Yin Yoga for Strength, Stillness, and Silence

Take a Yin Yoga journey with me to discover your strength. As we slowly stretch and hold poses for release, you will find hidden strength in your body. When we are still, we can feel the tension leaving the body. And being silent will allow you to feel and hear your deep, healing breath. Find the Strength, relish the Stillness, and sink into Silence.

Transcript

Welcome to our Yin Yoga session today focusing on silence, Stillness and strength and how we can feel the strength in our body by simply being still and letting go of tension that we're holding on to and that we don't need. You'll need lots of props today. Let's start out first with a strap. Grab that and grab a pillow. You might even utilize two pillows and a block. So we're going to take the block and scoot back so you can see just a little more. We're going to take the block underneath the pillow so it's like a it's like a little lift. So there's a ski slope, A little elevation for that the pillow. This will give us a natural chest opener. And then we will use the strap to bind up our legs for a hip opener. Let me face you first. So take your strap. If you have one that's got a c-ring that's the best way. If you don't have one it's okay we'll work it out. But you can take your strap around your back and then in front across the legs. Now let's loop up our c-ring. So you pull the strap through the two metal rings and then take it back through just one of them. And this will make a it's nice and loose or it can be held tight if you pull on the two ends. So we can tighten it up or it can hold our tension. And then we will place the strap around our feet. Now just be careful of where the loop is. You don't want it around your right by your feet because it might create tension. And you're going to tug on that strap while you're in this Baddha Konasana. So there's some tension. I can feel it pulling. My legs aren't going to be able to slide out of the pose. Then let's scoot ourselves around and put your hips right up against your pillow and then lay yourself back so that your head is about on that block. Got it pretty well. Now at this point you might need to tighten on that strap just a little bit or loosen it either way. Make it feel like it's holding a little pressure so it's opening up and your legs are not going to be able to slide too far out of it. And then just bring your arms by your sides. If you are worried about getting cold feel free to place a blanket over you. I'm just going to put it over me a little bit. It's a little cold here so keep yourself warm. Be comfortable and we'll close our eyes and just start to focus on the breath. Now you'll see me using my watch during this. It's just simply to put a timer on us so that we don't fall asleep, So that I don't fall asleep. I'll show you my position again once more. Okay so close your eyes and start to notice the breath. All day long we breathe and we don't think about it. It's something that happens naturally. It just comes and it goes. And here we want to feel the breath. We want to feel how it deepens. The moment that we lay down our breath starts to deepen. It's just a natural response of laying down and starting to rest. So we can feel how it becomes not just through the chest but deeper down into the diaphragm. So as you breathe here, Seek the the full breath. We are in quiet, Not quite silence, Because you might be able to hear the sound of your breath moving through the throat. And our body is mostly still but we are breathing. There's movement there. But since we don't have to worry about how to move or when to move, Maybe we can silence our mind or at least quiet it just a little for a few moments. Let's see how we can just allow ourselves to release and let go. Start to wake yourself up just a little if you fell asleep. Hopefully not too much. Just enough to release some of that tension in your body. And let's carefully bring our feet together. Now your strap is on your legs so we have to shimmy our way out of it. I'm going to press up with my hands and then loosen that strap around the feet. Let's bring it off to the side and just set it down. And we'll come over to all just to our feet for a moment or just sit for a moment and just take a moment and just shake. Shake those legs, Letting go a little through that tension there. And then come to all fours. We'll just do some gentle movement with cat and cow. Now in yin yoga we don't like to warm up our body completely because we don't want to have tension and then release it. We want to just be relaxed and release. But some gentle movement is appropriate. So let's drop our belly down. Shoulders roll up back. Inhale, Send your gaze up. Exhale, Round through the spine. Pull and lift, Tucking your chin and your hips. Inhale, Arch, Belly drops down, Send the gaze up. Exhale, Round, Trying to get full range of movement. See how we're just moving slow, Getting that full articulation of the spine. One more time. Inhale, You might feel the strength through your arms, Back. Exhale, Curving