The extraordinary power of Yoga – to reset a frazzled nervous system:
Sometimes it feels like we’re juggling all the balls, have all the tabs open, are responding to everyone else’s needs and ignoring our own.
Yoga can help!
If you fall into bed at night exhausted, but find you just can’t get to sleep. If your jaw is tight, your shoulders ache, and your pelvic floor is not working like it used to….
A restorative yoga tools can help reset your whole nervous system!
Stress-related health problems are responsible for up to 80% of visits to the doctor..But very few doctors actually talk to patients about how to reduce stress.
Yoga is key. Here’s the how and why:
Yoga means ‘yoking together’ – of the mind, body and spirit.
Yoga is a holistic tool bag of many different philosophical and physical practices that are scientifically proven to improve overall wellbeing when practice regularly.
Restorative Yoga Practices
Especially during times of hormonal upheaval, the most beneficial exercise for us is often the one that creates an experience of ‘not-doing’.
Signs That You Need Restorative Yoga in Your Life
- You have a hard time falling asleep at night or you wake up in the wee hours with hot flashes or heart palpitations.
- When you wake up in the morning it feels like you haven’t slept
- Your brain is constantly chattering. You think ‘I can’t meditate because my brain is too busy’.
- You have persistent discomfort or pain in the body, like tension in the jaw, shoulders, or pelvic floor area.
- You cannot stop multitasking even when you don’t need to. You have ‘all the tabs open, all of the time’
Intensive cardio exercise can make us feel good (endorphin high) for awhile, but if it then makes you feel even more tired, incorporating a restorative practice will really enhance overall wellbeing.
Yoga helps us to get out of our heads and into our bodies and the key tool is the breath.We use slow, diaphragmatic breathing to enhance strengthening, flexibility and balance as well as practicing mindfulness and meditation.
The main goal of practicing yoga asana is not to attain certain physical shapes.
The goal is to create internal ‘space’ where you once felt stuck…and to appreciate the extraordinary instrument of life that is your body.
This leads to an awareness of the constant chitter chatter of the mind and eventually to a sense of stillness when the egoic mind quietens.
Practicing yoga asana (postures) and breathwork (pranayama) gives us the opportunity to make peace with who we are in this moment in time.
This level of acceptance (santosha) coupled with patient action towards a positive goal (tapas) always leads to some degree of positive change.
A 2014 meta analysis study showed that a regular yoga practice lead to reductions in the symptoms experienced by menopausal women, like better sleep, less anxiety, fewer hot flashes, less brain fog and clearer thinking.
Enhancing The Parasympathetic Nervous System
In restorative yoga practices, we focus on diaphragmatic breathing with a long exhalation for Vagus Nerve activation and to enhance the ‘rest and digest’ parasympathetic nervous system.
The aim is to move the diaphragm and intercostal muscles with the breath, using the whole of the lung capacity and to slow your breathing right down. You should see the belly rise and fall, not the shoulders.
Vagus nerve activation occurs when the breath is slowed from our typical 10-14 breaths per minute to 5-7 breaths per minute.
You can achieve this by ‘stretching’ the breath and counting the inhalation to 5, hold briefly, and exhale to a count of 8-10 beats.
Let the air fill you from the abdomen up underneath the armpits (use those intercostal muscles) like an accordion expanding, then let it out slowly, like an accordion being pressed back inwards.
With every long, slow exhalation, you should feel more relaxed.
A regular practice of therapeutic yoga may also help women release harmful tension patterns in and around the pelvic floor. Muscles can then be toned to help to support the bladder and bowel and improve symptoms of incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse.
Within the WomensWellbeing.me space, there is the Chill Out Tent where members can practice ‘yin’ style yoga recordings, tailored guided meditations and a Sleep Better course of yoga and restorative practices. The Monday night ‘Release & Replenish’ class is where you can practice effective restorative sequences live each week.
ARE YOU STRUGGLING WITH TENSION, ANXIETY, PELVIC PAIN, BLADDER ISSUES?
You’re not alone. Get in touch if you’d like to discuss a bespoke health and wellbeing mentorship. I can guide you back to inner balance and radient health.
Email: linda@womenswellbeing.me
