Yin Yoga for Pain x Gen Well, Foxtel

I was invited as the Yin Yoga expert on Foxtel’s Gen Well program to assist family members who live with pain in one way or another. What I shared on Foxtel is worth sharing with everyone.

What is Yin Yoga?

Yin is a practice of long-held, poses, mostly sitting or lying on the floor, where we hold the pose for several minutes at a time. Where other dynamic styles are about stretching and strengthening the muscles, yin is designed to target the connective tissues of the body: ligaments, tendons, fascia, and our bones.

The physical benefits of Yin Yoga

Yin is a deeply hydrating practice, which becomes necessary given our bodies dry as we age—as can be noticed in the degradation of our eyesight, and our joints becoming less flexible. When our tissues are dry, layers of fascia can adhere together and create rigidity; a feeling of being inflexible. Hydrated connective tissue will glide and slide more easily giving you a greater sense of freedom in your movement. Hydrating the deeper tissues of the body, therefore, makes yin a fundamentally important practice as we age.

To understand the science of how this works, we first need to understand how water behaves in our body. Biological water is gel-like in its consistency. Water molecules clump together along with other minerals and become relatively large sized molecules. When we hold a yin pose, we create mechanical stress in the body that generates what is called piezoelectricity (translates to “pressure electricity”). Piezoelectricity affects bio-water by changing the organisation of molecules, reducing them in size. This results in the water having greater bioavailability and so, when we come out of the pose, is more readily absorbed by the connective tissues of the affected area.

For this reason, pausing in a neutral position after each pose (called the ‘Rebound’ pose) is an important part of every yin practice as this is when the immediate hydration occurs.

The neurological benefits of Yin Yoga

In the act of bringing the body into a level of physical stress whilst simultaneously eliciting a sense of relaxation, you retrain your nervous system to be less reactive to stressors. This helps with both emotional/mental stress, as well as physical pain. 

Broadly speaking, there are two types of physical pain. Type 1 is first felt by the senses. For example, we stand on broken glass and cut our foot. The skin receptors and pain receptors in our foot send messages of the injury to the brain which results in our conscious perception of pain in the foot. 

Type 2 is when the pain is created by our brain, rather than the senses. This is a neurological response based on past experiences of sensory pain. The brain can become so protective that it becomes hypersensitive and reacts in anticipation of pain. It becomes a warning alarm that says, ‘Don’t do that, it will hurt’. The way these alarms are expressed in the body, however, is in the form of symptoms. Thus, they give us the conscious perception of pain!

The perception of pain is the same regardless of whether it's caused by broken glass or your hyper-vigilant neurology—and it's this hyper-vigilance that we work with in yin. By putting stress on our system, at the same time as deliberately relaxing the system, we decrease hyper-vigilance, increasing our tolerance and thus reduce Type 2 pain.

The mental benefits of Yin Yoga

In addition to the benefits gained from relaxing your nervous system, the long-held poses of yin give us precious time to take a mental breath. We might pause from life to just be, or else grab this as an opportunity to think all those ideas you’d been pushing to the side because you had meetings, phone calls, emails and other things to attend to. Yin yoga offers free time for your mind to wander wherever necessary so it can feel up to date with its backlog of un-thought thoughts.

The emotional benefits of Yin Yoga

In everyday life, our muscles automatically engage to protect the deeper tissues of our joints and bones. In yin, however, we don’t want to engage the muscles. We intentionally relax the muscles so we can feel deeply. Because we’re going against instincts and familiarity to feel this deeply, it feels especially vulnerable. And then we stay there. For minutes at a time, we sit in our own vulnerability. This can bring up a multitude of emotions.

Commonly, yoga studios are supportive environments for these emotions to rise and be felt. These emotions may have otherwise been pushed down because there wasn’t time to process what arises. Yin, however, provides time and space for emotions to rise, whilst you can feel supported by the teacher to simply feel whatever is present. In this space, there is nothing to fix or change. It is simply about you acknowledging what you're feeling and me, as a teacher, allowing you to feel seen and heard. These benefits cannot be understated.

Are there specific physical conditions that Yin Yoga helps?

Yin is highly adaptable to however your body moves—your body’s flexibility, its restrictions and its injuries. This makes it an easily tailored practice to suit any person’s individual needs, whether that is a frozen shoulder, back pain, arthritis, knee pain or any other discomfort.

What are some misconceptions about Yin Yoga?

The most common misconception is that because it's a still practice, that it's a gentle practice, or that nothing is happening at all. It can be gentle. It's always under your control how much you feel, but you are always invited to find your edge, and that might be something fairly strong. I don’t think people in my classes would always call it gentle! But they always thank me for it afterwards.

What are the long-term benefits especially for pain management and mental health?

Finding comfort in discomfort, and the tools to calm a stressed nervous system. And, not to get too esoteric, but the awareness that you are not your body. Your body can be experiencing stress, while at the same time, you can be experiencing a calm, slow breath and drifting in and out with the music. This is really important for people who are experience pain. I can attest to that in my own experience of emergency lung surgery. These tools were paramount!

A final thought about the power of Yin Yoga…

If you would like to garner greater comfort in being you, your body—with all its quirks and uniqueness—these thoughts, these emotions, and this path that your life takes you on, then yin is a brilliant facilitator of the capacity to love who you are, as you are.

Trying Yin for yourself

Yin is offered at most yoga studios. Make sure your teacher is formally yin trained. Of course, all teachers are different so, if you don't love the first yin teacher you meet, try someone else's class.

If you're local to Sydney's northern beaches, you're welcome to come to my classes at D-F Studio.

If you'd like to try yin online, I have a mix of yoga programs here which all include yin classes, amongst other styles of yoga and meditation.

If your stress is emotional or mental and you're interested in meditation with me, I generally have a live-streamed meditation course coming up. If the next one has already been schedule, you'll find info here. If you'd prefer to work one-on-one, you can find consultation information here. For yin teacher mentoring as well as anything I've missed, contact me :)