If you have never tried Yin Yoga before and you get frustrated with beginner yoga classes on YouTube that are too difficult, too hard to follow,
don't give modifications, then don't worry, this beginner Yin Yoga class will have lots of modifications, will be easy to follow and will give you step-by-step instructions.
Hi, I'm Melissa from Yoga with Melissa. We offer real yoga for real people. We're all about connection, connection to a teacher and teachings that allow you to connect to a genuine path of spiritual transformation
and a community of people that are dedicated to a genuine path of spiritual transformation.
If you're new here, I put out a brand new yoga class every single Friday morning at 9am Pacific, so be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss a single class.
If you get frustrated with beginner yoga classes that aren't actually for beginners that kind of move too quickly, well, Yin Yoga doesn't move quickly for one,
but move too quickly, don't give modifications or too difficult, aren't easy enough for you to follow, then don't worry, this is going to be step-by-step.
I'm going to talk to you about how to get into the poses. I'm going to give you modifications and it's actually going to be a beginner class.
I have a testimonial for you today from Julie. She says, wow, how am I just finding Melissa West?
Your modifications are so appreciated. This is the perfect class for beginners or those who have been away from yoga for a long time.
So thanks, Julie. I really appreciate the time you took to leave your comment on YouTube. That was a beginner class I did on Yoga for Cassandra's channel.
And I appreciate all of you who take your time to leave your comments on YouTube and iTunes, Facebook, Instagram, my website,
and always our most in-depth conversations happen in our membership community.
I want to thank Squeeze Yoga Clothing for my clothes. Today I'm wearing the long sleeve, what do we call this?
I forget. I forget what it's called. Anyway, it's gray and black leggings.
And since you're if you're new to yoga, I want to remind you if you have any injuries or medical conditions, make sure you speak to your doctor first.
Before you participate in any yoga, whether it be in yoga or in any exercise program and ask your doctor what movements will make my medical condition or injury worse
and what movements or shapes will make my medical condition or injury better.
And then when you come to your yoga mat, you'll know how to care for yourself and how to be your own best teacher.
So today I want to, oh, you're also going to need some props for today. So what you'll need within yoga, you don't even need a yoga mat.
If you have a carpet, you can do your practice on a carpet, just lay down a blanket.
As you can see, I lay down a blanket over top of my yoga mat.
You're going to need, you may need a blocks, but probably because you're new to yoga, you don't have blocks.
So I was thinking today, what could you use instead of blocks?
If you have some Tetris packs like of almond milk or juice, you could use those instead.
So this is not sponsored. This was just in my cover.
And you may need a strap, a yoga strap, which also you may not have, which is fine.
You can just take the tie from your bathrobe and you may need cushions, which you can grab from your couch.
And I think that is all that you will need today.
And also what I would like to do is give you a preview of the class so that you can kind of look it over and think, okay, yeah, that's something that I can do.
And if, if not, then I won't waste your time with this whole class.
So here's what we're going to be doing today.
We're going to start in butterfly pose. We'll hold each pose for about two minutes.
Then we're going to be going into Sphinx pose.
After Sphinx pose, we'll do keyhole pose.
And for each one of these, I'm going to be giving modifications.
Then we're going to be doing banana asana and then dragon pose.
After dragon pose, we're going to do half heart melting pose.
And after half heart melting pose, you're going to do a seated twist.
And then we're going to do half butterfly.
And then we're going to finish with Shavasana.
So that's our plan for today.
And we're going to begin with Shavasana lying on your backs to center to transition from the busyness of your day to day life to find that stillness, quietness.
That is so important in the Yen class.
Okay, so we're going to lie down on your backs to begin with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor.
If you have low back issues, you could put a cushion underneath your knees or a bolster.
If you have one, if you're a seasoned yoga practitioner, if your back doesn't bother you, you can have your legs out long.
And you can place your hands on your lower belly just to create that inward focus.
Take a deep breath in through your nose.
