Category: Blog

From 20th August 2025 I will be hosting a Yin class at 7.15pm at Revitalise in Hove.

To find out more and book you place online, visit their website here!

What is Yin Yoga and how is it different from other styles?

Yoga, as we understand it in the West, has roots in Eastern philosophy and is broadly perceived as a means through which body, breath and mind can be unified. Over time, it has been shaped into a form of exercise that is mostly practised to stretch, mobilise and strengthen the body. There are aspects of modern yoga that support the stilling of the mind and focusing of the breath and the present moment, but it has become predominantly a muscular and active process, with asansas, vinyasas and sequences to build heat, flexibility and fitness, which can be described as ‘yang” in nature.

Yin yoga, alternatively, focuses on the tissues of our ligaments, joints and fascial networks; it involves “yielding, allowing and nourishing” (Clark, 2019).  It has its roots in Ancient Chinese Daoism; the philosophy that harmony and health are generated when opposite qualities are in balance. Everything in nature is perceived as having both yin and yang qualities – light and dark – all mountains have a shady and a sunny side.  Yin and Yang are understood as contrasting qualities that cannot exist without each other, as they complement and support the other; there is no sunny side without a contrasting shady side.

Yin qualities are depicted as denser, heavier, cooler, darker, slower, more surrendering.  Yang is described as lighter, hotter, brighter, active. 

Although yoga in the 19^th and 20^th centuries favoured yang style, muscular, practice, long held poses could be commonplace, although typically there was no specification as to how long to hold a pose for. It was not until 1966 that B.K.S. Iyengar specified that a pose be held for 1- to 15 minutes, without using the word ‘yin’ to understand this. Longer held poses were also used in gymnastics, athletics and martial arts.

After attending a Taoist Yoga class taught by Paulie Zink, in the 1990s Paul Grilley became the first person to host a yoga class entirely devoted to Yin, with meditation, specific yin poses, counterposes and contraindications, which focused on holding poses for a longer period of time to reach the deeper tissues such as tendons, ligaments and other connective body tissue.

Toaists practiced a form of yoga as a way to ‘live forever’ in their earthly bodies, by effectively transforming their mortal bodies into a perfect body in an alchemic way. A way to do this was to preserve energies, such as the Jing (ancestral energy), Vital energy (chi) and Spirit energy (shen) and even rebuild their original energy stores to gain longevity. Alchemical Daoism focused both on the stimulation and balancing of energies; the yin and yang aspects. To do this, blockages to the flow of energy in the subtle body need to be cleared and the mind uncluttered.

Within Yin, sequences of certain poses can stimulate these energy channels, or meridians, which relate to the five elemental energies in Traditional Chinese Medicine.  This, combined with conscious breathing, paying close attention to sensations, and adopting a functional approach such as considering a “targeted area” such as a fascial group, internal organs, or regions, to promote good health came to be understood as yin yoga practice. Grilley explored and spread the value of a dedicated Yin practice threaded within the roots of Ancient Daoism, creating sequences with aims similar to that of acupuncturists.

It was one of Grilley’s students, Sarah Powers who extended our understanding of yin to include three Tattvas or principals; to come into the pose at an appropriate depth, to remain still and to hold the pose for some time.  Yin classes can now be accessed in most studios.

Personally, I came to yin yoga quite accidentally through a friend’s yoga class.  Having practiced mainly Hatha yoga for almost 20 years, I was quite accustomed to the Yang experience; flows, asanas and closing savasana. Although I valued the opportunity to come into my body and focus on linking my breath with movement, I did see it as primarily a form of exercise.

I began to practice my own yin at home during lockdown, and I found the three Tattvas became really central in my experience. Having experienced back pain and stiffness for most of my adult life, I would perceive almost any sensation as something to avoid.  However, during my practice, I began to explore the concept of the ’edge’. I tried to understand sensation as a feeling or a response, and not immediately as something to back away from. Almost being alongside this as I would a felt sense in my stomach or chest, I began to understand the ‘edge’ as an invitation to become familiar with my body, almost enquire into what it was telling me, and perhaps even accept the offer of release or the invitation to go deeper.

The second Tattva; to remain still also helped me to tune inward and settle my mind. Rather than my more common experience of transitioning from pose to pose without really sensing any subtleties in my body, the practice of simply ‘being’ in a pose felt like a meditation. When I began to explore specific yin poses and start to understand about fascia and connective tissues, I began to imagine yin as a way to tap into the body’s own healing capabilities.

The idea of holding poses for some time also seemed counter to all of my previous experience of yoga, and perhaps, of all of the Tattvas, explains a draw to Yin in more recent times.  The idea of consciously giving something time in a time-deprived culture seems quite revolutionary, and it feels as if I am gifting myself something by doing this; the sacred pause, doing but not doing, time space to journey inward when so much around us is designed to draw us back out again. 

After its long history I can understand the increasing appeal of yin yoga towards the end of the 20^th century and its place in timetables alongside yang practices. As Daoists believed, yin and yang need each other and are intrinsically weaved together.  But perhaps, in this fast world of ours, we need to make time for a little more yin to have a chance to restore some harmony, because, to heal the world, we need to start with ourselves.

