What is Yin Yoga?
Yin yoga is a practice of interoception. It involves staying in a pose, which targets the ligaments, joints, bones, deep connective tissue and the fascia of the body, for long steady passive holds. It is in this staying and stillness, without distractions of movement, that we can begin to slow the mind and body down. This slowing down and stillness enables us to go inwards and fosters inner listening; to pay attention and to notice sensations and feelings. It helps us to peel back the layers of what lies beneath the surface of our skin. By stepping into the feeling body as we focus on physical sensations during a pose, we in turn allow ourselves to ground into the energetic body and to give space to emotions to reveal themselves. Yin yoga also offers us a time for reflection in the stillness of ‘rebound’ as we experience the echoes and vibrations of the poses. It is a practice of self-awareness and self-study as it is a time for the practitioner to observe his/her thoughts, reactions and emotions. It encourages us to accept all that is and to surrender instead of resisting or escaping. It is through this surrendering that yin yoga has the potential to also be a practice which can cultivate an inner awakening and transformation.
Why practise Yin Yoga?
Like other forms of yoga, yin yoga helps to bring calm to the body and mind and can reduce stress and anxiety. However, yin specifically targets the deeper connective tissues and it is through applying a stress to these tissues for a longer period of time that circulation in the joints and flexibility can be improved. As yin yoga also stimulates the myofascial meridians, it helps to remove blockages and regulate the body’s flow of energy or qi, which in turn balances the body’s internal organs and systems. Yin yoga is the perfect complement to other more dynamic and muscle strengthening forms of yoga, which can be referred to as more yang practices. These are all good reasons to practise yin!
More importantly still is that yin yoga allows us time to sit with ourselves, to slow down, to be still, to tune into how we are feeling and to notice what our mind or body is trying to tell us. In an era where dependence upon and addiction to social media and technology is prevalent, we have become accustomed to constant stimuli and distractions in our daily lives. Our days are consumed with multi-tasking and deadlines, and with that comes stress and anxiety. We have become more comfortable in busyness than in stillness, and we more often than not attempt to fill any void in our days with more stimulation. We tend to crave and jump into the next experience or search for our next thrill instead of digesting our experience and just sitting with our thoughts and emotions. We prioritise doing and going instead of stopping and feeling. We spend most of the time up in our heads that we have become so disconnected to our bodies and we have forgotten how to be in stillness and in silence. We need to learn how to balance our yang lifestyles of go-go-go with the calmness and quietness of yin.
Through a yin practice, we reconnect to our bodies in a gentle way. We learn to listen to both our body and mind, and to notice and recognize our thoughts, reactions and emotions from a place of calm as opposed to running from them. A yin practice carves out space and time for us from our busy lives – space and time to allow emotions, thoughts and feelings to come up which may have been pushed aside or buried beneath the deep layers of our body’s tissues. Our body ‘keeps the score’; it holds the ‘issues (emotions, memories, tension, stress, worries and anxieties) in our tissues’. Yoga, but yin yoga in particular, helps these ‘issues’ to resurface or be released and can offer the practitioner an opportunity for reflection or a sense of relief, clarity or an awakening. Recognising our patterns and thought processes, and reflecting on our actions and emotions can help to bring us closer to our true nature and to our authentic self.
Yin teaches us how to be comfortable in stillness and in discomfort, how to sit with ourselves and connect to ourselves. Yin helps us be in the present moment, in a place of observation and acceptance – acceptance of all that we are, the dark and the light, the ego and the true Self. Through yin we not only gain a deeper understanding of ourselves, but we nourish the relationship we have with ourselves and cultivate self-compassion, resilience and inner strength.
