[00:00:00] Monica: Welcome friend. Today's episode is all about yin yoga, one of my favorite styles. And today I'll be sharing with you all the things you wanted to know about how it works, the principles of yin yoga, and the effect it has on our body, our nervous system, our emotions, and our mind. But before we begin, let's take a long slow exhale.
[00:01:31] I've been teaching yin yoga for 12 years now, and it really is one of my favourite styles. And at our East Brisbane Yoga Studio, our yin yoga classes are the most popular by far. Partly because they're very accessible to people of all ages, and yin yoga can be easily modified for people with injuries and different body types.
[00:01:54] But the reason yin is so popular is because it's incredibly calming and relaxing style of yoga. The entire class is done sitting down or lying down, you don't even stand up and you don't break a sweat. It's different from other forms of yoga because we hold the poses for three to five minutes, and the emphasis isn't just on the muscles but the fascia or connective tissue.
[00:02:20] Busy, stressed and anxious people love it because it helps them calm down. People with injuries or health conditions enjoy yin yoga because it's slow and can be modified to suit their body. Older people love it because it helps them stay mobile and reduces the aches and pains, and we've got lots of clients in their 70s practicing with us.
[00:02:47] Athletic people love yin yoga because it complements their other forms of exercise and gives them that deep stretch and recovery time their body craves. avoiders love it because it doesn't feel like exercise and it's a great way to connect with our body without that no pain no gain rubbish.
[00:03:07] Beginners love it because yin yoga is easy. You don't need to be flexible or have any prior experience. And it's slow, so there's no problem with trying to keep up. And to an observer, yin yoga just looks like lying around on the floor with cushions that we call bolsters. It looks really easy. But looks can be deceiving, because yin yoga can be quite challenging.
[00:03:32] Not just physically, but mentally. Now you're probably familiar with the yin yang symbol. So it's really important to distinguish what yin energy is compared with yang energy as that will really inform our approach to the practice. And yin and yang are energies, they're complementary opposites. Like two sides of coin or night and day, yin can't exist without yang and yang can't exist without yin.
[00:04:01] They complement each other. Yin and yang balance each other to create harmony.
[00:04:09] And yin is used to describe things that are relatively denser, heavier, lower, more hidden, more yielding, more feminine, more mysterious. And more passive yang is used to describe the opposite qualities, things that are less dense, lighter, higher, more obvious or superficial, more masculine, and more active.
[00:04:43] And yin yoga is designed to compliment our yang tendencies and bring us into balance with the softer, receptive, passive energy. And that's why yin yoga is so great at balancing out stress, overwork, burnout, and exhaustion, because all of those are yang problems, and being more yin can help us to strike that right balance.
[00:05:04] But all too often, clients approach yin yoga with a yang, or aggressive, achievement oriented energy, which is counterintuitive to the goals of yin yoga, which is to soften, yield, and become passive. Now there are three main principles to yin yoga. Number one, find your edge. Number two, remain still. And three, hold the pose for a period of time.
[00:05:35] So the first principle, finding your edge, is about coming into the pose at an appropriate depth. Beginners often make the mistake of pushing themselves to their limit, but that's not what yin yoga's about. We want to find that delicate balance of not too strong, not too soft, just right. We want to feel some degree of discomfort, but not pain.
[00:05:59] Kind of like pleasurable discomfort. And a good guide is our breath. If we have to hold our breath to remain in the pose, then it's too much. If we can't breathe deeply in the pose, we're doing too much. And since yin yoga is the opposite of striving and straining, we want to soften and yield into the pose, and we can't do that if we're trying too hard.
[00:06:24] And our edge is going to change each time we practice. Each day our body will feel different, the left side might feel different from the right side. We need to feel our way into our edge, rather than just thinking or assuming we know where it is.
[00:06:41] And too often we approach a yoga pose based on how we think it should look, or with an aggressive attitude trying to force our body into a shape. So a really useful reframe is that we use the pose to get into our body. rather than using our body to get into the pose. And once we've reached our edge, we pause, and notice how it feels.
[00:07:10] If we feel a stretch that's enough, then we don't go any further, we stay there. And usually it's that first point of resistance. But doing more, is counterintuitive to yin yoga. Often that's just our ego that wants us to do more. And I like to remind my clients that when it comes to yin yoga and releasing chronic tension from the body and mind, less is more.
[00:07:38] The less we force, push or strive, the more of a release we get. And that's the paradox of yin yoga that can really trip up high achievers. The second principle of remaining still is important for a couple of reasons. Firstly, yin yoga is intended to go beyond the muscles and stretch the fascia or connective tissue.
