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Yin Yoga: What Most Teachers Get Wrong

Hosted by Sage Rountree, PhD, E-RYT 500, YACEP

A 60-minute Comfort Zone Conversation for yoga teachers · comfortzoneyoga.com/yin

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The question you’re actually asking

You said yes to the yin slot. The room is quiet. Everyone’s folded over on the floor. Four and a half minutes left in the hold.

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What am I supposed to be doing right now?

Not the question about fascia. This one!

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By the end of the hour you’ll have a full sequence in your hands—built live, on screen—and you’ll know what your job is during those four and a half minutes.

Three things we get wrong

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We think that yin is a setting, not a practice.

Same shapes, longer timer, lights down.

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We believe “find your edge” is a complete instruction.

The phrase students hear most and understand least.

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We assume building a yin class is just making a pose list.

Five shapes you like, in an order that feels nice.

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Yin has no governing body and no alignment dogma—malleable, adaptable, almost open source. But open source still has architecture.

The whole practice in one line

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In yin, time is the dial you don’t set.

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Gentle

• Frequency high
• Time short
• Intensity light </aside>

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Yin

• Frequency low
• Time 2–6 mins.
• Intensity sets itself </aside>

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Restorative

• Frequency low
• Time 10–30 mins.
• Intensity near zero </aside>

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Paul Grilley’s braces analogy: you don’t straighten teeth by shoving them. You apply a very low-grade stress over a long stretch of time, until the tissue reorganizes around it.

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Tension or compression

Every shape is limited by one of two things—and they feel completely different.