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Have you ever practiced yin yoga? It is an excellent compliment to a Vinyasa practice. Yin has a special place in our studio as well.

It is so dear to my heart that I am offering an entire 200 hour teacher training just for those who seek to learn more and/or teach this healing and therapeutic practice.
WHO IS YIN YOGA FOR
Yin yoga is for you if you are tired and craving energy or you’re over-stimulated and have too much energy.
Our world bombards us with stimuli, 24/7, keeping our minds constantly busy with processing all the information that’s thrown at it. Whether the information is valuable or rubbish, it doesn’t matter; the mind still needs to deal with it. Eventually, we get used to that level of stimulus and start to crave it if things become quiet. So we end up browsing, looking for activities or things to fill us up; it doesn’t matter what, as long as we fill the gaps.
Any form of dynamic yoga caters to this aspect of keeping ourselves busy. Although the mind may calm down as a result of active exercise, we’re still feeding the part of us that craves intensity and wants to be stimulated. We just happen to have found ourselves a healthier stimulus! I’m not encouraging you to cut out the dynamic yoga practices. I would simply love a way to offer you a chance to balance all the on-the-go aspects of life.
A great way to do that is by practicing Yin yoga.
YIN YOGA AND THE BODY
Yin yoga works on the yin tissues – also known as the connective tissues. Connective tissue responds best to a slow, steady load, which is why we hold the poses for longer. If you gently stretch connective tissue by holding a yin pose for a long time in this way, the body will respond by making it a little longer and stronger – which is exactly what you want.
Different Yin yoga poses stimulate and remove blockages in the myofascial meridians in the body, which in turn balances the body’s internal organs and systems. Yin yoga requires the muscles to relax around the connective tissue in order to get a stretch, so not every yoga pose can be done safely or effectively when practicing Yin style yoga.
YIN YOGA AND THE MIND
Becoming still in a pose and staying for a while creates those gaps that I referred to earlier. Keeping the gaps empty creates space for anything that wants to come up. This could be anxiety, happiness sadness, boredom…any emotion or feeling you suppress with all busyness in your life. Yin yoga gives you the time and space to allow emotions, thoughts and feelings you have kept in the shadows, to surface.
Generally speaking, during a Yin yoga class, you will be encouraged to allow all those feelings to be there, but not to identify with them. To observe but not get caught up in them. It costs the body a lot of energy to keep things suppressed, so the release you feel from letting it all come out can be just as big.
If you are familiar with the way I teach, you know that this aspect of the practice is so precious to me.