[00:08:02] And we can only access and release the fascia when our muscles are soft. And our muscles are only soft when we're still. Now the muscles naturally want to take any stretch in the body, because one of their jobs is to protect the joints. It's only when we keep the muscles still and quiet that we can allow the effect of the stretch to sink into the joints and the connective tissue.
[00:08:28] So constant movement or fidgeting engages the muscles, which means we never get to access the fascia. And the fascia is where all the chronic tension and stress is stored.
[00:08:41] And the stillness in the body means that the muscles are inactive. And this stillness eventually leads to stillness of the mind. But if you have trouble being still in the pose, if you're chronically restless, it's often a sign that our nervous system's dysregulated, that we're in that fight or flight response.
[00:09:04] And we can calm our nervous system with our breath. I really like extending our exhales. And being really present to the sensations in our body also helps our nervous system to down regulate. And that's why we use the pose to get into the body. The other reason to remain still is to help the mind and nervous system to slow down.
[00:09:26] Many of us live fast, busy lives, so our yin yoga practice is the only time we have to slow down to become still to breathe. And just let ourselves be. And while this sounds nice, it can actually be quite challenging. Because when we're no longer distracting ourselves with busyness, we can feel any anxiety that's there in our nervous system.
[00:09:52] Or we become more aware of any emotional pain that we might have been suppressing. And that can feel really uncomfortable. But the good news is that with patience and a lot of breath work, we can calm our nervous system. We can lower our anxiety. and find that inner stillness and peace that we all crave.
[00:10:12] So yin energy is still, it's quiet, it's inward. Yang energy is doing, it's achieving, it's being active. Yin energy is being.
[00:10:28] Now once we've found our edge and resolved to remain still, the third principle is to hold the pose for several minutes. Yin tissue, which is the connective tissue or fascia, responds very differently to muscle tissue. Yin tissue is plastic, or harder. And yang tissue is elastic or more stretchy. So yin tissue responds better to slow, gentle, sustained stretching, rather than muscle, which responds to, more active stretching.
[00:11:03] Now, yin yoga is derived from some principles from Daoism, from the Chinese tradition. And this is the energetic or the emotional component of yin yoga, which I often talk about in our yoga classes. And it's based on the theory of meridians or the acupuncture lines that run through the body. And yin yoga focuses on the 12 major meridians associated with our main organs.
[00:11:35] Now, meridians exist in our energy body, they're not visible in an autopsy, but they affect every organ and every system in the body, including the immune system, nervous system, endocrine system, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, skeletal, muscular, lymphatic, and reproductive system. Each system is fed by at least one meridian.
[00:11:59] And meridians are different from the organs, they have a much broader function for transporting energy around the body. Chronic stress, illness, and lifestyle can disrupt the flow of energy in these meridians, and this can lead to energy becoming stagnant, or energy blocks, or being deficient in energy.
[00:12:21] And in traditional Chinese medicine, these energy imbalances can precede poor health, and can often be used to predict the onset of illness. These energy imbalances can also indicate emotional dysregulation, and it can really point to areas where we might be in need of some healing.
[00:12:42] So we have yang meridians and yin meridians, and the yin yang form a complementary pair. And each of these meridians is associated with a particular emotion. And this is where yin yoga gets really interesting. So certain poses will target specific meridians, which will increase or stimulate the flow of energy in that meridian, which can result in an emotional release.
[00:13:11] And this is why we may suddenly get angry in a yoga class. This is why we may suddenly feel sad. This is why we may feel a sudden change of emotion. Or perhaps we don't know what the emotion is, but we feel energy moving through our body. We can feel a sense of heat. Maybe we feel tingling. Maybe we feel twitching or some involuntary movement in the body.
[00:13:36] This is energy moving. It's a really interesting aspect of our yin yoga practice. So the main meridian pairs are The spleen and stomach meridians. So the spleen is the yin and the stomach is the yang counterpart. And the emotion associated with those two are all about worry and overthinking and rumination.
[00:13:59] It's very much about being, mentally and emotionally grounded. The next pair are the liver, which is the yin meridian, and the gallbladder, which is the yang meridian. And the emotions that correspond to this pair are anger and frustration, resentment, irritation, all of those fun emotions. And you'll probably have heard or experienced yourself, poses that tend to focus on opening the hips, working on the Glutes, the groin, the inner thighs tend to target the liver and gallbladder meridians, and these are the poses that we often have a really strong emotional reaction in.
