Restorative yoga

Restorative yoga is a practice of four or five fully supported shapes, each held for five to twenty minutes on bolsters, blankets and blocks, in which the props do all of the work so that no muscle in the body has any reason to be switched on.

It comes out of the Iyengar tradition. B.K.S. Iyengar used supported postures for students who were ill, injured, exhausted or recovering, and Judith Hanson Lasater, one of his students, is the person most responsible for restorative yoga existing as a practice in its own right rather than as a set of adaptations. If you have met the props on an Iyengar page and wondered what they were ultimately for, this is one of the answers.

The test for whether you are doing it correctly is unusual and worth memorising, because it is the exact opposite of every other instruction in yoga. You should feel nothing. No stretch, no effort, no interesting sensation anywhere. If you can feel a stretch, the shape is not restorative yet, and the answer is another blanket rather than more patience.

Very little happens, slowly, and setting up takes longer than you expect.

• Arriving, five to ten minutes. Lying over or under something, often with the legs raised on a chair seat, doing nothing.
• Four or five supported shapes, forty minutes. A supported reclining shape over a bolster, legs up a wall, a supported forward fold with the forehead resting on a block, a side lying shape with the knees propped, a supported twist. Each takes two or three minutes to set up and then runs for five to twenty.
• A long close, ten to fifteen minutes. Savasana with the knees supported and the eyes covered, or the same shape guided as Yoga Nidra.

Two things surprise first timers. The first is how much equipment is involved: a bolster, three or four blankets, two blocks, a strap, sometimes a chair and a wall. The second is how cold you get. Nothing is generating heat, so a blanket over the top is not a luxury, and the reason the teacher keeps handing you one is thermal rather than spiritual.

The breath is left entirely alone. There is no technique to learn and nothing to count. In practice most people's breath slows on its own within about five minutes of the first shape, which is the whole intention: you are not being asked to relax, you are being put in a position in which relaxation becomes the path of least resistance.

This is a practice where the honest summary is that the evidence is modest, real, and much narrower than the marketing.

The largest trial is the PRYSMS study, which randomised 180 underactive adults with metabolic syndrome to restorative yoga or to active stretching, with 135 completing 48 weeks. Restorative yoga was not significantly better than stretching for most metabolic outcomes. The one difference that held up at twelve months was a greater reduction in fasting glucose in the yoga group. A companion analysis of the same trial reported lower morning and late afternoon salivary cortisol and improved fatigue and emotional wellbeing scores in the yoga arm. So: a small metabolic signal, a clearer signal on how people felt, and no grounds whatsoever for calling it a treatment.

For the nervous system claims, the nearest good evidence comes from the slow passive practices generally rather than from restorative specifically. A randomised trial of a five week yin yoga based programme in 105 stressed adults found reductions in anxiety, sleep problems and a stress related biomarker against a control group, and the mechanism there is not obviously different. If your reason for reading this page is anxiety or insomnia, yoga for anxiety is the page written for it, and yoga for high blood pressure covers the cardiovascular question with its own sources.

What I would say from experience rather than from a journal is this: restorative is the only practice on this site that I have seen work on the very first attempt. Not flexibility, not strength, but a person who arrives unable to sit still and leaves an hour later having genuinely stopped. That is not a small thing to be able to offer somebody, and it is also not a medical claim.

Restorative is the easiest style on this site to prescribe, because the indications are so specific.

• You are exhausted, ill, recovering, or in the middle of something hard. Restorative. Nothing else on this list is appropriate and this one is.
• You cannot sleep. Restorative in the evening. The bedtime sequence is the version you can do without a class.
• You are anxious and too tired to move. Restorative rather than yin. Yin asks something of you; this asks nothing.
• Your hips are stiff and you want them to change. Yin, not restorative. Restorative is not trying to stretch you and will not.
• You are pregnant. Supported practice is the part of yoga that adapts best, and it still needs a teacher who knows what to change. See prenatal yoga first.
• You want to get fitter, stronger or more flexible. Not restorative. It is rest, deliberately practised, and it is not exercise. Yoga vs gym is the honest comparison.

My verdict. Of everything on this site, restorative is the practice I would most like more people to take seriously and the one they are most likely to dismiss, because it looks like nothing and because we have all been taught that an hour only counts if it costs something. My view after forty years is straightforward. Most of the people who walk into a hall in the evening are not short of effort, they are short of rest, and giving an exhausted person a strong class is a way of being liked rather than a way of helping. I would put one supported evening into almost anybody's week. I would not let it be the whole week, because a body that is never asked to hold itself up slowly stops being able to, and getting off the floor unaided at seventy is a strength question rather than a relaxation one.

Restorative is not taught here as a named class, and no style here is. The classes are one teacher, about forty years of teaching, one hall at the residents' association in MSR Nagar in north Bangalore, in person there or live online, all ages and all levels. The hour covers asana, pranayama and relaxation, taught slowly, and it is not labelled with a style off a timetable.

The part that overlaps genuinely is the end of the class. The relaxation is long, it is not treated as a reward for the work, and nobody is hurried out of it. Props are offered before anybody struggles rather than after: a folded blanket under the knees, a block under the head, a chair to raise the legs. That is restorative practice in miniature, and it is the piece of it that fits inside a general class honestly.

The rest of it is better done at home, because it needs time and cushions rather than instruction. The bedtime sequence is built on exactly this principle, Yoga Nidra is the guided version you can follow lying down, and how to start yoga at home explains how to put one supported evening beside a class. If you want to see the room before you decide anything, the first class is free, and the classes page has the timings and the costs.

Restorative shapes are ordinary postures with the effort taken out by props, which is why they often look nothing like the version you know.

The supported backbend is Setu Bandhasana with a bolster under the whole length of the spine, or Matsyasana arranged so the chest opens without the neck taking any load. The supported forward fold is Paschimottanasana with the forehead on a stack of blankets, which changes it from a stretch into a rest. Balasana with a bolster along the torso is usually the first shape a nervous beginner is given, and everything closes in Savasana, held for ten or fifteen minutes rather than three.

What is absent is the whole standing half of a practice: Tadasana, Trikonasana and the balances never appear, and neither does Surya Namaskar. That is the reason I treat it as one evening rather than as a practice. If you are building a week, put the ten minute morning routine at one end of it and a supported evening at the other, keep the desk sequence for the working day, and see how often should you do yoga for how the whole thing adds up. For a supported practice on a chair rather than on the floor, chair yoga is the closer relative.