Restorative Yoga and why I want to share it so much.

By Clare Browne, Restorative Yoga and Sound Therapy practitioner at Barefoot Body and Soul

I completed my 200-hour yoga teacher training in May 2024, after a particularly challenging time in my life. The training felt like a healing and empowering thing to do.

Over time, I noticed my yoga practice becoming slower and slower. I found myself amazed at what I could tap into during the stillness of Savasana, feeling a deep connection with something within me that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I felt naturally called to restorative yoga training, wanting to explore this experience more deeply.

During our first restorative practice in the training, I felt an overwhelming urge to cry. I was trying to hold it together in a room full of strangers, and my rational mind couldn’t understand why simply staying in a particular position for 15 or 20 minutes could bring up such a response.

Of course, this isn’t to say that everyone who comes to restorative yoga will feel the need to cry.  (Please don’t let this put you off!) We’re all different, and we arrive on our mats carrying different things. But for me, the practice opened up a part of myself that my everyday life hadn’t been allowing me the space to access.

Our modern lives are super noisy. There’s always so much going on, so much to think about and so much to do. Even when we’re sitting still, our minds are often busy planning the next thing or replaying something that happened earlier.

But in that restorative pose, I felt myself dropping through these layers of noise and activity, like someone turned the noise on a radio down and I started returning to something I had become disconnected from – the simple essence of being. Which I had learned and read so much about while studying yoga, and somehow through restorative it began to make sense.

And I think that’s the beauty of restorative yoga. It offers us an opportunity to step away from the constant doing of daily life, whether we’re moving through something difficult, feeling burnt out, carrying stress or simply longing to slow down a bit.

You don’t need to arrive with a particular problem to solve. Perhaps you want to reconnect with yourself after a challenging time. Perhaps your mind never seems to switch off. Or maybe you’re doing great and just want a wee hour to yourself where nothing is expected of you.

With the body fully supported by props, we can begin to notice tension we hadn’t realised we were holding, become more aware of our breath and find a little more space around our thoughts and feelings.

There’s no particular way you need to feel, and nothing you need to achieve. You might experience deep peace, a wandering mind or simply a lovely rest. You don’t need to be flexible, experienced in yoga or able to meditate. You’re simply invited to arrive as you are.

Learning to slow it all down

I sometimes think of restorative yoga as being a little like shutting down a computer system.

To shut it down properly and safely, we press the shut-down button, and the computer takes time to save the work it was doing, close its programmes safely and process everything that has happened since it was turned on.

I think this is a beautiful analogy for restorative yoga. Twenty minutes might seem like a long time to stay in one posture, but in that time, we’re processing so much. Our minds might run through thoughts and events from the day, we might become aware of tensions we’ve been holding in the body, and we simply allow things to wash over us.

Until eventually, that sweet moment arrives when the noise begins to settle, the silence starts to come in, and we gently find our way back to our centre.

Why I love to share restorative yoga

There’s something incredibly beautiful about guiding this practice, too.

I’ve noticed that, by the second or third posture, there’s often a subtle shift in the energy of the room. Breaths become a little slower and longer. There’s less fidgeting and movement, and the room grows quieter.

It fills me with joy to look around the room in these moments and observe everyone resting in what I feel is one of our truest states of being, a place of peace that we may lost touch with amidst the busyness of life.

Just a little space to rest, to feel and to be.

I think that’s what I love most about restorative yoga. It’s not about changing anything, but creating the conditions to reconnect with something that was already there, beneath all the noise.

My hope is to create a space where others can begin to discover that for themselves.

I could sit here all day rattling off the physical, neurological, emotional benefits of this practice (there’s a lot), but why don’t you come and see for yourself? ❤️

Clare’s Restorative and Sound sessions begin on Friday 29th November 2026 at 6-7.15pm and run for 4 weeks (December 6th, 13th, 20th) at Barefoot Body and Soul, 49a Cregagh Road, BT6 8PX

Drop in price: £12

4 Week block booking price: £40

For more info, message Clare on Instagram @clare.b.yoga or email clarebrowneyoga@gmail.com.