I look forward to seeing you in class soon!

Suzanne x

From 3rd July 2025 I will be teaching trauma sensitive yoga at the Brighton Unitarian Church.

Survivors Network is a Sussex charity that supports survivors of sexual violence and abuse.

Trauma can show up in people’s bodies in so many ways, including numbing, stiffness, chronic pain, fatigue, restlessness, dissociation, hyper-vigilance or a feeling of being in stuck fight or flight mode.

Trauma sensitive yoga can help to support us to reconnect with our bodies and foster a sense of safety and trust in ourselves. It can help to ground us in the present moment and promote a sense of choice and control. It can help to regulate the nervous system and encourage self-compassion.

These classes will include gentle grounding exercises and some somatic techniques such as tapping, rocking, shaking and releasing movements. We will also explore some standing, strengthening, postures and flows which can feel empowering and activating.

Everything is an invitation and how much you do is up to you. I will always encourage people to choose where to put their mat, take breaks when they need to, make the right choices for their own body and support a sense of control and autonomy.

To find out more or book onto a class, please visit Survivors Network

There is lots of talk about nervous system regulation in both the counselling and yoga world and it can be useful to consider the link between the nervous system and trauma when we are trying to understand ourselves and our emotional or physical reactions to things.

But where to start?

A good place to begin is by understanding the vagus nerve, which is increasingly being mentioned as a profound tool for helping with anxiety and creating a mindful connection with our body.

But what is it?

The vagus nerve (sometimes called “the wanderer”) runs the entire length of the torso from the brain into the facial muscles, throat, heart, lungs and stomach. It governs the two parts of our parasympathetic nervous system.

Our parasympathetic nervous system has two branches – the first to evolve was the dorsal vagal circuit, which protected us from dangerous and life-threatening situations by shutting down the body; a variation of which is when we feel numb or paralysed with fear, or dissociate in response to overwhelming situations. In this way, our bodies can override all other systems to survive, and although some survivors of trauma might feel disappointment or shame in not fighting back, this response may well have been life saving.

The second part of the parasympathetic nervous system to evolve was the ventral vagal circuit which is a uniquely mammalian trait that helps us feel safe though our connection with others.

We also have a sympathetic nervous system, which activates the body’s fight or flight response.

The vagus nerve governs both parts of the parasympathetic nervous system and works to inhibit the fight or flight response of the sympathetic nervous system. It either causes the body to shut down, or it facilitates social engagement. It takes its cues from what is happening inside our body (our feelings) as well as outside (the environment) to determine how safe we feel – and our nervous system is constantly scanning for threats outside of our awareness.

We can learn to influence the emotional state we are in by understanding and ‘toning’ our vagus nerve, using different practices to have different effects on our nervous system. Paying attention to our breath is the most immediate way to do this because we can change our physiological state through breathing, which our nervous system responds to. If our breathing is fast and shallow, we can engage our sympathetic nervous system and our fight or flight response kicks in. If we breathe slowly and calmly, our brain responds to the physical cues that we are safe and relaxed and our parasympathetic nervous system responds. A toned vagus nerve will identify slow breath as calming and relaxing rather than engaging the dorsal circuit, or a numb/dissociated, response.

For people with a history of trauma or PTSD, the body may sense danger in the present moment when in fact the nervous system is stuck in past reactivity. The body may sense the slightest danger as life threatening and mobilise the defensive actions of the sympathetic nervous system (fight/flight) to perceived threats, or shut down completely if it feels overwhelmed (a dorsal vagal response). The body can be stuck in the past long after the threat has gone.

Both of these reactions happen outside of conscious awareness; it can feel as if our nervous system has hijacked our body.

But gentle movement and breathing can help with this; beginning with merely softening the muscles of the face and breathing fully and comfortably. These motions trigger a felt sense of safety because they activate a ‘ventral brake’, or engage the ventral part of our nervous system, which can slow the heart rate and hinder the activation of the sympathetic nervous system.

Regularly checking in with your breath and noticing specific parts of our body where we hold tension when we are not in an immobilised or triggered state can help to familiarize ourselves with grounding practices and tone our vagus nerve ahead of time. That way, we can learn to recognise the early warning signs in our ‘alarm system’ and notice potential triggers so that we can manage them in the moment.

Recognising what we feel and why we feel that way gives us the ability to regulate our emotions and control our lives. If we have conscious awareness of our physical and emotional state, we can choose to respond differently rather than reacting habitually. We might notice our feelings, such as shallow breathing and sweaty palms, without feeling like we have lost control.

Slow, conscious movement can gently shift our physiology and help to build body awareness giving us space and time to process sensations and emotions so that we can respond rather than react.

Some of these are quite somatic, such as:

Swaying; stand with your hands at your sides and shift the weight of your body from one foot to the other. Notice the slow movement as your come to balance in your midline. Allow your attention to shift consciously to your breathing, slowly inhaling through your nose and elongating your exhale to the rhythm of your movement.

