19/10/2025
For the last 6 weeks in candlelit yoga on Tuesday evenings, we've been expanding our awareness to consider the benefits of yoga.
We focused on just a few of the MANY benefits yoga practice gives us, including flexibility, balance & posture, letting go of stress & tension, strength, and pain relief. When we spend time thinking about what we get from our yoga practice, it helps us to connect better with each experience, and with ourselves, and makes yoga feel even more meaningful.
In our final session in the series last week, we brought our awareness to a big yoga benefit - RELAXATION. Yoga helps us to slow down, calm our nervous system and relax. Relaxation, in balance with activity, is imperative for our health & well-being.
For many people, relaxation can be the most challenging part of yoga practice, because of the busy roller coaster of life that we're on. Yoga supports us physically & mentally to relax and find peace, and the more we practice, the easier it can become.
In our physical yoga we practiced restorative movements & postures with yin style yoga - where we found stillness in each comforting posture for around two minutes. When we hold postures for a little longer it gives our muscle fibers the opportunity to relax more deeply, relieving extra tightness & tension in our body, and consequently in our minds. Yin styles of yoga help us to find more inner peace due to the still nature of the practice, so it can be a great way to find a relaxing mindset.
In our mindful exercises we thought about ways of finding inner peace & rest. Our reading came from 'The Art of Rest' by Claudia Hammond.
"It's just as important to rest well as it is to sleep well. This book is a call to rest. We need to start valuing it, validating it. Rest is not a luxury it's a necessity. It's essential."
And the book goes on to explore all the ways in which we might rest, not necessarily just by lying down, we can also get restful feelings from walking, listening to music, being in nature, having a bath, or reading a book. We all find relaxation in different ways.
Come and explore yoga with me to support your relaxation practice.