The bolster on the train

I took a long train last autumn — twelve hours, sleeper car, two countries — and decided, on the basis of an idea that seemed reasonable at the planning stage, to bring a small inflatable travel bolster and to try doing restorative yoga on the small floor space between the sleeper cars. The experiment was, in its own way, instructive. I am writing about it not because I recommend the experiment, but because of what it taught me about what the practice actually depends on.

The setup

The bolster was a small inflatable cylinder, about thirty centimetres long, that packed down to the size of a soup can. The floor between cars was small but clear, about two metres by one. The train was a sleeper service, so the corridor was mostly empty at the times I planned to practice — early morning and late evening. The plan was to do a short restorative session in this space twice during the journey.

What actually happened

The first attempt was at around six in the morning, somewhere between Vienna and Salzburg. The space was, indeed, empty. The bolster, when inflated, was firm enough. I lay down on my back, put the bolster under my hips for a supported bridge, and tried to settle into the pose for the fifteen minutes I had planned.

It did not work. The reasons were specific and instructive. The floor was vibrating from the train, which made the body unable to fully settle. The lighting was bright, with no way to dim it. The temperature was cold from the corridor, which meant the body was bracing against the cold rather than relaxing into the pose. The sounds were the sounds of a moving train, which included frequent small alerts and announcements. The space, while clear, was small, and the awareness that someone might walk through at any moment prevented the small psychological surrender that the pose required.

I stayed in the pose for the full fifteen minutes, mostly out of stubbornness. By the end, I had achieved a small stretch of the lower back and not much else. The pose had been performed. The practice had not happened.

What this taught me

Restorative practice depends on conditions, more than it depends on equipment. The bolster is necessary but not sufficient. The pose is necessary but not sufficient. The conditions — temperature, light, sound, the small psychological certainty of not being interrupted — are what allow the pose to produce its effect.

I had, before this, assumed that a sufficiently disciplined practitioner could enter the restorative state in almost any conditions, given the right shapes and the right duration. The train experiment showed me that this is not true. The practice depends on the body being given the conditions in which it can fully release, and a vibrating cold brightly-lit train corridor is not, however clear of foot traffic, a place where this can happen.

On the small implication of this

The implication is that home practice — or any practice in a controlled environment — is the practice that actually does the work. The portable version, while sometimes necessary on travel days, is a much smaller version of the same practice. It maintains the body, somewhat, but it does not produce the deep restoration that the controlled environment makes possible.

This has changed how I think about travel. On a longer trip, I no longer expect to maintain my full home practice. I expect to do small portable versions that maintain the body's basic openness, and I expect to come home and immediately resume the full practice. The trip is, in this framing, a small temporary reduction in practice volume, with a planned return to full volume on arriving home. The conditions, not the discipline, are what determine the depth of practice that is available on any given day.

What I would say to anyone planning to practice on the road

Bring a small portable kit if it brings you comfort. Use the small portable practice to maintain a basic level of body openness. Do not expect, in less-than-ideal conditions, to reach the depth that your home practice reaches. The depth will come back when you are home. The trip is the trip, and the home practice is the home practice, and the two are different things that serve different purposes. Holding them as different things, with different reasonable expectations, will save you the small disappointment of trying to make the trip into something it cannot be.

The bolster, by the way, has stayed in the travel bag. It does occasionally come out on hotel floors, which are at least stable and quiet and warm. The hotel floor version is not the full practice, but it is closer to it than the train corridor version was. The conditions are what determine the practice, and the conditions on a hotel floor are at least conditions in which the practice can begin to happen.