Let it fall out of your mouth and allow yourself to arrive here now.
And then you're going to focus your attention on your breath and your lower belly.
And just let your breath slow down and become a little slower and deeper.
And then feel the back of your body resting on the ground.
And allow yourself to sink into the support of the earth underneath you.
And then feel your body from the inside.
Notice how your body feels today.
And then stay resting here, letting your body sink heavy into the ground.
Letting your body rest and receive the support of the earth and also allowing your breath to continue to relax and slow down.
I'm just going to share a few words about our class today as we do that.
We live in an anxiety producing world where we are pushed to perform, accomplish and achieve.
And this energy is considered yang.
Even a lot of yoga in our culture is outwardly focused on obtaining the shape of the postures, getting a good workout and losing weight.
This kind of buzzing energy that reverberates throughout our lives is yang energy.
With yin yoga we seek to find balance with yin energy.
Yin energy is melting, unfolding, releasing, yielding, centering, easing, internalizing, feeling, slowing down, surrendering, sinking, allowing, softening.
Calming and exploring.
Where yang is the sun and daytime, yin is moon and nighttime.
We need both, but the thing is we tend to have way more yang in our lives.
And yin yoga seeks to find balance between the two.
Yin yoga is a quiet practice that allows us to slow down, listen, do less and come into the wisdom of our own bodies.
Okay, so from here what we're going to do is roll to our sides and make our way up to a seated position.
And we're going to come into our first posture.
So if your pelvis is when we're going to bring the soles of our feet together and we're going to fold forward.
Now if when you sit like this, your pelvis is really curved under, then it can be quite helpful to, and you're being pulled back.
It's because of tight hamstrings.
Then it can be quite helpful to sit up to use that blanket that you've got to elevate your pelvis and to sit up on it.
So that's going to be your modification here.
And that will help to tip your posture forward.
The other thing that I recommend doing is taking those pillows from your couch and putting them underneath the space between your legs here.
So fill the space and then you're going to fold forward.
Okay, and we're going to hold this pose for about two minutes.
So there are three main principles to a Yin practice.
Yin yoga practice.
One is that we come into a shape.
So this is the shape we're taking in butterfly pose and find our edge.
Now edge is not sharp shooting pain.
It's not burning or electric.
And Yin yoga is not an aesthetic practice.
So it doesn't matter what your pose looks like.
So your butterfly pose doesn't need to look like my butterfly pose.
When you find your edge, it may be something like a doll ache or slightly uncomfortable,
but you want to be able to take a full breath in the pose.
If your breath is shallow, then you've gone too far.
Now in this pose and butterfly pose, we're, we're stressing the six main meridian channels in the lower body.
So the kidney, the liver, the spleen, the stomach, the gallbladder,
the urinary bladder meridians that run on the insides of the legs, the fronts of the legs, the backs of the legs,
the front of the body, the back of the body.
So we're challenging those meridian centers.
If you're feeling it, you're doing it.
Okay.
So once you've stayed in the pose and found your shape, we're going to come out after two minutes now.
And then we're going to feel the effects of the posture.
So we're actually going to lie back down on our backs and feel the reverberation or the rebound of the posture for a moment.
So you're going to feel into your body, feel around your pelvis, the insides of your legs, along your spine, maybe up into your shoulders.
And just feel the effects of this posture, feel the rebound, feel the echo of the posture.
Okay. For our second pose, we're going to roll over onto our stomachs.
So on your stomach, lie with your arms out in front of you, and you're going to wiggle your hips from side to side.
And then you're going to walk your elbows underneath you.
And here in this pose, if that feels like too much, you can walk your elbows a little bit further forward.
And if it feels like your back feels a little fragile, then you can draw up through your navel, draw in through your inner thighs.
Otherwise you're going to relax in this pose. We want to feel a little bit of pressure in our low back.
In this pose, we're stimulating the kidneys in your low back at the base of your ribs to create the energy that we need for this practice and for your life.
