Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign welcome to Deep in your yoga practice. I'm Lauren Leduc, the owner and founder of True Love Yoga in Kansas City, Missouri. And today we will deepen our yoga practices by talking about Yin Yoga. So where does it come from? Why do we practice it and what does it does it offer? We'll talk a bit about Yin yoga's roots, its philosophy, all of its benefits, and how it can support your nervous system and deep energetic awareness. I'll also add that we have Yin yoga within our 300 hour yoga teacher training at True Love Yoga and we offer Yin several times a week at the studio, if you're curious. So if you'd like to know more about the practice of surrender, stillness and inner listening, this one is for you. And I thought it would be apropos because we are shifting into a more Yin time of year. So we have Yin and Yang, which most people are familiar with. Yang is more fiery and more active. Yin is more receptive and more cool. And as we move into these winter months, we get to slow down a bit and explore the more lunar Yin side of things. That being said, what is Yin yoga? Yin is a slow floor based meditative yoga practice where poses are held for about two to seven minutes and it targets the fascia joints and deeper connective tissue, not really the muscles. It emphasizes stillness and surrender and awareness over movement and effort. It is similar to restorative in that it's passive and you're holding postures for a long time and you might use props as well for support, but it's a little bit different. It's nourishing like restorative, but it's less about letting go and more about focusing, staying with the sensations of the body and then surrendering into that. Yin yoga was developed here in the west in the late 1970s and 80s, but it is influenced by Chinese Taoist practices and traditional Hatha yoga. If you go back to the traditional Hatha yoga texts and see how postures were practiced, they were typically held for a very long period of time. The founder of Yin Yoga was Poly Zinc and then it was expanded upon by Paul Greeley and Sarah Powers and then many other influential teachers in the US and beyond. Yin especially draws from Daoism and TCM or traditional Chinese medicine and Buddhism as well, especially through concepts like the Yin and the Yang which I spoke of. This passive versus active energy or lunar versus solar energy as well as the meridian system and Chi. So energy channels within TCM as well as this idea of balance through. So Yin isn't ancient in form, but it draws from ancient wisdom and systems that remind us the power of slowing down. There are many benefits to a Yin Yoga practice. Physically, it increases joint health and mobility and flexibility. It stimulates fascia and deep connective tissues. It also aids in recovery for athletes and young style practitioners. For so for those of us who like to strength train or who are athletes or love Vinyasa Yoga, Yin is such a wonderful and important compliment to these practices. It also supports parasympathetic nervous system regulation. So it helps us go from fight or flight and downregulate more into a place of rest and digest and connection. There are also energetic and subtle benefits to Yin Yoga. It supports the flow of chi or prana life force energy through meridians or nadi pathways and I interchange some of those words, although they're from different systems. But it helps the energy flow through the system. To put it plainly, it connects to the chakra system and you can program your Yin practices around that. And it builds tolerance for discomfort and inner awareness. So you have time to be in a posture and maybe to explore whatever sensations you're feeling both externally and internally. And you have to be with that for the duration of the posture. So it's where we meet the edge of discomfort and we stay present, not to fix or change anything, but simply to witness and also to make choices. We can meet our edge and then pull back a little bit into a little bit softer space. So what does a Yin class look like? It's typically going to look like floor based poses, just a handful of those per class since you're holding them for a good amount of time. The poses are held passively so there is little to no muscular engagement. There are props like bolsters and blankets and blocks to help support these passive postures. Your teacher will speak a bit more minimally. Maybe they will introduce a theme, maybe they will help keep you present during different postures. But they're also going to leave a lot of space for introspection for you to be with yourself. Some common poses you might experience are very similar, if not the same as in Hatha or Vinyasa Yoga, but they often have different names. So there's Dragon Pose, which is a low lunge, or a Lizard Sphinx pose which is the same in Yin, and Vinyasa Caterpillar Pose, which is the same as Paschimottanasana or seated forward fold shoelace, which we know as Gomukhasana in Vinyasa or Hatha Yoga as well as many, many other postures that can be explored. So a lot of the postures are the same. The approach is just what is different. Yin classes often close as well with a nice long Shavasana or meditation. So expect silence, space and stillness. And with them, maybe a deeper sense of space and clarity when you finish the practice. There are many reasons to practice Yin Yoga. One is to balance an active lifestyle. So if you love hiit strength, Vinyasa, or maybe you have a very busy schedule, Yin is such a great opportunity to pause and slow down. It's a really great way as well to process emotions and stress and to slow down during times of transition. So it can be this really beautiful gift to yourself. In busy or difficult times, it's great to practice during the evening when you're slowing things down, or maybe when you're marking some kind of cycle in life like new moon or full moon. It's a great support during times of grief or burnout or exhaustion. And it's a wonderful opportunity to explore stillness, mindfulness and meditative presence. Yin invites us to listen more deeply to our bodies, our breath and our being. We get to be instead of do. My life has been really busy and full lately and I love Vinyasa Yoga and I absolutely adore strength training as well. And sometimes it can be hard to stop, to pause, to slow down and to devote time to something so slow and spacious. But every time I come back to my mat for Yin Yoga, I feel this deep sense of replenishment and restoration. And I'm so grateful I have this tool in my toolbox to balance out all of the Yang in my life. Like I said earlier, we do offer Yin at True Love Yoga. And through ytt, we offer Yin four times a week at True Love Yoga on Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. We also offer yin in our 300 hour yoga teacher training. And we go deeper into Meridian Theory, advanced prop usage, therapeutic applications of Yin, and sequencing and intuitive teaching as well. So if you're feeling called to go deeper, not just in your body, but in your teaching and being, I would absolutely love for you to join us. It starts January 1st. I can link to the application in the show notes. And before we close, I would love to invite you to try a Yin Yoga class this week, especially if it's something that you tend to avoid. So if you are go, go going, try to pause and just be and approach the Yin practice with an open mind. We tend to avoid things that are uncomfortable and Yin can be a little bit confrontational in that way. So I invite you to approach that with that knowledge, but also with the possibility that it might soften your edges, open some space, and feel deeply relaxing. A really simple home practice you could do is legs up the wall with deep breathing just for five minutes. So scoot your bum up against a wall or even your headboard on your bed.
[00:09:10] Flip your legs up, close your eyes, and breathe deeply. Let yourself hold that and notice how you feel when you're done. I have a journal prompt for you if you would like to reflect on this, which is, where in my life am I being asked to soften? So, as we enter this Yin season, where are you being asked to soften? What edges would you like to let go of? How would you like to create more space? Thank you so much for joining me for this episode. Happy Yin season.
[00:09:41] Until next time. Om Shanti Om. Peace.