Rocking; either use a rocking chair or gently sway while you are standing up by rocking on your feet from toes to heel. Notice the sensation of almost coming ‘off-balance’ and drawing yourself back.

Swinging; Standing with your feet shoulder-distance apart, let your arms be loose by your side and rotate your torso from left to right and let your arms move with the momentum. Let your hands tap the sides of your body as you do this.

Shaking; from standing, let your arms and fingers be loose, gently shake your hands, lift and drop your shoulders, pulsate from your knees, wiggle your ankles, loosen the muscles in your face by mobilising your jaw and purse your lips, taps the heels of your feet on the floor; any movement that promotes softening and releasing.

Conscious presence can also involve restorative yoga poses, such as child’s pose (a forward fold with your buttocks resting on your heels and your head on a cushion or your hands). Or savasana (lying prone on the floor) which can allow us to focus on slowing the breath and induce a relaxed state. These poses can help to ground us and notice the points of contact between our bodies and the floor, bringing us into the present moment; the here and now.

Other methods can involve breathing techniques, such as

Square breathing; linking the four parts of the breath (inhale, pause, exhale, pause) with the four sides of a square.

Ratio breathing; inhaling for a specified number of seconds, pausing, and exhaling for a number of seconds. A simple ration to begin with is 3:2:4. A longer exhale stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system.

Sighing breath; Sighing and shrugging are both signs that the body is dissipating energy; that it is safe and it can move on. Exaggerate your shrug with arm movement can feel really good.

By choosing how to move our body and learning that we can control our breath, we realise that we have choice and agency over our lives. The body and breath are always in the present, unlike our time-travelling mind. Noticing, or being aware of, our bodies in the present moment is a skill we can cultivate and nurture until it becomes second nature. It can be our superpower!

In the months between signing up to train as a yoga teacher and the start of the course I was filled with self-doubt. Flicking through manuals and building up my practical experience in online and face to face classes, I started to question what I was thinking. As a 40 something who slipped a disc at the age of 17 and has suffered recurring sciatica and lower back pain since, my movement felt limited, I considered myself stiff and inflexible, unable to contort my body into particular positions and certainly not a typical yoga teacher.

Yet, having developed my own practice during lockdown, stretching by myself in candlelight as a way to focus my anxiety away from the uncertainty of the time, I had developed an appreciation of yoga as a way to simply be with myself. With a ‘monkey mind’ rendering me unable to sit still for long enough to mediate, I found yoga a moving meditation that invited me to journey inwards and notice sensations as they arose and actually begin to observe, and be with, myself in the present moment.

It was this very understated experience of yoga that continued to call me back when I had doubts and which led me to take the plunge and turn up on the first day of training. Noticing my -very human- tendency to compare myself to the other students, I needed to keep reminding myself that yoga can be an opportunity for a deeply personal encounter with yourself, far departed from throwing particular shapes on the mat.

As I began to delve into the history of yoga, I began to see some overlaps between the theory of yoga and the person-centred approach to counselling, which I am trained in. “Yoga” in Sanskrit roughly translates to ‘yoke’; to bind or unite. It is a reintegration of our head with our heart, our body with our mind; also the experience the joy of this union.  When our head and our heart are pulled in two directions, our ‘self’ is divided between fear and compassion, which leads to a ‘disharmony of spirit’. 

Developed by Carl Rogers in the 1940s, person-centred counselling centres around the client’s experience of themselves, not the therapist as the ‘expert’. He postulated that each individual has an ‘actualising tendency’ to grow and reach their full potential and live in accordance with their true nature, but life experiences, such as the ‘conditions of worth’ – or the beliefs people have about what they need to do, or who they need to be, in order to gain acceptance – mean that they become distanced from their true self.

In person centred therapy, the client is offered conditions of acceptance, empathy and unconditional positive regard so, at their own pace, they can begin to enquire within. With time, these conditions, within the context of a therapeutic relationship, might assist a person to refamiliarise with their ‘true self’, their organismic self or inner being. In this context, a person might be able to reach their full potential – their true potential – a term Rogers called ‘self-realisation’.

Rogers’ most quoted expression is arguably; “the curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change”.

In yogic philosophy, the first sacred texts of Hinduism depicted a universe that is interconnected by a single principle called brahman.  The main teaching is that brahman exists in the unchanging core – the atman – of the individual.  Traditionally, yoga was a path to re-unite with atman; our essence.

Yoga, like counselling, can be an enquiry within and a path towards self-acceptance. Far from twisting, pulling, forcing or heaving my body into shapes it doesn’t make, simply listening to what it is saying can help me understand myself in ways I never did. And only when I can be with, rather than resist, a sensation could I notice a very gentle shift, and even perhaps an unlocking, an unravelling or new space, strength and possibility begin to reveal itself.

Both yoga and person-centred counselling can be seen to be centred around a relationship; the relationship with your inner, or true self, which has been there all along. Personally, yoga means coming home, returning, or uniting with my ‘self’; under the layers of ego, adaptations or self-concept, accessing a universal peace and stillness within that is ever present, but often muffled under a lot of noise.

…And I’m very glad I drowned out the noise and finished the training!