In this pose, if you have any neck issues, you can take your block or your carton and rest your neck on the block because this pose is more about your low back than it is about your neck.
So that's a nice modification there if you have any neck issues.
So the second principle in yin yoga is that we resolve to be still once we come into the pose.
Now that doesn't mean that if you have any sharp shooting pain or burning electric pain that you don't come out of the pose, you do.
But if you're feeling fine in the pose, then you resolve to be still.
And this is so that the tissues can soften and so that we can explore sensations and emotions without our habitual ways of moving and reactivity when feelings of discomfort arise.
So in yin yoga, we're accessing the deeper connective tissues, the deeper fascia, and so we resolve to be still and soften so we can access these deeper layers of tissue.
Okay, so we're going to come out of the pose.
You're going to come forward and you're going to rest on your belly here.
You're going to feel the rebound again.
You're going to feel the effects of the posture, the echo of the posture.
Okay, from here, we're going to roll over onto your back.
And our next posture is going to be keyhole stretch or eye of the needle.
So with this pose, you're going to cross your right ankle over your left knee, open your right leg out to the side and slowly draw your left leg in.
You're going to hold on behind your left leg and draw your leg in until you feel sensation, probably along the outside of your right leg into your right glute, maybe even on the inside of your right thigh.
If you can't reach, you can use that strap and draw it in this way.
Or you could even turn yourself against the wall and put your foot against the wall and use that to prop your legs here.
So the third principle of yin yoga is that we stay for a while.
Now in a beginner class, we stay for a minute and a half to two minutes.
Today we're staying for two minutes and this is to affect the deeper connective tissue.
So remember doing an exercise class or a hatha yoga class or an ashtanga yoga class or a flow yoga class for affecting the superficial muscles.
And they like to have, they like movement and they like contraction.
And that really works well, that fast movement, that contraction, that repetitive contraction works well to access the superficial muscles.
But with yin yoga, when we're accessing the deeper connective tissues that wrap around the bones, they are much more dense, they're much more plastic.
These connective tissues, these ligaments, these joints and bones themselves respond to slow, gentle traction.
So we hold the poses for a while.
In a beginner's class, this is going to be around two minutes.
And in a normal yin class, we could hold the pose usually for around five minutes, but you could hold it for up to 20 minutes.
Okay.
Okay, so you're gradually going to release, slowly come out of this pose on this side.
And then we're going to come into that shavasana pose to just feel the rebound, feel the echo of this pose, especially on the right side.
Notice how prana or chi or energy is flowing through the right side of your body now.
And then we'll repeat this pose on the left side of your body.
So bend your knees, feet flat on the floor, your left ankle is going to cross over the top of your right thigh.
You open your left knee out to the side, drawing your right leg in.
Again, you're going to hold on behind your right knee.
Your right knee is bent.
Your left elbow can open your left knee out to the side.
You want to feel sensation on the outside of your thigh into your glutes, probably into your, maybe into your inner thigh as well.
But each person will be unique in where they feel sensation.
And we will stay in this pose for a while.
Relax your shoulders, relax your jaw, relax the space between your eyebrows.
Relax.
Relax.
Relax.
Relax.
Relax.
Relax.
Relax.
Relax.
Relax.
So very slowly you're going to let this posture out of your body.
And you're going to release down to feel the reverberation of the posture to feel the energy in she, the Prana moving through your body.
Relax.
Okay, the next pose we're going to take is banana asana on your back. So it's a side bend on your back. You're going to take your feet over to the left side of your mat.
You're going to take your arms overhead.
You can have them straight.
We're going to modify this today by bending your elbows and also bending over to the right side of your mat.
Remember, you're going to stay here for a while.
So you don't want to come to your biggest edge.
In yoga, it's best to come to about 70% effort.
So staying in this pose and going to continue to tell you a few more things about yoga.
