Yin Yoga is a magical practice, where the poses are held for an extended period of time, creating a long slow extension of the body, unwinding of compacted fascia, and unknotting and releasing of muscles. The practice allows the body to drop down in to the parasympathetic nervous system and therefore becomes a deeply healing and nourishing practice. It is grounding, calming and revitalising, with profound physical, energetic and emotional affects.
8 Amazing Benefits of Yin Yoga
1. You stretch beyond the muscle fibres and in to the connective tissue and fascia.
Fascia is a continuous web of tissue which weaves in and around our organs, muscles, nerves, lymph. It is everywhere, and to be truly flexible we much stretch this out. Fascia requires long held gentle stretches. Practising Yin Yoga will give you a greater range of motion and increased flexibility. Your body will feel longer, lighter, looser.
2. Toxins are stored deep within the fascia.
When the fascia is stretched these deeply embedded toxins are released. Yin yoga is a mini detox, and it’s a 10th of the price!
3. In stretching out the fascia, water and chemicals are secreted, which lubricates the joint capsules and between the layers of fascia.
Joints move more freely and the layers of fascia glide over each other, giving you a sense of openness and a wonderful freedom of movement.
4. We learn to be still in our yin practice.
Needless to say this is an increasingly difficult thing for Westerners to be, with the constant and persistent onslaught of technology, emailing, texting, tweeting, facebooking, instagramming, pinteresting. Endless social media updates to prove that you are down with the kids and keeping up with the Jones’s. Come to a yin class and suddenly there is nothing to do, nothing to watch, you sit there and be still. You sit there and be.
5. Yin yoga prepares you like nothing else for meditation.
Unlike other forms of yoga it opens up the joints and joint capsules and therefore sitting still for long periods of time becomes manageable and pain free. You can meditate without the distraction of pain in your body.
6. The energy channels are located deep within the fascia tissue.
In stretching out the fascia we are also stimulating the flow of energy / chi / prana / life force through our bodies. Yin yoga balances out the flow of energy through our meridians, which creates a sense of general wellbeing and ‘ease’.
7. Yin yoga gives you permission to rest (most of the postures are on the ground) and this relaxation drops you down in to the parasympathetic nervous system.
This place is where our body rest and digests. Blood, nutrients, energy goes in to our digestive system, our endocrine system, our reproductive organs, our lymphatic system. Our body detoxifies and begins to heal itself. Our body is allowed to work its own magic.
8. Yin yoga has been proven to help people with PTSD, anxiety, depression, eating disorders.
It slows down our mind and helps to control our thoughts. Those destructive thought patterns are lessened, broken, diminished.
Yin Yoga rocks. In a world where we are obsessed with ‘doing’ and obsessed with ‘tightening’ and ‘shrinking’ and ‘creating’ muscle mass it is provides the much needed antidote; relaxing, being, lengthening, confirming that as we are now, we are enough.
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