Yin Yoga for Beginners - Full Body Stretch Yoga

Hey guys , welcome to my channel .

My name is Cassandra and today we're doing a Yin yoga class for beginners .

This is a full body stretch and we are definitely going to be using some props .

So go ahead and grab two blocks as well as a strap .

If you don't happen to have that at home , you can always use some pillows or couch cushions .

And then for the strap , you can always just use a belt , it works perfectly fine .

If you happen to be new to the practice of Yin yoga , we do hold passive poses for an extended period of time .

So we're not meant to use any kind of muscular effort .

This is not about getting stronger and it's not about endurance .

It's really about relaxing and all of the poses , letting gravity do the work for you so that we can send the emphasis of the stretch and really the stress into our joints as well as our muscles so deep into the connective tissues , which will improve our range of motion and increase our flexibility .

So the first pose we'll get into is child's pose , big toes together and then the knees go apart , the wider you have your knees , the more intense the sensation will be through the inner thighs and inner groin .

You don't want to cause any kind of pinching or compression in your lower back .

So if you feel tightness or tension here , it usually means your knees are too far apart and you just need to bring them back in , walk your hands out and you can either rest the forehead down to the floor onto your palms or you can bring your block under the chest and under the forehead to close the gap between your body and the floor .

So we're always trying to find our edge in this pose or in all of these poses , which means not going so deep into a pose that you can't breathe or that you have to tighten up and tense your body .

So while it should be fairly sensational , it should never ever be painful .

And while you're in this pose , try to let your hips be heavy towards your heels and just melt the chest down to the floor , relax your arms and shoulders and upper back and simply breathe slow and steady in and out through your nose .

Sure .

Hm .

Begin to engage your arms , push into the palm so you can start to lift your chin chest back up and we're going to slide forward onto our belly into our sinks pose .

So bring your knees in and just come down to your belly .

Try to keep your feet about hip with distance apart , slide your forms out in front of you and you want to have your elbows and your palms about shoulder with distance .

So you control how deep you go into this back , bend .

The further forward you bring your arms , the easier it will be and the less deep of an angle you'll have in your low back .

Alternatively , you can make it a little bit more intense by bringing the elbows directly underneath your shoulders .

Try to widen through the sit bones , lifting up through your chest , press your shoulders back .

So it's lightly squeezing your shoulder blades behind you chin parallel to the floor , just extend your heart forward .

So again , if there's pinching or compression or any kind of pain in your lower back , you know , you've gone a little too far into the pose , your rib cage expand front to back and side to side with the rhythm of your breath .

Yeah .

Take your last three deep breaths in this pose .

Try to shine the heart forward , reaching the tailbone to your heels and very slowly release all the way back down .

We're gonna come up tabletop po on hands and knees making our way into baby Dragon , which is just a little low lunch .

You may or may not want to have your blocks for this one .

So stepping the right foot forward in between your palms to the top of the mat because we are here for a little while .

I like to fold up the mat just to pad the left knee .

And if it's hard to keep the fingertips on the mat here , you can just have your blocks under your palms .

So you have a little bit more lift .

Try to keep your ankle underneath your knee .

Melting the hips forward and down , draw the shoulders away from the ears and let gravity do the work for you here .

So , a deeper hip opener , if you need to take any breaks , you're welcome to straighten the leg and release .

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And before we go into that same thing over on the other side , it might feel good just to do a few hip circles or to take another little child's pose and just notice the difference from one side to the other after that hold .

So this time , we'll want to step our left foot forward in between the hands at the top of the mat , aligning the knee over the top of the ankle and keep your hands to either side of that front foot .

And again , you can roll up your mat or even put a little pillow or blanket underneath your right knee , melting the hips forward and down , keeping the chest lifted .

I'm trying to remind not to collapse your weight into your wrists .

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Um Just like before any little movements that feel good here and help get the blood flowing again down into that right hip .

So our next pose will be caterpillar , which is just like a forward fold and you'll probably want to have your blocks for you .

For this one .

Just extend your legs out in front of you .

You want your feet to be about hip with distance apart .

So a Yin yoga forward fold is passive , which means we're not pushing or pulling um and forcing our way to fold deeper .

In fact , we want to just let ourselves naturally round and relax into the pose with very little effort .

This also means that you can absolutely bend your knees .

The legs do not need to be perfectly straight if they can be straight , that's fine too .

So just let yourself naturally soften into the pose and wherever you want to end up or when , wherever you do end up , try to relax your head and relax your neck .

If you're somewhere close to the ground , I like to prop myself up with a block either under the chest or under the forehead .

And if you're up a little bit higher , you can use both blocks so that you have some support .

So props are very , very useful for a pose like this one .

And I like to turn the palms to face up so that I'm not tempted to push or pull my way deeper into the pose .

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You stay in this pose , the more you might notice that you can soften into it or even go deeper .

So the pose tends to change quite a bit , the longer we hold it .

So forward folds can be quite intense for the low back and for the spine in general .

So we'll want to go extra slow as we come out of the pose , start by flipping your palms and just push into the hands .