In a yin yoga practice, we are embodying the yin energy of dropping inwards.
I like to think of yin yoga as a way of life.
So not only are we dropping inwards to the felt sensation in our yin yoga shape,
but we're also dropping the yang energy that we carry, our plans, our preoccupations, our ambitions, our identities, and our frustrations.
Thank you.
Very slowly going to come out of this pose and back to your center and feel that rebound.
Feel the energy flow moving through your body from the shape you just took.
And then we're going to take banana asana on the other side, that side bend on the other side, so take your left leg over towards the right side of your mat,
your right foot's on the right side of your mat.
And then you're going to take your arms overhead, hold onto your elbows and bend towards your right side.
Remember, a little less effort is probably a good idea in a pose where you're going to be holding it for two minutes.
And then soften, let go of effort, let yourself breathe into your lower belly.
And then you're going to take your right leg over towards the left side of your mat.
And then you're going to take your right leg over towards the left side of your mat.
Keep breathing into the tension and allowing it to relax.
And then you're slowly going to release, coming back to the center and feeling the rebound in the posture.
So feeling the flow of energy in your body now.
Okay, you're going to bend your knees, roll to your side and make your way up onto all fours.
So the next pose we're going to do is called, sometimes it's called quarter dog.
It's called half heart melting pose.
You may want to have a cushion for this pose to modify it.
And the way that it works will start with your left arm.
I'm definitely going to use a cushion.
You could use it, maybe I'll show you without the cushion first.
You take your left arm forward.
You bend your right arm.
Your legs are going to be perpendicular to the ground 90 degree angle to the ground.
And you lower your forehead to the ground.
Okay, if this is too intense behind your left arm into your left shoulder, what you can do is put a cushion underneath your head.
So that you're not lowering as far.
No, you don't do.
So this posture is modified.
So we're doing one side at a time, quarter dog, half heart melting pose.
Sometimes it's done with both hands.
This time we're doing one side at a time.
So we're going to hold this pose for two minutes.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Slowly you're going to come out of the pose.
Start to make your way down onto your belly.
And feel the reverberation of your posture and rest all the way onto your belly.
Within yoga, we are surrendering the young energies, persevering, holding on, defending, pursuing, asserting, continuing and advancing at all costs.
Okay.
So from here, we're going to come up and we're going to do the half heart melting pose on the other side.
So on this side, you're going to bend your left elbow.
And you're going to extend your right arm.
You're going to lower your forehead to the ground.
And you're going to breathe here.
Put the cushion under your head if that helped.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
And then very slowly going to make your way out of this posture and come back down onto your belly to feel the reverberation of this posture.
Light all the way down. So instead in yin yoga, we're letting go of wanting to be better, the young energies of wanting to make it better.
Letting go of wanting to be somewhere else, letting go of planning tomorrow, letting go of that inner dialogue, letting go of tension around the area of sensation.
We're letting go of straining the shoulders. We're letting go of what we think we are supposed to do.
We're letting go of impressing and improving.
Okay.
Slowly make your way back up to seated seated.
And again, here we're going to sit. It may be useful to fold your blanket or just sit on a folded blanket.
If when you sit, if it takes a lot of effort or your back gets curled under because of tightness along your posterior chain along your back body with your hamstrings, then it's really useful to sit up.
You will probably want to fold your blanket more than that even. You're going to sit up on something elevated and then that will give you enough elevation that it's easier to set up.
We're going to take a seated twist. So you're going to bend your left knee, cross it over your right leg.
It will be easier to do this if you move your left leg further away from your body.
It also makes more space for your body.
Okay. So play around with the position of your foot. Find a position that works well for your body.
And then you can, I can give you two options here. You can turn towards your leg, wrap your right arm around your leg, or to make more space for your belly, you can turn away from your leg.
So you're going to choose which works best for you in your body today.
So continuing with the letting go, which is a yin energy letting go. And then we're talking about kind of more of the yang energy that we're letting go of.
