
A warm welcome to this "Yin Yoga for Stress Management" course. I am just giving you some introduction into myself, what this course and yin yoga is all about. During these five days you will learn to listen to your body and mind and what techniques work for you to calm your nervous system.
In yin yoga we like to use props, because we stay in poses for a long time and we really like to support various body parts so we can work more with the connective tissues, rather than the muscles. In this video I am giving you some alternatives to common yoga props that you will find in your home.
Before we go into our first practice day, allow me to give you some more information into your practicing space, what to wear and which sound might work for you in the background.
Day 1, let's get started! For our first practice, we will focus on the heart space, which consists of both the chest and the back of the heart. I hope you will enjoy this first practice and allow yourself to recharge and restore.
Day 2 is upon us. For this practice, we are taking a few shorted poses that are a little bit more active (but still very passive compared to more active yoga) and we are doing some supported backbends to stretch and open up the front body.
We've arrived at the middle of your journey! For this sweet practice we will be opening, stretching and moving our back and neck in different directions and gently kneed our connective tissue. I hope you'll have a wonderful practice.
In the yogic philosophy, it is believed that we store a lot of old emotions in our hips. It is also referred to as the "junk drawer" of the body. So for day 4, we are targeting our hips and pelvis and gently allow some of that older stuff to leave our body - in a safe and mindful way.
On our last day, we are probably the biggest prop there is: a wall. In some gentle shoulder and hip openers, we can allow the body to rest and ground against the wall and the floor. I hope you will find a practice as grounding as I did.
In this goodbye video, I am summarising the most important aspect of this class for me and how I envision the journey could continue from here and how you could utilise what you've learned here in the future.
Hello,
and welcome to "Yin Yoga for Stress Management", your 5-day yin yoga course. In this course, we are going to be practicing some gentle and mindful movement together, while regulating our nervous system.
Yin yoga is a very slow yoga practice, where we are staying in the poses for a longer period of time. To allow the body and mind to rest, we are using a lot of props to minimise muscular activity. In that sense, it is a more meditative practice than other yoga practices you might know, and it can therefore reduce stress levels.
On a mental level, we are using various techniques to regulate our nervous system. When we are stressed, nervous or feeling anxious, our nervous system can spike out of our normal range. When this is the case, we use techniques like orientating, self touch, or breathing techniques to calm ourselves down again.
You will not only be learning these techniques, but in these five days you will get to know your personal needs better and try to accept your own boundaries, too. We can't really control stress from an external source, but we can control how we deal with it on the interior.
I look forward to moving together with you!
See you soon,
Doris