Yin Yoga - or challenging yourself to complete stillness and surrender

I am very, very impatient - which is why to this day, I am surprised that I picked up yoga at all.

Maybe precisely for the reason of working on my impatience and gaining more and more ability to be patient and still. Yet, a lot of the challenging vinyasa practice I have done, achieves quite the opposite - you want to get to a particular pose and even though you might know that you are not quite ready, you try pushing yourself into a direction that comes closer to 'perfection' for you or that looks like a certain pose you have seen on instagram or even see your teacher in. Whether you want it or not, you start rushing yourself into particular practices and it becomes more and more competitive. Especially as a teacher you think, you need to be able to embody the pose with skill and come as close to what the 'textbook' says, as possible.

Now over the last few weeks and months, for several reasons, I have slowed down my practice and taken a raincheck on the most challenging vinyasa classes - and I would by lying if I said that it wasn't difficult. I felt like I was losing things I had just learned when in fact I was gaining so much... Instead, I have been exploring different types of yoga, such as Kundalini and as of late: yin yoga! I was intrigued by yin yoga the first time I heard about it - because it's almost an anthesis to the way I tend to live my life or rather develop my practice - it's very slow, emphasizing patience and turning inside to get to know yourself better. Just today, while taking the class I was comparing the yin approach to Kundalini and it struck me as quite similar in some way - it's also about working through things but in a very different way. Kundalini has the different krias which usually involve some kind of movement that you engage in for a longer time - and in yin yoga you work with the relaxation, the opposite of activation, the release is key. It's really interesting because you work with the opposite of what you are used to and it has an amazing effect- granted I have only taken two classes so far but have been amazed by the way I felt afterwards. Give it a try! Working towards stillness is something we do too rarely in our busy lives and the benefits are really great! It's interesting when you observe yourself holding a pose for minutes, much longer than you usually would - and tell yourself to stay in it even though many parts of your body are asking you to get out of it. It should never really painful but always a little strenuous - there's a fine line there which is helping you feel your body more and get more in tune with yourself. Yin yoga seems to be a form of moving meditation that I could get used to.