[00:14:37] The next pair are the kidney and urinary bladder meridians. So the kidney is the Yin, the bladder is the Yang, and these two relate to fear and anxiety. And just a really interesting anecdote, I had a client who, uh, was a little bit older and had, uh, urinary incontinence. And she would often complain that, after her yoga class, she would have to rush back home and would almost pee her pants just getting in the door, had to urinate, all of a sudden.
[00:15:07] And after a few months of regular yin yoga, and it just so happened to be, winter time where we tend to focus on the kidney and bladder, because they're associated with the season of winter. And after a few months, her, bladder problems just seemed to resolve itself. Uh, she no longer had that urgent need to pee and longer had those little accidents.
[00:15:30] so that was a great result for her. The next pair are heart and small intestine. The heart is the yin and the small intestine is the yang. And the emotion here is joy or fright. And the last pair is the lung meridian, which is the yin and the large intestine, which is the yang. And these two are associated with sadness and grief.
[00:15:53] So certain poses that open up through the chest area that open up through the shoulders and the inner arms. They can stimulate the lung and heart meridians and bring on some of those strong emotional releases. And this is why yin yoga can be so beneficial for stress reduction because most of our stress is emotional in nature.
[00:16:15] Uh, these days we're not really being chased by tigers. You know, our life is really in danger. A lot of our stress is mental and emotional. And think of emotions as energy stored in our body. And that energy wants to move. It wants to be expressed, it wants to be discharged. But when we don't feel our emotions, either because we don't know how to or they're just uncomfortable so we avoid them, they end up being stored in our body.
[00:16:44] And that can cause physical tension, emotional tension, it can cause energy blocks in our meridians and affect our overall vitality and how we feel. So yin yoga is a really gentle form of emotional release that can help us work through the issues in our tissues. So in our yoga classes, we'll actually tell you which meridian is being targeted and what emotions you may experience.
[00:17:12] That kind of helps to normalize, your experience. If you are having a strong emotional reaction, it can help to, to feel less odd when the teacher explains why that might be happening. And quite often the sequence of poses will be chosen based on the seasons, based on uh, what's going on in our environment.
[00:17:33] For example, if I see people in the room, they're feeling anxious, I might focus a lot on the kidney and bladder meridians. If I sense that the people in the room are frustrated, angry, or menopausal, I might focus on the liver and gallbladder meridians. If there's a lot of sadness around, or if there's sort of general grief, I may focus on the lungs.
[00:17:55] Yoga teachers can often read the energy of the room and read bodies to get a sense of the underlying emotions that people are feeling. you sort of go to a class and feel like it was just for you or just what you needed. because there's a real skill in being able to read the energy of the room and respond accordingly.
[00:18:15] Now let's have a look at the effect that yin yoga has on our nervous system. So yin yoga brings our body into the parasympathetic nervous system state, which means that it's calming and relaxing. The slowness and stillness of yin yoga contribute to this, but so does the inner awareness that we develop from yin.
[00:18:35] And there's a number of things going on at the level of our nervous system that really warrants extra explanation so you can understand the shifts that are taking place and the, the resilience and capacity that you're building in your nervous system with regular yin yoga. So, when you're in the pose and you're invited to feel into your body and feel the sensations of the pose, you're developing a nervous system skill called proprioception.
[00:19:03] And this is the ability to sense our body in space. this is kind of like being able to know where your arms and legs are without looking, being able to feel what your body is doing. And the more that we can propriocept, meaning the more that we can sense what our body is doing without looking at it, the more settled and relaxed our nervous system.
[00:19:24] So our ability to turn inwards and tune in to the sensations of our body is sending a powerful signal to our brain that we're safe and that we can begin to relax. The next input into our nervous system is called nociception. Sensing and responding to our body. And making adjustment is the next input.
[00:19:49] And this is where the nerves in our tissues register the stimuli of the stretch. And they convey this via nerve signals to the spinal cord and the brain. And this is a really complex nervous system process that involves filtering, comparing, and conditioning to eventually form our overall experience of the pose.
[00:20:09] And we use nociception to, to Detect or register potential threat, hazard or pain and respond accordingly. So this might look like getting into the pose, going beyond your edge, feeling pain and discomfort, and, uh, responding appropriately by backing out and doing less. But if you have poor nociception or you don't respond to the pain, it actually signals hazard, danger, and threat to the nervous system.
