Have you ever ever tried to study to meditate however the considered sitting nonetheless to meditate made you so squirmy you threw in your meditation cushion throughout the room? For a lot of, quieting the thoughts feels extra like a chore than a second of peace. And that may be a barrier to creating an everyday meditation follow.
I’ve been a yoga instructor for greater than a decade. I might be flexible and twisty, feeling snug in superior lessons. However the second meditation was launched, I began to squirm and my wandering thoughts simply bounced round like a pinball.
What if Conventional Meditation Strategies Don’t Work For You?
In my instructor coaching, we meditated and realized the way to lead meditations – fundamental breath meditations, physique scan meditations, totally different point of interest meditations, and tons of different meditation strategies. However, it was not clicking for me. I satisfied myself that I couldn’t sit nonetheless, and I definitely couldn’t get my thoughts to nonetheless.
Even when I can’t do a particular pose myself, it’s no drawback as a result of I nonetheless have the talent to information my college students into that pose. However for me, not having the ability to meditate felt totally different. So I didn’t introduce it into my lessons as a result of I didn’t really feel snug speaking to my college students about stilling the physique and quieting the thoughts once I couldn’t.
As my yoga follow and instructing turned extra superior I’d at all times really feel that I used to be missing for not being “a meditator.” And no quantity of meditation suggestions or meditation strategies have been serving to.
Finally, I found the bridge I wanted to lastly settle into an everyday meditation follow. It was Yin yoga. Yin yoga is a type of yoga the place you maintain a posture for an prolonged time frame … like full minutes of time, not simply 5 – 10 breaths. Have you ever already tuned out pondering it’s not for you? Hear me out.
Yin yoga can provide a gateway to mindfulness meditation for these of us who discover conventional approaches difficult. Let’s discuss how Yin yoga helped me begin meditating and may find a way that will help you unlock the meditative state you didn’t suppose you would attain.
Enter Yin Yoga
In increasing my data of yoga, I attempted totally different class types. Being a movement yoga lover, a gradual follow the place I would solely do 6-8 poses gave the impression of my worst nightmare. But it surely turned out to be simply the other – Yin was precisely what I wanted to easily focus and really feel calmer.
Yin is a passive follow that as Bernie Clark writes within the Full Information to Yin Yoga, “physiologically … targets the deeper connective tissues.”
It’s a cool follow, that means that you shouldn’t go into it with a warmed up physique and it’ll not be a cardio follow that heats you up. The follow’s “intention is to soundly, reasonably stress our joints to advertise the well being of the tissues in and round our joints—to not overly lengthen these tissues” (Yoga Journal April 2023).
And sure, physiologically it did all that, however I additionally discovered a strategy to enter a meditative state.
Training Yin has many similarities to meditation, beginning with sitting in “stillness.”
Consider Childs pose. Have you ever ever taken a category and also you begin in Childs pose? Particularly when it’s your first form on the yoga mat as you first widen your knees and ease your sit bones in the direction of your heels you might need to wiggle to handle the bodily sensations of the pose. It doesn’t begin out feeling restful however after a couple of deep breaths your physique begins to settle in and your leisure response comes on-line.
Then, you may discover that you simply’re in a position to now get your head right down to the ground. You could discover your arms can inch ahead slightly extra. Your breath begins to even out. Your thoughts may even start to deal with the sound of your breath versus another ideas your personal thoughts introduced into the room.
Congratulations – you may have simply executed Yin yoga.
How Yin Yoga is Like a Meditation Session
Whereas I used to be specializing in my breath, moving into every Yin pose, and permitting my physique to proceed to regulate I used to be in “the second.” I wasn’t enthusiastic about an e-mail I had to answer when class was executed. Or enthusiastic about what I ought to have stated within the assembly 5 days in the past.
I used to be related to my physique and my breath and – little did I do know – I used to be participating in a meditation follow – even when it wasn’t the way in which we historically consider sitting meditation.
I used to be having a continued dialog with myself seeing if the discomfort of relative stillness I felt was my autopilot mind simply wanting to maintain transferring on to one thing else, or my physique saying that it had to get out of the form. My thoughts was totally immersed with curiosity on the precise second I used to be in.
My “doing” mentality was happy as a result of I used to be “doing” yoga. The “being” mentality of meditation – of being within the current second – was additionally happy.
A New Perspective on Mindfulness Meditation
It took me awhile of constant follow with Yin to comprehend that what I used to be doing was meditation. I used to be mindfully within the current second. It enabled me to get out of my very own approach and understand that there isn’t any proper or mistaken strategy to meditate.
Finally, I used that very same set of expertise from my Yin follow to start to sit down in what you’d usually consider as a meditation follow (sit loosely cross-legged, eyes closed). I’ve a cushion and I pop on an app’s guided meditation for five or 10 minutes.
Some days I’m in it, in a position to keep centered with few distractions, and different days my thoughts wanders. However I can sit with the stillness and provide myself mild reminders repeatedly to information my thoughts in the direction of that too, even when it’s a fleeting second.
So if meditation is in your 2025 checklist of intentions and also you bristle on the thought of having the ability to sit nonetheless for even a minute, strive Yin yoga.
Have you ever ever tried Yin earlier than? What was your expertise? Drop us a notice under. –Tam
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Tam Turse, M.A., RYT-500 is the Editor at FBG. When she isn’t modifying, writing, or working a 9-5 advertising and marketing job, she might be instructing a yoga class or coaching for her subsequent marathon. You will discover her on IG @tamturse .