it. Feel the motion in the back. Once more. Inhale, Arch. Exhale, Round. Good. Come back to neutral and let's grab that bolster again. You might need two, Just depending on your flexibility. We're going to bring it around our, You know, On our belly in a child's pose. So I'm sitting back onto my heels and then just let yourself lay down onto that pillow. You see I've got two. I'm just feeling a little tight today. If that's too high, Just one is fine. Either way, Do what works best for you. Maybe a pillow and a folded up blanket works fine as well. And just turn your head. We're going to hold on each side with our head for two minutes. And just let yourself relax like you would into a pillow, A body pillow. Our arms are just relaxing right down by our sides and we can feel that gentle release through the hips. That's the sacrum right in between there. This time we can feel our breath from the stomach because we're laying on the pillows. So you might notice that deep belly breath. Good. Now lift yourself up. Let's switch sides. Set my timer again. To the other side. This is just helping our neck so it doesn't get too tight on one side. It's just as much of a neck release as it is a hip release. And lay yourself back down. Maybe getting deeper and deeper with each exhale. Gently press your way up and we'll shift our pillows out of the way for a moment. Come up onto all fours and just gently tap your feet. We were putting maybe a little pressure on the tops of the feet so tap them out. And then step your way onto your feet and let yourself just hang forward. So see how my knees are bent? I'm just gonna hang here through my neck. You can even shake your neck around. Shake your head one way. The other way. Sway a little bit. Might feel nice. Don't worry if your hands are not touching the floor. I've got a short torso and long arms so I have that going for me. Just feel that heaviness and that release through the back. Let's slowly lift up. Maybe straighten the knees a little bit and coming through each vertebrae one at a time. All the way up. I should have grabbed my hair tie. Pull your arms and your shoulders back as you stand. Good. We'll face each other. We've got a lot of strength in our shoulders but they can get tight. So let's feel the strength and then release it. Reach your arms up. Inhale. Feel that strength in the shoulders. Exhale. Release it. Take your hands back behind you and clasp them together back there. Press into your fingers and look up. Pulling the shoulder blades down away from the neck and feel that opening in the chest and the heart center. Keep your hands there and then look down. Feel the release through the the back of the neck. We're now stretching out that cervical spine there. Release the hands. Inhale. Lift them back up again. Exhale. With your exhale goes all the tension. Good. Clasp your hands or actually grab your left wrist and pull over to that right hip. You can feel this in your left shoulder. Then turn your gaze to your left shoulder. So you're looking slightly down at that shoulder and feeling the neck, The side of the neck on that right side. Good. Release that hold. Switch sides. So now grab your right hand with your left, Your right wrist with your left hand. Turn your gaze toward your shoulder. Feel that right shoulder, That area right around the pectoral and the chest and sending our gaze down so we feel that rotation through the neck. Good. Now go the opposite direction. Let's start with our left arm because that's what we were on before. Take it in front and pull it across. Be mindful of this shoulder. Don't let it lift up. Pull it down. Pull it down into the hips, The shoulder socket. Maybe lower it just a little so that it's not lifted. My arm is maybe just a little lower than shoulder height. Good. Release that arm. Let's do the other side. Hold the right arm across. See how my shoulder is lifted? Draw it down and pull across your chest so you can just feel this outer area of the shoulder and coming into the arm. I'm sure there's good anatomical names, Muscle names. I don't know but we can feel it in our arms. Good. Beautiful. Now build up that strength. Let's take it back to our knees. Lift up. Inhale. Feel how strong and sturdy and stable you are. Exhale. Swan dive forward. Let everything release on the way down. Feel free to bend those knees once again. Bring your hands to your shins. Inhale. Halfway lift and then exhale. Bend your knees. Let's come down to all fours and take your body to the floor. We will crisscross our hands on top of each other. Palms on the ground and then lay that forehead down on your hands. Now this time our head is just looking, You're looking down to the ground. So really nice neutral spine. We can just hold this pose here for two minutes because we are not turning our head one way or another. And just letting the shoulders relax. I like to shake my legs a little bit to let the low back and the glutes all of that relax. This is crocodile pose. I think it feels like almost like you're laying on a massage table. You don't have