Sacredsmile Yoga

A couple of days ago I had a conversation where part of it went more or less like this:

Person: “I must have slept almost 10 hours last night but I still woke up feeling tired and somewhat sore in the morning.”
Me: “Ok, ... are you doing relaxation exercises of any kind during the day?”
Person: “No, actually I am not. I do not know how to fit it into my schedule. My meditation and preparation for it already take me an hour in the morning and in the evening I do another 90 minutes of yoga. So, I am doing two and a half hours of yoga a day.”

This is quite common, being a committed and dedicated yogi but not valuing the importance of relaxation enough. At least this person I was talking to is already astutely aware that yoga and relaxation are not synonyms and needs little education on the importance of relaxation. Getting practical about it is what is the challenge.

Most people that I have met however, even regular yoga practitioners, do no really understand what relaxation is and how important it is for our overall functioning and well-being. I have been fortunate that I have been trained from a very early age on in the art of relaxation. In fact teaching relaxation is now part of my profession either as a yoga teacher or when I train corporate executives on recovery strategies.

Yoga teacher Rod Stryker says: “Relaxation can take you further than anything else to get the body ready for spiritual development.” In fact, the chief thing to support the functioning of the body in general is relaxation.

I love the word recovery in relation to stress and relaxation because to me it is so appropriate. To recover from the stresses of life and bring the body and mind back to homeostasis. In this day and age where the stress levels and demands placed on us are so high the need to develop some form of regular recovery strategy and fit it into our schedule is crucial. Especially the contemporary yogi will benefit from conscious relaxation and will notice with practice that many insights come into so many of our aches and pains. It is also through relaxation that we prepare best for our meditation practice and calm the mind thus cultivating more peace and contentment throughout our days.

There actually is a science to relaxation that I won’t go into right now in this article but I am pretty sure that this person I spoke with would wake up more rested in the morning and need less sleep by regularly practicing relaxation techniques.