[00:20:40] And this is why we never force or push ourselves beyond our limit in yoga because it dysregulates our nervous system. And then there's interoception or our ability to detect how we feel. So not just the physical sensations of the pose, not just the sensations of the breath or our ability to feel our pulse from within, but to also notice the really subtle changes occurring in the body that's associated with stress or relaxation.
[00:21:10] interoception means sensing those internal signals from the body, like when our heart starts racing, or when our muscles tense up, or when our stomach goes into knots. And attuning to that internal landscape of our bodies with conscious awareness is known as interoception. And the better that we are at interoception, the better able we We are to respond to stress before it overwhelms our nervous system.
[00:21:35] And this is a really useful life skill that's about internalizing our attention, being present in the body and really embodying our practice gives yin yoga that calming aspect. And these three nervous system skills, proprioception. Which is our ability to sense where our body and body parts are in space without looking.
[00:22:03] Narcisseption, which is our ability to detect the signals of threat or pain or danger and respond accordingly. And interoception, which is our ability to detect those really subtle changes like our heart beating faster or our muscles tensing up to be able to detect our internal state. These three skills build resilience and capacity in our nervous system.
[00:22:28] And nervous system capacity is all about our ability to stay present when faced with discomfort, rather than going into fight, flight, or freeze. Nervous system capacity builds our window of tolerance, which means that we can handle uncomfortable situations Without being completely dysregulated and when we're able to build our capacity and increase our window of tolerance We're much calmer We're less anxious and we're better able to cope with life And the final reason I love yin yoga is that it's a gateway to meditation A lot of people have this internal block to meditation They tell themselves that they can't do it or it's too hard or they can't sit still or they're too busy But meditation is just about directing our focus and sustaining that focus over time.
[00:23:26] And that's exactly what we do in yin yoga. It's meditation without realizing you're meditating, and that's why it's so calming for the mind. When we give our minds something simple and repetitive to do, like watching our breath, or staying present with the sensations in the body, it actually calms the mind.
[00:23:48] We're directing our attention away from our thoughts, which is kind of like depriving them of oxygen. And without our attention, our thoughts tend to fizzle out. In yin yoga, we're practicing present moment awareness, and that's the most relaxing place for the mind to be. So for people who experience stress or anxiety or overwhelm, yin yoga gives them the practical tools to change how they think.
[00:24:21] And change how they respond and gives them the cognitive skills to develop that mental resilience and mental flexibility, whereby they can choose what they focus on. They can choose what they think about, and that means that when we catch ourselves having negative thoughts or going down a negative thought spiral, we can redirect our focus onto something else.
[00:24:45] We can deprive those negative thoughts and old patterns of our attention, and that's an incredibly handy tool. So if you've always wanted to try yoga, but you felt like you were too unfit or inflexible, Yin may just be the style for you. And here's the thing, you don't need to be young, fit, or flexible.
[00:25:06] We've got loads of people in their 70s practicing with us. We've got all sorts of body shapes and sizes practicing with us. And it can be modified to suit your body. So don't let a bad knee or a dodgy shoulder stop you from experiencing the benefits of yin yoga. And it's perfect for people who experience stress and anxiety.
[00:25:26] And it's beginner friendly. And right now we have a sale on our VIP Annual Membership. So you can stay relaxed and calm for a whole year. And for a limited time you can save 600 on this Annual Membership. And in addition to these savings, our annual members get access to our special member only classes and they get advanced booking access, which means they never miss out on their favorite class because they can book weeks in advance.
[00:25:56] They also get five free five class passes for friends and family, and they save big on courses and workshops for the year. But the best bit is that we gift a free three month scholarship to a member of our community with each annual membership sold. Now what I know to be true is this, life just keeps unfolding, it doesn't slow down or get less complicated or get easier.
[00:26:23] And learning to regulate our nervous system and calm our minds is going to be a life skill that we will all need to draw upon in 2024. To keep up and be at our best, we need to learn how to calm ourselves, and that's our promise to you. If you practice yoga with us regularly, you will think better, feel better, and live better.
[00:26:47] We don't care what you look like or what you wear, we want you to think and feel better on the inside. Our yoga classes are for real people, with real bodies, and we get unreal results.
[00:27:01] You'll sleep better. You'll have less stress, less anxiety, you'll be less reactive, you'll be more creative, more patient, more present with your loved ones, you might just find that spark or get your mojo back. And we offer daily yin yoga classes at our East Brisbane Yoga Studio. We offer more yin yoga classes than anyone else in town, so I really hope to see you in a yin yoga class soon.
[00:27:31] Until next time my friend.