to turn your head one way or another. And feel the stillness. Again we can notice a little bit of that belly breathing, Belly breath. Tops of the feet on the floor. Try to relax the tops of your feet. Everything relaxing with each exhale. Good. Let's gently lift up. Press ourselves up and come to sit. Grab all a whole bunch of your props again and bring your legs around. So we're going to do a forward bend, Supported forward bend. I've still got my strap on. All looped up. Let's unwind that strap so it's ready. We're going to use that as well as blankets and pillows maybe. So the idea is we're folding forward and being able to rest on that pillow. So I'm going to take a couple. You can have two pillows. You can stack up blankets. Blocks are not the most comfortable so maybe not the blocks. Pillows and blankets is probably better. And then you take your hands around the legs with the strap. You have something to hold on to. And then you can just let yourself relax. Now I'm going to prop up my chin. So sometimes it's nice to take the blanket and kind of make a little a little prop for it. I don't know what this is doing to my microphone. Hopefully it's not too bad. So my chin is this prop so it kind of supports that cervical spine as well. And we're going to hold here for five minutes. Try to keep your head nice and neutral. So prop up your chin if you need to like I've done. And we're just going to enjoy this forward fold. Poses like this are great for the hamstrings, Good for the hips, For the spine. You can see our whole spine is just kind of rounded over these pillows which is really great for the space between these vertebrae. We're spreading that out making more room for for everything that happens in the spine. So the movement of our spine, The nerve system that you are running through the spine. All of that. And of course each moment that we're here we're just going to let ourselves relax more and more. And we lift up and start to unwind yourself from your props. You can set the strap down. We won't need it again. Keep your blanket close and one of your pillows close if you have multiple. We'll use those in just a moment. But let's first grab a block. So blocks have three different heights. The first lowest height, Then on the top. Then on the next level and then on the highest level. We'll use this to prop up our hips in a bridge pose. So come down and take that block underneath your hips. I'm going to choose the middle height. I like the middle long edge because I feel like it supports across my hip bones and I think that feels really nice. So we'll just lay here propped up. I love this. I feel like we could stay here for a long time. What's great about it is it stretches the front of our body but we don't have to work at all. We don't have to hold our glutes. We don't have to hold our back muscles. We can just be here and enjoy that lift in the body. We spend a lot of time in our day seated. Maybe we commute, Spend time in a car, Seated at a computer desk, You know things like that. And having this reversal to stretch out the front of the hips, Open up the chest, Pull the shoulders back. It can give our body a lot more balance of strength and just counterbalance that time that we might be seated. So just give the weight of your body to that block. Feels really nice. I wish we could stay here for a long time and I want to make sure you have a good Shavasana. Just know that you can come to this pose whenever you want and it's gonna feel really great. Let's take one more breath right here. Inhale. Exhale. Very nice. Come off of that block. So just lift your hips a little bit. Pull it out and bring your knees into your chest, Which will press that curve of the spine to the floor. So moving our back in the opposite direction as just previously. And now it's time to come into Shavasana. It almost feels like we've been in Shavasana the whole time, But a traditional Shavasana is always welcome. So take a bolster or pillow underneath your knees. There's a little bit of elevation which can help relax and release tension in the low back. Arms by your side. Feel free to grab your blanket, Place it over you. If you think you're going to get cold because you're just laying on the floor. Definitely in Shavasana, You want to be comfortable. You want to be cozy so that you can give yourself a good sense of feeling grounded and released. Feel free just to relax your mind as you relax your body. And I will wake you up when it's time with the sound of a bell. Just enjoy your Shavasana. Start to wake yourself up. Rotate through your wrists and your ankles. Point and flex your feet. Stretch your arms overhead to lengthen through your entire body. And roll yourself onto one side in fetal pose. Gently press yourself up to a comfortable seated position. Feel free to sit on a pillow to support your hips. And just bring your hands to heart center. Thank you so much for your practice today. I hope that you were able to feel your strength, Enjoy your softness, And relish in the silence. Thank you for your practice. Namaste.