by Nina

I’m excited to announce that Anna Ashby’s new book RESTORATIVE YOGA: Power, Presence and Practice for Teachers and Trainees will be released this month on March 21, 2022. I was privileged to receive a review copy of it so I can vouch that it is an excellent resource on Restorative Yoga, both thorough and well written.  So I thought this would be a good  time to interview Anna both about her book and her special approach to Restorative Yoga. 

Nina: For those who don’t know much about you, please tell us something about yourself and your background as a yoga teacher.

Anna: Thank you so much for inviting me to be part of your blog, Nina. I’ve been practicing yoga since the early 1990’s having come across it while I was studying dance at Mills College in Oakland, California. Yoga became a compelling and helpful way for me to navigate the challenges of a first year at university away from home. It also began a process for me to redefine my relationship with my body (which, not surprisingly, was negative) and in finding a way to articulate a sense of purpose and meaning in my life. Yoga had such a profound impact that once I graduated, I decided to go to an ashram in upstate New York to immerse myself in its practices and teachings. I ended up staying for 12 years. It was a life changing experience.

Nina: Your forthcoming book RESTORATIVE YOGA: Power, Presence and Practice for Teachers and Trainees, which will be published on March 21, 2022, is an entire book about the practice and teaching of restorative yoga. This is an obvious question, but I think people will wonder: why did you decide to write a whole book on restorative yoga when there are already other well-known books about the same basic topic?

Anna: The 12 years I spent in the ashram transformed my perception and understanding about the possibilities of Restorative Yoga as a means to explore the depths of conscious human embodiment. I felt it was important for me to articulate my experience and learning of how this style can not only help manage the stress response by understanding how the nervous system works and taking steps that help support its movement towards balance, but how it can serve as a powerful means to investigate the deeper aspects of human ‘being’. I wanted to add to the great work already done by many learned teachers by clarifying Restorative Yoga’s lineage and purpose (often conflated with other introspective styles) and describe its relationship to the yoga tradition with its potential for realising higher states of consciousness.

Nina: Although the book is written for teachers and trainees, I actually think that yoga practitioners who are not yoga teachers or trainees may be able to benefit from this book. What would you say to them about how to use this book?

Anna: While I wrote the book for teachers and trainees, I also felt that it could serve as a helpful guide for anyone interested in furthering their experience of this way of practicing yoga. In some ways, the designation for teachers gave me permission to say exactly what I thought about Restorative Yoga without holding back or simplifying my ideas for people who may be new to yoga practices and teachings.

That said, I really tried to write it as a helpful missive for beginning a process to understand how much our nervous system impacts perception/experience and how much we can do as individuals to shift from reactivity and move towards the state of connection, which I think is rather pertinent in current times.

So that’s why I created the three-part structure to the book: “Power” refers to the power of the practice and how it impacts physiology; “Presence” refers to Restorative Yoga’s unique expression for exploring the depths or layers of the human experience; and “Practice” explains the poses, the set-ups, and how to practice Restorative Yoga and teach it.

So whether a teacher or a practitioner, the book could serve as a means to begin to investigate Restorative Yoga practice at home for one’s self, and eventually, with further training, share the practice with others. I think Restorative Yoga can be a game changer for many to be able to work with the challenges we are facing, not only individually but collectively by cultivating awareness, equilibrium, and clear perception. I see the practice as a profound method for developing discernment and being able to understand ourselves and our world.

Nina: You begin the book with quite a lot of background information, with some of it about yoga history and much of it about the science related to stress and the nervous system. How does all this background information enrich our understanding of restorative yoga?

Anna: I think it’s helpful to know where something comes from and how it works. It deepens the experience of the practice and enables an empowered choice. I also wished to honour and link back to the yoga tradition, and to shed a little light on yoga’s roots, which can be easily forgotten in our fast paced, fitness-oriented world. I think this is important in terms of respect for the tradition and being able to innovate from a seat of authority.

Spending some time understanding Restorative Yoga’s history and context helps elucidate its purpose and power, especially in relation to other modern styles that may feel similar but hold an entirely different intent. Articulating Restorative Yoga’s purpose—not only in terms of physiology but in terms of reaffirming the state of connection—establishes and values Restorative Yoga’s unique place in the yoga tradition and amongst the wide variety of styles that have emerged from the 20th century onwards.

Restorative Yoga can be a context to learn about nervous system health and a direct way to experience the uniqueness of one’s own response to stress. In particular, I feel Restorative Yoga’s teachers are well placed to offer this kind of empowering knowledge as well as share practices that support the movement towards equilibrium and a felt sense of connection. When you understand better how the nervous system works, it underscores the value of sanctuary—of quietude, non-doing, and creating safe spaces with others—for the experience of being able to relax and feel connection.

