Yin and Nidra class

Yin Yoga and Yoga Nidra class tailored to Full Moon in Libra.

What is Yin:

Yin yoga works deeply into our body with passive, longer-held poses.

It targets the deepest tissues of the body, our connective tissues – ligaments, joints, bones, the deep fascia networks of the body and the meridians. This is contrast to a Yang yoga practice such as Vinyasa yoga which targets the muscles.

Energetically, Yin yoga improves the energy flow, enhancing the flow of chi in the organs. To be healthy, we need healthy organs as well as healthy muscles. Yin yoga also offers wonderful emotional and mental health benefits.

What is Yoga Nidra:

Yoga nidra involves slowing down and chilling out. So does meditation. While some people tend to lump them together, they really are two different practices.

“Yoga nidra is like meditation, but yet it’s not,” says yoga therapist and yoga program manager, Judi Bar. “There are overlaps, but there also are key differences. With yoga nidra, you are lying down and the goal is to move into a deep state of conscious awareness sleep, which is a deeper state of relaxation with awareness. This state involves moving from consciousness while awake to dreaming and then to not-dreaming while remaining awake — going past the unconscious to the conscious.” Bar says that this practice is guided like some meditation practices, but it’s very structured.

“With meditation, you’re sitting and in a waking state of consciousness while focusing the mind and allowing thoughts to come and go. Meditation makes it possible for us to get to the theta state — the state we go through to get to the delta state, which is the place of the deepest sleep cycle. The delta state is a deep healing state. That’s where we’re trying to get through yoga nidra. In this state, the body and mind rest and the consciousness is awake.”

Host or Publisher Ann Petrov Yoga