Have you ever ever tried to be taught 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 growing an everyday meditation apply.
I’ve been a yoga instructor for greater than a decade. I could 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 Methods Don’t Work For You?
In my instructor coaching, we meditated and discovered the best way to lead meditations – fundamental breath meditations, physique scan meditations, completely different point of interest meditations, and tons of different meditation methods. 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 selected pose myself, it’s no downside as a result of I nonetheless have the talent to information my college students into that pose. However for me, not with the ability to meditate felt completely 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 after I couldn’t.
As my yoga apply and educating 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 methods have been serving to.
Finally, I found the bridge I wanted to lastly settle into an everyday meditation apply. It was Yin yoga. Yin yoga is a type of yoga the place you maintain a posture for an prolonged time period … like full minutes of time, not simply 5 – 10 breaths. Have you ever already tuned out considering 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 speak about how Yin yoga helped me begin meditating and may give you the option that will help you unlock the meditative state you didn’t assume you may attain.
Enter Yin Yoga
In increasing my data of yoga, I attempted completely different class kinds. Being a movement yoga lover, a gradual apply the place I’d solely do 6-8 poses appeared like 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 apply that as Bernie Clark writes within the Full Information to Yin Yoga, “physiologically … targets the deeper connective tissues.”
It’s a cool apply, which means that you shouldn’t go into it with a warmed up physique and it’ll not be a cardio apply that heats you up. The apply’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 solution 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 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 just a few 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 all the way down to the ground. You might discover your arms can inch ahead a bit of extra. Your breath begins to even out. Your thoughts may even start to concentrate on the sound of your breath versus every other ideas your individual thoughts introduced into the room.
Congratulations – you might have simply completed Yin yoga.
How Yin Yoga is Like a Meditation Session
Whereas I used to be specializing in my breath, stepping into every Yin pose, and permitting my physique to proceed to regulate I used to be in “the second.” I wasn’t fascinated by an electronic mail I had to reply to when class was completed. Or fascinated by what I ought to have mentioned 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 partaking in a meditation apply – 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 shifting 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 glad as a result of I used to be “doing” yoga. The “being” mentality of meditation – of being within the current second – was additionally glad.
A New Perspective on Mindfulness Meditation
It took me awhile of constant apply with Yin to understand 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 notice that there isn’t a proper or incorrect solution to meditate.
Finally, I used that very same set of expertise from my Yin apply to start to take a seat in what you’d usually consider as a meditation apply (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 targeted with few distractions, and different days my thoughts wanders. However I can sit with the stillness and provide myself mild reminders recurrently to information my thoughts in direction of that too, even when it’s a fleeting second.
So if meditation is in your 2025 listing of intentions and also you bristle on the concept of with the ability to sit nonetheless for even a minute, attempt Yin yoga.
Have you ever ever tried Yin earlier than? What was your expertise? Drop us a notice beneath. –Tam
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Tam Turse, M.A., RYT-500 is the Editor at FBG. When she isn’t enhancing, writing, or working a 9-5 advertising and marketing job, she might be educating a yoga class or coaching for her subsequent marathon. You’ll find her on IG @tamturse .