Which Yoga Is Best For Stress?
The roots of the slow yoga movement.
Yoga covers a fairly wide spectrum of practices from the highly athletic to the deeply relaxing. There are so many different styles on offer it can be rather daunting for the newbie to navigate.
I feel like most people view yoga as a method for balancing stress. Largely because it’s a physical discipline that connects body, mind and breath. And thats what makes it so unique and effective.
Yoga classes for reducing stress.
Exercise in any form can help us to reduce stress. Regardless of whether it’s easy or demanding, the net effect will be a positive one. But sometimes we need a practice that offers a more therapeutic level of relaxation. Something that helps us disrupt our habitual response to stress, and rebalance our nervous system.
This is where gentler practices like Yin, Restorative, or Nidra yoga come in. Classes that can help us tune out the world, and tune back into ourselves.
One thing all three of these yoga styles have in common is that they are low and slow.
The pace is unhurried and the poses happen down on the ground. And this is by design, because doing yoga on the ground allows us to take full advantage of the force of gravity.
Think of it as time under gravity.
Where we gradually unwind as the weight of our body meets the firm support of the floor beneath us.
The origins.
Getting grounded is a simple science, and a natural form of medicine. Time under gravity offers dual benefits - meditative calm for mind, and physical therapy for the body.
The contemporary slow yoga movement is actually rooted in the ancient practice of Savasana or Corpse Pose. Savasana you could say is the original ‘time under gravity’ yoga. It is the art of comfortably doing nothing, while healing both body and mind.
What is Savasana?
The term Savasana comes from the Sanskrit word Śava, meaning corpse, and Āsana, meaning pose. It is believed to have originated from the school of Laya Yoga, taught by the 12th century Hindu saint Gorakhnath. Savasana was used as a method to dissolve the self into a state of higher consciousness.
A few hundred years later, Savasana was given official mention in the ancient yogic text Hatha Yoga Pradipika. Where it is said that:
Lying supine on the ground, like a corpse, will eliminate tiredness and promote calmness of mind.
Having been a yoga practitioner for the last 35 years, and teaching therapeutic yoga for the last 20, I believe that mastering the art of Savasana is one of the most effective ways to address stress in our life.
The art of doing nothing.
For me personally, I feel that Savasana is actually an instinctual response to stress. I say that because I started doing it when I was just a toddler. I would lie down on my back, limbs outstretched, letting my body sink into the ground like rain.
It was a quiet cocoon safe from the chaos of life where I could get reconnected.
I loved lying down by a doorway or window where I could bask in a ray of sun or moonbeam. I would gaze into the soft light, watching the illuminated dust motes or shadows dancing on the wall. Arguably one could say I have been doing Savasana for my entire life. And I honestly cannot extol its virtues enough.
A typical Savasana session.
Savasana is a posture that anyone can do. It is in fact the most accessible yoga posture there is. All you need a firm surface like the floor or the ground outdoors, and a mat, blanket, or rug to lie upon.
You lie down supine on your back, with limbs comfortably stretched out. You can cover your eyes with an eye pillow to help you turn inwards.
Then you just breath and slowly relax into the support of the ground.
You can start with a slow moving body scan, from the feet up to your head to facilitate relaxation. And then drift into a rested but aware state. I recommend 15-30 minutes, ideally done in the evening or on the weekend. Sometimes a longer session is called for when a deeper healing and integration is needed.
I often enhance my Savasana experience with healing music like solfeggio frequencies, binaural beats, crystal bowls or classical Indian ragas. And use the Prana bolster from Halfmoon Yoga with a heatable flax pillow for my spine and eyes to deepen the physical relaxation.
What happens during Savasana?
This is what will happen during your Savasana session:
Your spine will traction and unwind under the force of gravity.
Your entire musculature from head to toe will relax.
Your nervous system will gear down into parasympathetic mode.
Your mind will become increasingly more quiet.
Your ego will slowly dissolve into a more spacious self-awareness
Shedding skins.
Indian yoga teacher, B.K.S Iyengar describes Savasana as a shedding of skins - a gradual loosening of the architecture of self and body into something more open and formless. With each breath a layer of tension acquiesces into effortlessness and non-action.
In his book Light on Life he says:
”Tension results from clutching tightly to life and in turn being held by myriad invisible threads that tie us to the known world, to our identity. Savasana is a technique that cuts the threads of tension and dissolves what we are not.”
Iyengar considers Savasana to be the most difficult pose in Yoga. And I don’t disagree because it asks us to rest, to let go, and to be present. Which is precisely what we avoid, but exactly what we need. I consider Savasana a time out from life where you can sink into an unfiltered and more primal awareness.
The body unconscious.
Wilhelm Reich, a pioneer of Western psychotherapy, was the inspiration for somatic therapies like Feldenkrais, Rolfing, Gestalt, and the Alexander Technique. He put forward the idea that the door to the unconscious was through the body.
That makes a lot of sense when you consider that we process approximately 11 million bits of information per second through the five physical senses, compared to 50 bits per second through the conscious mind. This phenomenon is often referred to as the unconscious bias, and remains to this day a scientific mystery. So where does all that information go?
According to yoga, the mind within the body.
One of the four levels of mind in yoga, known as Manas, is responsible for coordinating sensory impressions before they are presented to the conscious mind. Consider manas like a giant receiver, that takes in and stores our sensory experience until it can be integrated into conscious awareness.
The movement of awareness from unconscious to conscious, is fundamental to healing and self-development.
Savasana is a practice that makes room for this level of integration. By putting us in touch with the primal wisdom of the body, such that deeper layers of self can rise up to the surface of our awareness. In the unwinding of physical and mental tension, we can open up and feel what typically gets drowned out by everyday life.
Savasana for life.
There is nothing stopping you from beginning the practice of Savasana right now. All you need is the ground and something soft to lie on. But it would be beneficial to expose yourself to yoga more broadly, to learn how to stretch out your spine and limbs, and connect with the breathe.
This is where an easy Hatha yoga class or the slower, therapeutic practices like Yin, Restorative, or Nidra could provide a wider context for the yogic way of life. But Savasana is a very easy and instinctual thing to do, and can live as a practice on its own.
Its is a simple but very powerful practice that can bring tremendous healing into your life, as it has mine.
Which is why I have been doing it since childhood. I use the practice of savasana to relax, to aid sleep, to reduce pain, to get in touch with myself, and to unplug from the world.