The choice to practice Restorative Yoga can be a powerful part of managing stress and anxiety, and for living well with clarity and joy. Practice becomes a personal way to cultivate resilience in being able to cope with the very real challenges we are facing at this time.

Nina: I found it very intriguing that you have a section on practicing self-enquiry. That’s not something I associate with restorative yoga. Can you explain how restorative yoga and practicing self-enquiry work together and complement each other?

Anna: I’ve found over the years of leading Restorative Yoga teacher trainings that many are challenged by becoming still and find it hard to ‘switch off’ so to speak. I also discovered in the course of dialogue with teachers and students alike, a recurrent idea that Restorative Yoga isn’t ‘real’ yoga. And what comes up for a fair number of folks is that it’s actually ‘lazy’ to lie back over a bolster and rest. Others have described Restorative Yoga as having ‘a nice snooze’. I find this curious. It points to the need to understand the deeper compulsions/narratives that influence our relationship to work and that impact our ability to rest or relax as well as to be able to dive deep into the subtlety of experience.

There is also a Western work ethos where ‘burning the midnight oil’ is valued over taking time to reflect, rejuvenate, and rest, which can become a very real obstacle for being able to feel the state of connection. I think this is starting to change, but it’s a strong collective narrative that shows up when least expected, and I feel it contributes to the state of imbalance reflected at so many levels in our society and world.

I have found contemplation and asking questions reveal these kinds of self-limiting narratives and this can begin an important process of release—a kind of liberation. This type of enquiry is very much a part of yoga’s long history.

Furthermore, the Restorative Yoga practice lends itself to a deep interiority and investigation into the felt sense and nature of ‘being’, the essence of which can be experienced as joy unattached to any particular thing—simply, the joy of being. In the book I call this type of enquiry during a Restorative Yoga pose ‘embodied presence’, where present moment awareness and the felt sense tap into an inner wellspring that rejuvenates and offers insight.

So, having first begun a contemplative process of release from self-limiting narratives that may prevent the ability to rest and become still, the Restorative Yoga practice can then help downshift the physiology to enable a deeply felt investigation into the nature of self and being, which is central to the experience of lasting happiness and a core part of what I feel embodies the actual practice of yoga.

Nina: You’ve chosen 6 basic restorative poses to feature in the book. How and why did you choose these particular poses?

Anna: When I started leading Restorative Yoga teacher trainings almost 20 years ago, I wanted to structure learning in a way yoga teachers could understand regardless of their style of practice. I noticed how most of the postures fell into broad categories that reflected common shapes and were basically variations on a theme. So I decided to distill the syllabus through this frame to be helpful for learning, although it does have its limitations as with any structure. This is why I feel it’s important to actually take a Restorative Yoga training along with reading the book in order to fully understand the ethos of the practice, the wide variety of postures, and the use of the props, and to be able to explore and play under the guidance of an experienced teacher. Then there is infinite possibility in the different ways to set up the poses and craft sequences.

Nina: Is there anything else you’d like to say to our readers?

Anna: I think we are entering a period in human history that is demanding our full collective attention—a deeply challenging time on all levels that requires a means to cultivate clear perception and be able to make choices that reaffirm interconnection. Finding sanctuary in whatever way we can, whether it’s through Restorative Yoga or otherwise, can play a central and empowering role in being able to make sense of what’s going on right now, not only inside ourselves but in our world. To become still and deeply listen cultivates discernment and holds sacred the best part of what it means to be human. It may be the only pathway forward in these chaotic and uncertain times.

You can preorder/order Anna’s book at annaashby.com/restorative-book as well as at many online booksellers, including Amazon , Book Depository, and Barnes & Noble.

Anna Ashby is senior yoga teacher and trainer in the United Kingdom. She has been studying and practicing yoga for over 30 years and teaching for over 20. She holds the highest level of certification with Yoga Alliance E-RYT-500.

Anna teaches at triyoga in London and at the Yoga Loft in Leicestershire, where she lives. As a founder and senior faculty member of the triyoga™ teacher training programme, one of the most comprehensive and rigorous training programmes in Europe, Anna enjoys curating a learning experience that honours the tradition while innovating to meet the times. She regularly leads retreats, workshops and trainings in the UK and Europe.

She specialises in Restorative Yoga where diving deep into embodied experience with a focus on nervous system health enables a profound shift of perception and state that supports well-being and integration. Her approach to yoga practice is methodical and accessible and incorporates the teachings of yoga in a way that makes sense in a modern context. Classes and retreats are focused on learning and direct experience; she endeavours to create an environment that is welcome to all, open and friendly.

Visit her website for more information about her teaching schedule: www.annaashby.com.

 

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