This month’s article on restorative yoga continues Natural Awakening’s review of popular yoga styles in the Atlanta metro area. Restorative yoga classes are available at almost every major studio in Atlanta. They’re often scheduled late in the day, reflecting the slower pace of the class and the intention for a restful experience. In fact, restorative yoga is a unique yoga style with a unique purpose: it invites deep rest and nourishment as an integral part of the postural experience. It fosters a felt sense of rest and ease as a ground from which to live and to which we may always return. In other words, it helps us become aware that rest and ease are always available.

Restorative Yoga Essentials

A slow pace and limited postures

A slow pace and limited postures facilitate a sense of ease. Restorative yoga usually refers to a very slow-paced postural practice. Over the course of an hour’s class, for example, students will take five to eight yoga postures and hold them for longer periods of time. Three to five minutes is the typical amount of time spent in a posture, while a longer period of time might also be considered for certain fundamental opening or closing postures, such as corpse pose, or savasana, in Sanskrit.

The fewer postures and longer holds differentiate restorative yoga from other more active yoga practices, and the focus or intention of the class is ease. Restorative yoga becomes an invitation to the body and mind to take deep rest and nourishment, to pause and stop. The style encourages students to step away from the intensity of other yoga and workout practices and, more importantly, step away from the hustle of daily life. Some teachers even include gentle movement, such as a very slow movement of the spine in multiple directions, as a kind of “rinsing” of the longer-held postures. Still, the longer holds, facilitated by lots of props, and the limited movement during and between poses will predominate the class.

An environment conducive to rest

In contrast to high-intensity practices such as gym workouts that often take place in frenetic, noisy environments and encourage students to constantly move energy, restorative yoga uses a limited number of longer-held postures to limit the sensations experienced by the body. Teachers of restorative yoga also often make further environmental adjustments to reduce physical stimulation, such as darkening the room and limiting external noise. Students can usually expect to find dimmed lights, a light scent such as lavender oil, low-volume music with a small dynamic range and a quiet studio environment.

Yoga props that encourage a sense of ease, support and “not doing”

Restorative yoga classes are known for including a variety of props. Blankets are used to support the head, arms, legs and more. Students are encouraged to prop their bodies away from a cold floor or to pad against the hardness of the floor. Blankets can be used on top of the body to feel covered and protected and, if desired, weighted. Yoga pillows, or “bolsters,” are sometimes used to prop the body, too. They can be used to limit the sensation of stretching, achieve more ease within a pose, and increase the feeling of being supported. Eye pillows are often used not just to darken one’s vision but also as a gentle weight on the surface of the palms or forehead.

Props play an important role in restorative yoga by encouraging the student to ask themself, “How little can I do? How much can I surrender?” The practitioner aims to let the pose do the work and accept the process of surrender. This is in stark contrast to yin yoga practices of “finding an edge” and sitting with sensation. Yin yoga’s emphasis on target areas and connective tissue experiences is absent from restorative yoga practices, for example. The restorative yoga postures are also more welcome than those practiced in a strict yoga nidra class, where postural yoga isn’t part of the experience. Of course, yoga nidra and restorative yoga have intention-setting and body scan techniques in common, but the focus on letting go and feeling held and supported during the postural part of the practice is unique to restorative yoga.

Why Rest?

To live with greater ease

Perhaps even more significant than understanding how to rest with restorative yoga is why rest is so significant. Dominique Harmon, LCSW, E-RYT 200, R-HYI, is an Atlanta-based mental health care practitioner and experienced yoga instructor who uses restorative practices to serve her students, especially women of color. Harmon is the founder of A Life Lived on Purpose, a wellness company that integrates psychotherapy and health coaching along with yoga and meditation practices. She stresses that restorative yoga practices welcome an alternate way of being in the world, calling it a lifestyle choice—one that welcomes a consistent state of greater ease.

“We don’t have to be dis-regulated in order to engage in restorative yoga,” Harmon explains. “Think about keeping your tank filled, keeping your cup full. We have these practices that we just know—that help us to be at our best. We do them because we know that they help us to be at our best.”

To counter stress


Based in Peachtree City, yoga teacher Jill Elkin, E-RYT 200, RYT 500, YACEP, is certified in a restorative practice called iRest as well as other restorative yoga techniques. She regularly leads Restore and Renew teacher trainings with Judith Lasater, and assists iRest retreats and trainings too. She stresses that restorative yoga offers a way to forge neural pathways that lead us to our true self, which is untouched by our daily experiences and to which we can always return. Restorative practices offer us an opportunity on the mat to practice being witness to ourselves. Elkin explains that when life presents challenges, “we get stuck in that nervous system spiral. Instead, [with restorative practices,] we have a lot of time feeling into what’s true for ourselves—our own sense of inner resource. That it’s always there, even in the background, when it doesn’t feel evident. [With restorative yoga,] we feel what we’re feeling right at that moment. And we ask [ourselves]: ‘Is there a place within myself where I feel whole and complete?’”

To heal


Harmon believes that these practices are especially valuable for helping African Americans heal from the structural and systemic racism and trauma they experience. She offers virtual and in-person retreats for women of color, emphasizing restorative yoga practices as one of many tools Black women can use to increase their well-being and shift their perspective and life approach. Restorative yoga, she explains, makes an “explicit invitation” to comfort, which translates to practices off the mat. “I really like the analogy of being held with restorative yoga because, oftentimes, we approach life being very independent. [We think,] ‘I’ve gotta do this by myself, and I can’t take the easy way out. I’ve gotta do it the hard way.’

“I don’t think that’s true,” she continues. “I think that we can always look for ease—how to invite and bring more ease into everything we do in life. Restorative yoga really asks us to do that—how can you be in this posture with as much ease as possible? And give yourself permission to be held by the bolster, the blocks. If you’re cold, put on socks. Use a blanket. Do you need a second blanket? You don’t have to tough it out! It’s asking us to bring ease and comfort to this opportunity of being in this posture. I really like that, and it translates so well into life.”

Elkin also uses restorative yoga to serve those living with complex PTSD and chronic pain as well as veterans and speaks to the shift of mindset that these practices facilitate. Restorative yoga “changes your perspective,” she says. “It makes a small shift. It’s not a cure … but restorative yoga can really help to make a shift. And we practice that mindset shift, and when times do get difficult, it’s there. You know where it is; you’re able to have a neural pathway to the experience of being OK, pulling through all the threads, until you find it and say to yourself, ‘Here it is.’” ❧

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Patricia Schmidt, C-IAYT, E-RYT 500, YACEP, is a certified yoga therapist specializing in pelvic health, accessible yoga and yoga for cancer support. She is a Franklin Method trainer, Roll Model method teacher and somatic movement specialist. To learn more, visit PLSYoga.com.