching with purpose, letting the dust around me settle so I could clearly see and sort the wood out from the trees. Bliss, pure bliss.