We do YIN yoga every 4th week in my yoga classes. A fixed commitment to a YIN class all week, every class, and much to the joy of many of my students who love the inward focus and stillness of YIN yoga. It’s a great contrast to a strong, more yang yoga practice.

We talk of YIN yoga being perfect for your joints, your fascia and your connective tissue. But one of the loveliest things about a YIN class is its slowness. Holding a pose for up to 5 minutes means it’s really good for stress. You have 1.5 hours of full permission to do nothing but hold that pose, propped up by bolsters and blankets, so it’s challenging but not uncomfortable, listen to music and pay attention to how you feel and play witness to your thoughts.
Normal stress is part of surviving as a human. We are triggered, we get stressed, we deal with it, we might grow from the experience and then we move on. But what about unrelenting stress? Stress that is so insidious, ongoing and perhaps the type of stress that you don’t have the tools to deal with. This stress and the elevated hormonal response plays out in your body in so many ways. Within the first few seconds of experiencing a negative emotion, people automatically tense the muscles in their jaw and around the eyes and mouth. The lower body gets ready to fight or flight with a shortening and tensing of the hip flexors and the psoas. And if these clenched muscles are never fully released, this lingering grasp on the hips and neck not only traps muscular tension, but emotional tension too. The longer you suppress emotion, the tighter the grasp.
Neurophysiologists explain that with repeated stress, people over time have shorter and shorter neck and shoulder muscles and tighter muscles in the hips. And if you add to this work practices like constantly looking down at papers or a computer, your neck may be angled in one position for an extended period of time without any movement, causing restricted blood flow to neck muscles. Sitting for long periods shortens your hip flexors as well.
If you work in a hostile or highly competitive environment you will hunch your shoulders to metaphorically grow that hard shell on your back to ward off the stings and attacks. And highly stressed people have chronically tight brow muscles (corrugator muscles) even when they did not think they were frowning.
I like to see yoga and YIN yoga in particular, as a slow release of these habitually clenched muscles in the body. As you learn to lengthen those short muscles and release all that unwanted emotional memory in your body, you’ll start the journey of unravelling that legacy of stress. 
Margot Wagner
Yoga Under the Bodhi Tree
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