Sunday, November 7, 2010

Yin Yoga Self-Practice

There were no classes for the past few days with Azmi away, so self-practice is the option to maintain a constant practice.   However, it is not easy to do a self-practice as it takes a lot of discipline and there are always many excuses about not being to find time to do the self-practice. But in actual fact, we only need to do a 10 to 15 minutes practice daily to reap the benefits.

Often most of us would think that we will need to do a yang practice for the self-practice but have you considered doing a yin practice instead.   A yin self-practice has its benefits especially if you have been doing a lot of yang classes.   A yin practice allows us to focus on those tight spots in our body and there are many yin poses that help to stretch out those tight muscles.   And if I am feeling lazy, I can do the poses lying on my back and still get the satisfaction that I have done a self-practice.  In yin yoga, the pose is held from 3 to 5 minutes to stretch the connective tissues in our body.

The following are some of the yin poses that I have been doing in my yin self-practice where the target areas are my tight shoulders, hamstrings and hips.


Before ending the practice with Savasana, I do Viparita Karani (Legs Up the Wall pose) which is a restorative pose and a gentle way to do an inversion pose.

Below is a video from Yogatic where a few yin yoga poses are demonstrated. 

1 comment:

PC Blind said...

Great yoga info, keep writing :)