We're letting go of frowns and forcing. We're letting go of ambition and aggression.
We're letting go of contrasting and comparing. And we're letting go of holding.
So see if when you're in this pose, if you can let go of forcing, of ambition, of aggression, of comparing yourself to how you were in this pose, maybe another time that you did it or to a way that you see me doing it
or to the way that maybe you've seen Instagram photos of it, but you're letting go of any aggression or forcing or really pushing in these poses and you're yielding and yin poses.
Breathing.
And then come back to the center. Take both legs out long. Just lean back slightly. Feel the reverberation in your body.
Feel the rebound, especially along your spine, maybe along the outsides of your legs.
And then again, we'll do this on the other side. So you're going to bend your right leg. You're going to cross it over your left leg. Choose a position for your leg that's comfortable for you.
Choose a position that's comfortable for you in your body and your belly. Wrap your left arm around your right leg. If that works for you, if there's space for your belly, you can lift and move your belly out of the way.
You can also do an open twist to see what works for you best in your body today. And then we're going to stay. We're going to be still and we're going to stay.
We're letting go of control. We're letting go of closed minds. And in letting go, there can be a loosening of rigid held beliefs that keep us from knowing ourselves from the inside, that somatic sense of feeling our bodies from the inside.
Sometimes it's called interoception. And all of these ways of letting go, I took them and adapted them a little bit from Norman Blair's book, Brightening Our Inner Skies, Yin and Yoga. Great book.
We're letting go of control. We're letting go of closed minds. And in letting go, there can be a loosening of rigid held beliefs that keep us from knowing ourselves from the inside.
We're letting go of closed minds. And in letting go, there can be a loosening of rigid held beliefs that keep us from knowing ourselves from the inside.
We're letting go of closed minds.
Okay, coming back to center again, releasing your right leg and just leaning back again, pausing here, feeling the rebound, feeling the echo of the posture.
And then we're going to do another forward fold. So this one's called half butterfly. So I want to elevate my pelvis again, because if we're trying to work against this, that's a very difficult way to forward fold.
So I'm going to set up my cushion here or fold a blanket. I'm going to sit on the edge of it. And then that lets me tip my pelvis forward more easily. I'm going to open my left knee out to the side.
And if my left knee is dangling in the air up here, then I want to fill that space with a cushion or a blanket or a block.
And then also if there's space between my knee and the ground here, I want to fill that space. Okay, so I'll fill it with a cushion or a sock or something like that.
Here I actually have a yoga strap there. Also, if you have any back issues like sciatica, herniated discs, then these forward folds are not these straight leg forward folds are not a good idea.
So you can do them with bent knees. So you could put a cushion underneath them. But depending on what your physiotherapist has said, generally they're not a good idea. Back bends would be a better idea.
So you could go back and do that Sphinx pose again that we did. That would be a way better option for you.
Okay, so we're going to fold forward over this straight leg until you feel sensation on the back of your leg.
So within yoga, we release the young energies of frustration, resistance, agitation and wild ambition that preoccupies so much of our internal and external landscape.
And we choose the Yin energy of patience instead.
Okay, so we're going to fold forward over this straight leg until you feel sensation on the back of your leg.
Relax your muscles around the sensation.
Relax your muscles around the sensation.
And then slowly come out of the posture. Take both legs out long and feel lean back a little bit just feel the reverberation of the posture.
Okay, shall we try this posture on the other side? So you're going to bend your right knee this time.
Open your right knee out to the side and fill that space if it needs filling.
And if there's space between your knee and the ground, you're going to fill that space as well.
And you're going to lean forward. You want to feel sensation along the back of your leg.
So you find that edge, a place where there's sensation where you're able to breathe deeply into your belly.
And then you resolve to be still so that the connective tissue, the ligaments can soften.
So Norman Blair says that becoming becoming patient in an inpatient world is skillful action.
The Buddha's teachings on patient state, infinite patience brings immediate results.
