The Secret Benefits of Yin Yoga…

I adore Yin Yoga. A lot of people don’t know what it is and how beautiful it can be. So I will attempt to explain and demystify. Daphne Bath my old Yin teacher used to say “chairs are your enemy, get rid of your chairs.” My mum and I started going to her classes just before my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2019. Previously I had always practiced Vinyasa, Ashtanga and Iyengar yoga. Yin was a revelation and Daphne was a magical human being. If you came into contact with her you just felt like everything was going to be ok, her warmth humour and capacity to light any room was palpable. Daphne lost her battle with cancer in August 2022 but helped people dealing with terminal illness and loss through her practice and her personality. She inspired me and helped me through a difficult time. After losing Dad I knew I needed Yin as a regular part of my life and I wanted to start a journey of using yoga and creativity to share with others too. Daphne is always in my mind, every class I teach, in the magic of the practice and as a compassionate character. 

Daphne Bath

Yin is stillness in a busy world, it uses long hold poses (between 2 and 5 minutes) where you surrender into each pose and breathe, letting go of stress, tension and emotion. It is challenging on many levels. You use your breath to calm your central nervous system and gravity to go deeper into each pose.

When do you practice being still?

When do you ever stop to truly notice what is going on in your body and mind without judgement?

On a physiological level it works your fascia (like cellophane, fascia wraps in and around your muscles and muscle fibres all over your body) and connective tissues. It works like acupressure because you are stressing your connective tissues and muscle fibres in deep stretches that you hold and soften into, improving your flexibility and mobility. Using your breath (pranayama) increases the amount of oxygen in your blood which activates and nourishes your muscles and connective tissues in each pose. Pranayama also directly links to our emotional state, our levels of stress and pain threshold. It helps you to de-stress. As we focus on our inner selves and distance our minds from all that stimulates it, we can go into a deep introspective state which can help give perspective. This meditative practice allows you to focus on yourself, your relation to the world around you and gain a deeper understanding of self. This is truly profound.  With Yin you are self lubricating your body, regenerating and being present, truly present in the moment, calming, stretching, soothing, accepting and gaining awareness.

Yin is often called the gateway to meditation because you gently guide your focus to your breath and your body, if your brain jumps to the past or future you just gently pull it back to the present to your breath and body with a certain curiosity. After a while this becomes a regular practice and skill. Noticing sensations deep inside or close to the skin, feeling where areas are tight, tense or holding and storing emotions and energy, then sending your breath to those areas to create space.

Space and time are often what we lack in day to day life. I hold that space and time with great care, to guide women to connect to themselves, to reset and restore on a regular basis. This is very important work. It is a kind and compassionate practice. It is accessible and so very helpful, now of all times when we need to learn to self soothe, to slow down, to treat ourselves and others with empathy and care.

We live in hyper-stimulated modes most of the time, with long lists of things that need to be done, deadlines to meet, challenges that come at us through work, finances, relationships. We see so much devastation and suffering in the world and we all have varying pressures coming at us, it is part of modern life.

But how does the body react to stress?

Our sympathetic nervous system, when activated, is on high alert (fight or flight), bracing ourselves and searching for incoming threats and dangers. We are over stimulated and overwhelmed on a daily basis. We breathe into our chest high and shallow, we tense and hold our bodies in ways to protect ourselves. We hold and store tension, trauma and experiences in our bodies, our minds are working fast. We find it hard to sleep, to switch off. Society expects us to become always busy, always on. 

When we experience stress, our bodies release hormones like epinephrine (adrenaline), cortisol, and norepinephrine. These hormones are designed to help us deal with stressful situations by increasing our heart rate, blood pressure, and blood sugar levels. However, chronic stress can take a toll on our bodies and minds over time leading to anxiety, weight gain, depression, high blood pressure, cognitive dysfunction, weakened immune system, gastrointestinal problems and other health problems.

Yin helps us to release stress and tension, to be in the present moment, breathing, feeling and releasing. It can help us to learn techniques to self soothe and activate our parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest) both on the mat and in our daily lives. It is somehow easier than mediation because of the way we are leaning into being curious about our physical body by taking different poses, which at first feel uncomfortable, but after a while we surrender and can go deeper still. 

