Yin yoga has been rising in popularity since the 1980’s inspired by martial arts expert Paulie Zinc, and then developed by Paul Grilley. Most yoga styles have been traditionally been of a “yang” nature, such as Ashtanga, Vinyasa and power yoga. Yang meaning more dynamic, faster paced and outwardly focused.
It could be argued that we live in a yang world – being busy human doings, rather than human beings. A large proportion of the population are juggling work/life and the overwhelming pressures we face to pay bills, stay fit, nurture our children, relationships, stay in touch with friends, stay on top of current affairs and the list continues. As Ruby Wax book title suggests, a large proportion of the population are “frazzled!”. Our brain simply cannot cope with all of the incoming and our nervous system is often “sympathetically” focused in fight/flight/freeze. Rather than our nervous system helpfully being activated by a potential attack by a woolly mammal in which the sympathetic nervous system was evolved for, we are now being attacked by emails, messages, news, marketing and a never ending list of other pressures. Living mostly in the sympathetic nervous system doesn’t allow our body to rest, digest and heal and can lead to dis-ease. The effects of stress on our health include a weakened immune system, high blood pressure, heartburn and headaches to name a few. Living predominately a “yang” lifestyle is clearly bad for your health.
According to the mental health foundation, in a survey from 2018, 74% of adults had felt so stressed over the previous year that they have felt overwhelmed and unable to cope. Post pandemic evidence from the mental health charity Mind suggests that around a third of people surveyed said their mental health had got worse since the pandemic.
Both Yin and Yang styles of yoga have a positive physical effect on the body including an increase of strength and flexibility, increased metabolism, an improvement in lung capacity and an increase of happy chemicals to the brain including Dopamine, Serotonin, Oxytocin and endorphins. However, there is more to yoga than the benefits to the physical body and for some people yoga helps people with a sense of connection to the divine/god/mother nature or whatever resonates with that person in relation to connecting to something other than ourselves. Evidently all yoga styles have benefits So why yin over yang?
(This is by no means an exhaustive list!)
Balancing the yang lifestyle with a yin practice creates balance and homeostasis. A study carried out in Sweden in 2017 found that yin yoga decreased stress and worry and increased mindfulness. Interestingly these positive changes were still prevalent 5 weeks after the study ended. A similar study examined the effect of yin yoga on stress, anxiety and depression and the group that practiced yin yoga against yang style yoga or no yoga practice showed the best results.
Yin yoga is characteristically quieter and more relaxing, and trains you to mentally slow down. Advising some people to meditate in order to slow down isn’t attainable for some people, and can often cause added anxiety. A practice of yin yoga helps the practitioner use the body as a gateway to relax the mind and therefore calms the nervous system.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, resilience can be defined as “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties”. Poses are held for longer in yin yoga, teasing the interconnective tissues giving them an opportunity to lengthen and therefore increases joint mobility. This in turn builds resilience as sometimes the practitioner may play with the edge of their threshold when stretching and is therefore sometimes uncomfortable. Life is often uncomfortable, but as humans we often want to move away from this emotion (energy in motion) by distracting or numbing ourselves. Staying with the “uncomfortable” and then potentially feeling a sense of release can arguably build resilience in our everyday life. Stretching our tissues for longer also helps our joints to stay healthy, agile and recover from injuries faster.
Many people associate yin yoga with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) as they believe yin yoga activates the flow of Qi in the body. According to the Yoga Journal, Hiroshi Motoyama and other researchers argue the network of connective tissues corresponds with the meridians of acupuncture and the nadis of yoga. TCM practitioners and yogis believe that blockages in energy manifest in physical problems; and believe that strengthening and stretching connective tissues is critical for our long term health. Many (sensible) people believe that prevention or treating problems before they manifest is much more effective than curing through the use of pharmaceuticals and potential surgery. A term that I recently heard is that Eastern medicine helps keep you living, and western medicine stops you from dying, meaning that TCM is preventative and western medicine is responsive. Additionally, TCM incorporates the whole body including the mind and western medicine treats the symptom.
Finally – yin yoga encourages greater self awareness (you may have the time and space to ask how am I? what’s coming up for me?). Its only when we slow down we can really listen to the mind, the body and even potentially our high selves!
In summary, yoga practitioners may choose yin over yang to balance out their yang lifestyles, to downregulate their nervous system caused by stress, to stretch their bodies helping to keep joints healthy which as a positive knock on effect in terms of building resilience. According to Hiroshi Motoyama and other researchers, Yin yoga can help unblock Qi in the body to prevent illness and finally
– give yourself the time and space to just listen!
