I'm wishing you a restorative practice

Paul Ranson, Sunflowers and Poppies, 1899.

Sharon Salzberg begins one of her Insight Timer meditation sessions with the phrase:

I'm wishing you a restorative practice.

I find that phrase encouraging and helpful.  It feels like a "performative" speech act.  (I might have that work wrong. Here's Speech Act Theory) (Here's more at Wikipedia) Such acts are like spells -- the saying of them makes something happen.  

In meditation practice, this is setting an intention for the the practice.  It sets the stage; it brackets the next chunk of time from the ordinary; it does this bracketing in an optimistic, well-wishing way.  The bracketing is also purpose setting.  

Somehow it suggests that we're in this together, this is what we're hoping to do ("restoring") and I hope that it goes well.  

It's also just "stopping" or "pausing."  (Reminds me of "I just want to take a moment to say...")

It's the opposite of "and the next thing is."  I noticed that the teacher of my recent Administrator Academy never set a purpose for any activity.  He was a beginning stage teacher where everything is "OK, we've done this activity, now we're going to do this other activity.  Next we're going to..."