‘Each yin pose is a chance to crawl inside ourself and stay a while’ - Sarah Powers

Whether you are brand new to Yin or a seasoned practitioner, you are welcome to attend one or all of these yin classes with Nicci Cloete of Metta365. No experience necessary, no flexibility required, all bodies welcomed and accommodated.

What is Yin Yoga?

In the West, a lot of the yoga practiced in studios is what’s known as “yang” styles of yoga—vigorous, fast-paced classes like vinyasa, power, and Ashtanga. But there’s another equally important style that’s completely opposite and vastly underrated: yin yoga. 

While “yang” yoga focuses on your muscles, yin yoga targets your deep connective tissues, like your fascia, ligaments, joints, and bones. It’s slower and more meditative, giving you space to turn inward and tune into both your mind and the physical sensations of your body.

Because you’re holding poses for a longer period of time than you would in other traditional types of yoga, yin yoga helps you stretch and lengthen those rarely-used tissues while also teaching you how to breathe through discomfort and sit with your thoughts.

Here, the goal isn’t to move through postures freely--postures could be held for three to five minutes, or even 20 minutes at a time. A yin practitioner is trying to access the deeper tissues, and many of the postures focus on areas that encompass a joint (such as the hips, sacrum, and spine, to name a few). 

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 stuff; 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, just try to balance all the on-the-go aspects of life. A great way to do that is by practising Yin yoga.

Yin 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. 

Yin 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.

You learn to observe only the pure physical sensations of emotions, without getting caught up in the stories about those emotions. 

These stories are usually related to why we feel such and such, whose fault it is etc. Just observing the physical sensations, without giving ‘juice’ to the stories, allows those emotions and physical sensations a way out of your system. This helps to clear the mind of these often unconscious emotions, and thus gives your system an opportunity to work through the blockages those emotions have caused in the body. What a wonderful and much-needed release!

What are the benefits?

There are plenty of physical health benefits to practicing yin yoga, but there are plenty of mental health ones, too. Below are some of the most popular, from stretching your connective tissue to reducing stress and anxiety.

1. Lengthens connective tissue

Think of your fascia like shrink wrap around your muscles and bones. When this connective tissue is underused, it becomes less elastic which can lead to aches and stiffness. “If you gently stretch connective tissue by holding a yin pose for a long time, the body will respond by making them a little longer and stronger—which is exactly what you want,” Paul Grilley a registered yoga teacher, explains.

2. Increases flexibility

Elastic fascia and mobile joints lead to better flexibility, which is one of the key benefits to a regular yin yoga practice. Because fascia needs at least 120 seconds of sustained stretching to actually affect its elasticity, yin is one of the most effective ways at improving your flexibility and releasing tension in tight spots thanks to its long holds.

3. Boosts your circulation

By breathing into each pose and targeting your deeper tissues and ligaments, you bring more oxygen into your body and to your muscles. This helps increase your blood flow and circulation.

4. Reduces stress levels

That calm you feel after a yin class is very real—studies have found yin yoga to have a significant impact on lowering stress and anxiety and reducing the risk of depression. Plus, it activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which calms your body and slows your heart rate (rather than the autonomic nervous system, which triggers your fight-or-flight response).

About your host

Nicci lives in Scarborough with her passive-aggressive cat and her two children. She studied psychology, worked in corporate and non-profit for over 15 years, has years of formal training in yoga, mindfulness breathwork instructor, and retrained as a professional life coach to bring it all together (visit her website for more information).

Aside from individual coaching, Nicci teaches mindfulness to leaders, teams and execs at some of South Africa's biggest companies. Her flagship client is Woolworths Financial Services, having been engaged as mindfulness coach to the CEO and Exco team for over a year. She is a facilitator for Living Values and previous clients include Food Lovers' Market, Woolworths Holdings, The Sustainability Institute, Stellenbosch University and Elgin Free Range Chickens.

Please share with anyone you think may be interested in joining us so we can raise some funds for the amazing work that Kelson and crew do at Scarborough Environment Group.

Hope to see you there.

Questions to nicci@metta365.com

Sources https://www.ekhartyoga.com/articles/practice/the-benefits-of-yin-yoga

https://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-5037/Yin-Yoga-101-What-You-Need-to-Know.html