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We are truly blessed these days with the vast wealth of really excellent online yoga teaching resources. For a modest monthly subscription or course fee, you can get access to a wonderful range of courses and classes, with some highly experienced Yin Yoga teachers.

In particular, I am very enthused to be able to write a recommendation for a wonderful online Yin Yoga course from Paul Grilley, one of the early pioneers and leading master teachers of Yin Yoga. This course is available from Pranamaya.com and would be very useful for anyone who wants to gain a better understanding of the functional approach to yoga, as opposed to the aesthetic approach to yoga, in which the look of the posture is deemed to be more important than how the posture feels. Functional yoga focuses on how the posture feels in your body, rather than how it looks.

Paul Grilley’s course demonstrates very clearly that flexibility in yoga postures is ultimately determined by our own unique skeletal structure, which both enables and limits our range of motion. Paul has done a great service to the world of yoga over many years by taking a forensic, anatomical approach to yoga, in order to clearly show that not everyone is able to do every yoga pose to it’s maximum extent. No matter how much muscle or connective tissue flexibility we cultivate, in the end our unique individual skeletal structure will determine how far we are able to go in any given pose.

In the course, Paul shows us how to view our bodies in terms of 14 skeletal segments, which are moved by 10 muscle groups. This understanding enables us to effectively adapt the various yoga poses to suit our individual range of motion. I would highly recommend this course to all yoga teachers, as well as students, particularly as in showing bones from different people’s bodies, it demonstrates how important it is not to force our bodies (or our students’ bodies) into postures that we are simply not physically set up to do. In honouring and accepting our natural limitations, we greatly reduce the potential for injury.

Thank you Paul, for your amazing contribution to yoga science!

Of the many forms of yoga that I’ve practiced over the years, Yin Yoga has become my enduring favourite, and the one that I have chosen to share with others by offering weekly classes in the Sunshine Room.

I have never been a big fan of holding ‘yang’ yoga poses for very long. With yang poses, such as Warrior II, in which the muscles are held in a state of tension, my arms and legs would quickly get tired. Holding the pose would feel like a chore and it was hard for my mind to settle, as my main focus seemed to be “when is this going to end?” I am not knocking yang forms of yoga, as working the muscles is vitally important for health of course, I’ve just found other non-yogic ways to work the muscles, which I prefer.

By contrast, Yin Yoga poses give the muscles a rest, focusing instead on working the joints, tendons, ligaments and fascia, in a challenging but safe way. In my experience, with Yin Yoga it becomes possible to enter a state of ‘passive intention’, holding the poses for several minutes at a time, and allowing gravity and your own body weight to provide the challenge to the tendons, ligaments, fascia and joints.

Cushions, bolsters, rolled up blankets or blocks can be used to ensure that your body only goes as far as the first point of challenge, which becomes the ‘edge’ that you work with.

Focusing on the breath as we stay in each pose for several minutes, invites us to simply notice our thoughts as they pass by, becoming the observer of our own mind chatter, detached from the content and just letting each thought go, without judgement.

To cultivate awareness, so that we do not over-extend ourselves, and to be mindful to the present moment, is a great antidote to an increasingly over-complex and frenetic world.

For class information, please see the class schedule or contact Lisa at yoga@lisamead.uk, Mob 07940 889504.