You use your arm strength to lift yourself up , inch by inch , really not rushing this , keep breathing even as you transition out of the poses , then once you come all the way up , we'll take a really simple uh little seated twist so you can keep your left leg straight out in front of you , bend into your right knee and you're just going to cross your right foot over the top of your left thigh .

Grab a hold of that right thigh with your left hand , bring your right fingertips behind you and just open up the chest to the right , squeezing the thigh into your belly .

Yes .

Try to eliminate any rounding in your spine .

Think instead of lengthening up , grounding the sit bones and reaching the crown of the head up towards the sky .

While drawing your shoulders down and away from your ears , slowly unwind face forward and we'll switch sides , extend your right leg out in front of you , bend your left knee and cross your left foot over your right thigh .

Really ground all four corners of that left foot lift and lengthen up , catch a hold of your left thigh with your right arm , left fingertips go behind you just to provide support .

So you can push into those fingertips to lift and lengthen up a little more and then twist and rotate the spine from there , hugging the belly back and just close your eyes .

Paying attention to your breath in and out through your nose , then let's unwrap .

So grabbing a hold of your strap , we're gonna lower all the way down onto our back this time taking a reclining leg stretch .

So with your feet flat on the ground , knees bent , you'll need to hook your strap or your belt , whatever you're using at home around the ball of your right foot and then extend that leg straight up .

So my favorite way to do this one is to , instead of holding all the way up to the strap and trying to meet the foot , I like to hold a little bit lower down so that my arms can just relax on the ground .

And then I don't need to use quite as much arm strength to do this pose .

We want our right leg to be soft and relaxed , just using a little bit of arm strength to guide the leg in towards your chest .

And if you'd like to make this a little bit more sensational and go deeper into the pose , you can slide your left leg to the floor and just like in our forward fold and caterpillar pose , you can absolutely bend your right knee and sometimes the leg will shake a little bit and that's usually just a sign that you're a little bit too far into the pose .

Yeah .

Yeah .

Bend and cheer right knee , you can remove the strap or switch sides .

So at this time , the strap will wrap around the left foot , extend your left leg straight up , try to keep ankle , knee and hip all in one line , lightly pulling and using the arms to draw the thigh closer , flexing at the foot .

And if you did it on the first side , try to even things out again .

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So our next pose is one of my all time favorites .

It's called banana pose and it's a great way to open up the sides of your waist .

So a great big side body stretch , bending into your knees , you'll need to just move your hips as far over to the right as you can and then bring your shoulders and your chest a little bit more to the left .

So starting to make that banana shape , extend your legs straight and then your ankles will also move over to the left .

So making that C shape with your body , you can reach your arms up overhead and hold on to the opposite elbows and forms try to keep your right hip grounded to the floor as much as possible .

If you wanted to go a little bit deeper into the stretch , you can cross your right ankle over the top of the left .

So you should feel a nice opening into the waist , down into the hip and you might feel it in the it band as well if that's an area that's pretty tight .

So it takes a little bit of readjusting until you can find the sweet spot where it's not too intense that it's hard to hold .

It should be comfortable enough that you could stay here for a few minutes without having to readjust .

Try to send your breath into the right side of your body , filling up the space you're creating and just relaxing into the pose with every exhale .

If you had your ankles crossed , you can let that go .

We're just gonna ease over to the other side .

So bending the knees this time , your hips will have to go over to the left side of your mat while the upper body moves to the right .

So making the c shape over to the other side and then you can re extend your legs straight , walk your ankles and your feet a little bit over to the left and you can always cross your left ankle over the top of your right one .

And let's release the stretch on the side and we'll make our way into butterfly poses or reclined butterfly pose .

You may or may not want your blocks for this one .

We're just gonna bring the soles of the feet together to touch , make sure your shoulders and your hips are once more in line and let your knees open up .

If the lower back or the hips are really tight , you can always use your blocks and just prop them underneath your thighs underneath your knees .

So there's a little bit of support here and we'll make the pose a lot easier to hold .

Otherwise you can just let them fall open and let your arms go wherever it's comfortable .

You can even extend them up overhead .

If you wanted to stretch a little more into the shoulders and upper back , send your breath all the way down to your low belly , low back .

Mhm Use your hands to help your knees come back up .

We'll make our way to corpse pose .

Extend your legs out in front of you , take up space with your arms palms facing up to the sky and just let yourself soften in the shape .

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Slowly waking back up , energizing your body .

You can wiggle fingers and toes or turn the wrists and the ankles and let your head drop from side to side .

Take a great big stretch , extending your arms up overhead and we'll come up to take a seat , take your time to get there setting up nice and tall , closing your eyes , bring your hands together at the front of the heart and we'll close our practice with one big cleansing breath , inhaling through the nose and out the mouth .

Breathing , bowing forward and I must stay .

Thank you so much Yogis for doing this beginner .

Yin yoga practice with me .

I hope you enjoyed it .

Please do subscribe to my channel if you don't already , I put out new yoga classes every single week and I have plenty of other Yin yoga classes on my channel .

If you'd like to learn more about the style and practice it more frequently , it's a great way to increase your overall flexibility .

Thanks again .

Have a great day .