The magic of rest and recovery
Lets deep dive into the power of a ‘little R&R’ plays a powerful role in maintaining our overall health and wellbeing. Research shows that on average an adult needs 7 to 8 hours sleep each night, how many hours are you getting?
If your answer is about this, yay for you, if its less then come on a deep dive with me to explore how we can cultivate a better relationship with sleep.
Why? Because rest is where the body does its best healing. Constant ‘on the go’ patterns of living life, combined with diets that undermine physiological health eventually result in burn out or feeling of losing your ‘mojo’.
This makes our wellbeing highly vulnerable to ailments and disorders where the ‘dis-ease’ process kicks in.
Disorders like hypertension, obesity, type two diabetes, autoimmune problems, anxiety, depression - these are becoming rife. Has society’s addiction with productivity and efficiency made humans forget about the biological necessity to pause and take things slower in order to recharge for success?
From a Yogic & Ayurvedic perspective, a healthy resting schedule is to ensure you are asleep before 10pm and awake at sun rise depending on season usually between 5-6am.
This week’s class is themed around rest and recovery.
You can think about this class, as an intention to invite more rest into your life this month. Allow this to translate into more moments of rest than usual and explore setting up a new relationship with sleep and rest.
Maybe you’d like to join me in some lifestyle shifts – often these are very hard to do alone but making small changes together as a community is far less daunting!
Together, lets support one another to make some small gentle steps towards promoting more rest in our life. Here is how you can do it:
Finish your dinner no later than 7pm
Replace the TV or the phone scrolling with a bath, book, gentle music, and guided meditation
Go to bed before 10pm
Wake at 6.00am
Consider having an opening and closing routine for the day - be realistic and choose something manageable e.g guided meditation, short yoga class, breathing exercises, gentle walk.
Eliminate or reduce caffeine intake, switch to Spiced Milk Latte, hot water or herbal tea.
Replace cold water, and drink 7-8 cups of warm water day instead.
Set an alarm on your phone three times a day as a reminder to ‘Take Pause’ - use this moment to practice deep diaphragmatic breathing.
Give it a go and then feel free to comment or post about your experience Dindi Yoga & Doula’s community facebook page @AlexandraYoga to inspire us all to keep making small changes to our life that ultimately help us feel well. We’d love to see some pictures or stories!