If you feel yoga is a bit woo for you, there is plenty of scientific research like this controlled trial from the Depts of Psychology and Clinical Sciences at the University of Lund, Sweden in 2018, which tested a group who attended two hour classes of Yin yoga per week, compared to a group who did not and a group who did yoga and other mindful learning plus the Yin yoga. Below is the abstract, see the full paper here.

Five-week yin yoga-based interventions decreased plasma adrenomedullin and increased psychological health in stressed adults: A randomized controlled trial.

Background

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs, e.g. cardiovascular disease, cancer) are responsible for high rates of morbidity and the majority of premature deaths worldwide. It is necessary to develop preventative interventions that can reduce the associated risk factors of NCDs. Researchers have found that the biomarker adrenomedullin (ADM) becomes elevated years before the onset of NCDs and might play an important role in their development. ADM has also been linked to psychological problems such as stress, anxiety, and depression, which are known risk factors of NCDs. In this randomized controlled trial, we examined whether participating in a five-week yoga intervention reduces ADM and increases psychological health in middle-aged adults who self-report as moderately to highly stressed, but who otherwise exhibit no physical complaints.

Methods

One hundred and five adults (78% women; mean age = 53.5, SD = 6.7) were randomly assigned to (1) a five-week Yin yoga intervention, (2) a five-week intervention combining Yin yoga with psychoeducation and mindfulness practice (called the YOMI program), or (3) a control group who did not practice yoga or mindfulness for five weeks.

Results

Compared to the control group, we observed significantly greater pre-post reductions in plasma ADM levels (p < .001), anxiety (p ≤ .002), and sleep problems (p ≤ .003) in both intervention groups. Furthermore, the YOMI group exclusively showed significantly greater pre-post reductions in stress (p = .012) and depression (p = .021) compared to the control group. Significant correlations (p < .05) were found between pre-post reductions in ADM and anxiety symptoms (p = .02) and depression (p = .04) in the entire sample.

Conclusion

The five-week Yin yoga-based interventions appeared to reduce both the physiological and psychological risk factors known to be associated with NCDs. The study suggests that incorporating Yin yoga could be an easy and low-cost method of limiting the negative health effects associated with high stress.

“If you don’t tend to your garden, your plants won’t grow.” Was another favourite line of Daphne’s. When I made the decision to leave my career and retrain as a yoga teacher Daphne was in my mind. Now I run a regular Yin class on a Friday evening in Winchester and I can’t fully describe how magical it is. I see women come in, mothers, grandmothers, daughters all with a multitude of pressures in their lives whether it be life, work, loss, relationships, exams, and together we are still, in candlelight, all breathing and tuning into ourselves at the same time, just accepting, surrendering and regenerating. It is sublime.

I used to teach in universities here in the UK and in Portugal. I know how hard it is in education for teachers. My daughter is 12 and in her first year of secondary school. At Christmas I gifted a free Yin class to the teachers. Now, in 2024 I am holding a weekly class for them. It is so important to integrate time for this kind of deep work, to be able to refuel and build stamina in the long term. To be preventative and not reactive.

Having spent a lifetime thinking I did not have time to prioritise regular self care, I hit burnout in 2020 when multiple life challenges hit at once. I knew I needed to change my pattern as a mum, as an employee and as a daughter of going through life hard and fast with everything going out of me and nothing much coming back in, no pause, no space no time to replenish or even to notice who I was in the present moment. I know this is a familiar story for many.

So now the School of Creative Wellness provides a most beautiful service of time, skills and toolkits for wellness for women like me, and perhaps like you. Moving from arts and design education to creative wellness for women has been a natural transition. There is a great need for this kind of transformative work.

Below is a handwritten note from Jan who comes to the Friday Yin class every week, which means so much to me:

If you want to experience Yin Yoga The School of Creative Wellness offers several opportunities that you can book:

Yin and Restore In Winchester on Friday Evenings. Susanna offers yoga Nidra and Yin Yoga in these beautiful classes for women.

 Yin Yoga and Soundbath Experiences (5 per year) Booking now for January 20th.

Weekend Wellness Retreats (4 per year) June Bookings.

Susanna also has space to take on only 3 more private clients this month. You can be based anywhere for online guided sessions to fit into your busy schedules. A perfect wind down after work for beautiful Yin and Yoga Nidra sessions.  Available on request.