Leaning Into Discomfort, Leaning Into Support
Over the past year, two things have become staples of my personal practice: restorative yoga and ball rolling.
Restorative yoga helps me find calm and peace of mind. Ball rolling is an essential tool for unwinding tight muscles and relieving the pain that I often experience from prolonged sitting, or after a long week of teaching.
In many ways, these two practices are complete opposites of each other. One recruits blankets, pillows, and breathing, while the other is a strategic system for releasing physical tension.
But I've noticed that MFR and restorative yoga have a few things in common.
For one thing, they're both uncomfortable.
It might sound odd to associate discomfort with something as soothing as restorative yoga. But in truth, discomfort is baked into the experience.
It's not physical discomfort — restorative yoga theory stresses that physical comfort in each pose is the top priority. Instead, restorative yoga nudges each student to explore discomfort by sitting with their thoughts, emotions, and feelings in stillness.
Most of us don't have even a few seconds of quiet time during the day. So when we settle into a restorative yoga pose for 2 minutes, 4 minutes, even 10 minutes, it's a stark contrast to the reality of everyday life. And that contrast is often uncomfortable.
In practice we learn to sit with that discomfort, observe it, and even embrace it as part of the healing process. In effect, we're learning to get out of our comfort zone in order to experience growth.
Ball rolling, or myofascial release, involves a similar approach to discomfort.
No, it's not going to be incredibly relaxing to sink the ball into a tight or knotted muscle. But so long as we don't feel pain we can breathe through the discomfort and learn from the experience.
We also have the agency in ball rolling to vary the amount of force or time we spend on an area. We explore what feels like a healthy amount of discomfort, and what feels like too much.
Through leaning into discomfort we take ownership of our own healing. We learn our limits. We set boundaries. We grow.
Discomfort isn't the only crossover between ball rolling and restorative yoga. I've found that both practices include four things:
Discomfort + Support + Stillness + Time
Discomfort in the form of unfamiliar, or leaning into something new or tense. Support from props, ball rolling supplies, or our own body. Stillness - softening into a bolster or a ball and watching the body and mind respond. And time.
This is a special cocktail that produces life changing results. There's nothing quite like rising from a ball rolling session, or opening your eyes after a restorative yoga class, and feeling completely different than when you started.
It's transformative. And whether or not we realize it, transformation is what we seek when we dive into a yoga practice.
Cultivating a more peaceful state of mind or a more mobile body is a growth process. It requires a re-learning of priorities. It takes time and support.
And it can be a little uncomfortable at times.
But I've found that the more I lean into this kind of discomfort and let myself be supported in it, the more free I feel in my body and mind.
Perhaps that's one of the sneakiest kinds of discomfort involved; learning to let go not only of muscle tension, but of our old patterns. Learning to let go of who we were to make space for who we are becoming.
Even if that's as simple as feeling more space in the shoulders, I think it's worth the transformation.