I really love that infinite patience brings immediate results.
I often say infinite time and no ambition, but I actually kind of like this more infinite patience brings immediate results.
Let the muscles around the tissues soften so that the quadricep muscle, this big muscle at the top of your leg, be really soft.
Then you can feel how the connective tissues, the tissues around the joints, the more plastic, less pliant tissues soften.
Then we're slowly going to come out of this pose and make our way onto our backs for our final resting posture.
So if you have any low back issues, you're going to bend your knees and place your feet flat on the floor.
Otherwise you can lie with your legs that long, you may want to put a cushion underneath your knees.
Place your hands on your belly and this is our final integration time to feel that not only the reverberation and rebound of that last pose,
but also just to receive our practice as a whole.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So you're going to stay resting on your back for just a few more moments for these final moments of resting and I'm going to sit up and read you a poem.
This is my favorite way to end in Shavasana and I'm actually going to read you one of my all time favorite poems by Mary Oliver called Wild Geese.
Probably a lot of you know this poem already.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for 100 miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile, the world goes on. Meanwhile, the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes over the prairies and deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile, the geese high in the clean blue air are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely the world offers itself to your imagination calls you like the wild geese harsh and exciting over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
So you're going to wiggle your fingers in your toes, bend your knees, slowly roll to your side and gradually make your way up to seated.
So thank you so much for joining me for this beginner yin yoga class where we talk about yin and yang.
And if you liked this class, if you thought it was a good introduction to yin yoga and yin and yang, then please give it a thumbs up.
Let me know in the comments what you learned about yin and yang.
And if you know somebody who could, who would like to learn about yin yoga, then please feel free to share this class with them.
We have a live class once a month, the last Friday of every month.
So if you'd like to join us for that, our next one is November the 24th, Friday, November 24th at 9am Pacific.
And we will be doing a beginner yin class live and I'll be teaching you about the meridians.
I talked a little, little bit about meridians today. I mentioned that our first pose access the six main meridian channels in the lower body.
And we'll just be getting into the energy channels more in that class.
And I find, oh, it'll be live on YouTube on this channel.
Thank you so much to our Canadians for our donations this week. Thank you to Diane from Nova Scotia and thank you to Donna from Saskatchewan, your donations make this available to everybody all around the world.
So I find that you can't learn yin yoga in one class. It's something you have to do over time.
So I'm going to share with you a good, better and best way to do that. So a really good way to do that would be to subscribe to this channel.
And then you'll get notifications of when my classes come out because over the next four weeks for sure, I am going to be introducing yin yoga.
I'm going to be doing four beginner yin classes for sure. And then we're going to be continuing on with the yin series.
So that would be a great way to learn about yin yoga. A better way would be to subscribe to my, actually I have an, what do I have for you?
I have, I have something special for you. I have seven days of yoga for anxiety for you.
So if you go to Melissa West.com slash anxiety, you can sign up there and receive seven days of yoga for anxiety. And I find this to be one of the ways that you can overcome all the yang in our life because anxiety is a very young energy.
So that's one of the ways you can overcome yang. And one of the best ways that you can incorporate more yin in your life is to join our membership community.
And we offer a live yin class once a month. We have our live yin indulgence workshops in our membership community on the last Sunday of every month.
They're 90 minute workshops at 9 30 a.m. Pacific and 4 p.m. Pacific time.
So I'll leave the links to that in the show notes as well as direct links for our members because not only do we have the live classes, but also we have the recordings of past classes.
So for those of you who are members, you can check out those classes. They're, they're really great.
I know that our members who have joined us for those really enjoy them.
So that is it for us today. Thank you so much for joining us for this beginner yin yoga class. And I appreciate you being here.
I'm sending you much love from beautiful British Columbia. May your joy be as deep as our ocean.
May you be as rooted as the old growth trees in our forest and may you be as strong as our mountains. Om Shanti Namaste.
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