Yin Yoga classes are peaceful, restorative classes that focus on deep tissue release, through longer (mostly seated) holds and deep relaxation.
Looking for a Yin Yoga Class?
Do you sit a lot throughout the day?
Do your joints or back feel stiff in the morning?
Yin Yoga employs long, static holds of up to eight minutes in a single pose. The poses are most often seated or supine (on your back) and sometimes incorporating twists. With longer holds, the body deeply relaxes while simultaneously benefiting the fascia, or the saran wrap, around the muscles. Yin Yoga is accessible for ANY practitioner and we could not recommend anything more for both peace and relaxation, but also muscle and joint restoration.
We take a maverick approach to teaching yin yoga. First, we make use of the full range of possible yin poses; rather than merely repeating the same “top ten poses.” Beyond that, we offer reiki healing (balancing energy work) in conjunction with a relaxing ambiance, replete with flickering candles and comfortable bolsters, blankets, blocks, and straps to allow you to drop into a blissful space.
With a Yin class (especially ours at Yoga on C), you will drop in deeply to the place of pure possibilities and drop out of the everyday world of your specific concrete problems. It is a simple yet profound practice that is only enhanced through the energy work of Reiki, a soothing soundtrack and the flickering of candle light.
Yoga in general and yin especially, is about more than just “the light” and “feel good” themes and metaphors. We challenge our practitioners to dive below the surface level wisdom, or “yinsight”, often voiced in yin classes. We discover and embrace the dark as well. The dark is not evil, the abyss is not evil, the unknown is not evil, the female is not evil. Only when we journey into the dark and learn to dwell there in peace, do we begin to gain a more holistic picture of ourselves, reality, and thus, truth. Emptiness is not the same thing as nothingness and in fact, the experience of dwelling restfully in emptiness provides both peace and clarity.
Evolution speaks to why people are afraid of the dark, non-being and nothingness; it was a time fraught with peril and dangers: predators, crime, the icy cold, winter, et cetera. Our collective memory and our current culture make us fear these things. Sadly, we are avoiding and rejecting half of life! The womb was dark, was it evil? The night sky is dark, is it evil? The abyss of the ocean is dark, is it evil? No, darkness makes up the majority of existence and allows for life itself. Modern physics realized we needed to acknowledge the possibility of the existence and importance of dark matter and dark energy. The best mystics realized that there is a dazzling darkness beyond being and the light. The most shocking Near Death Experiences also speak of a beautiful inky black darkness filled with truth and bliss. The classes at Yoga on C do not shy away from this deeper and richer picture of truth; we honor it and seek to share its beauty through the amazing practice of Yin Yoga.
