What is Yin Yoga with Paul Teodo

0:00 Welcome back to the Going Pro Yoga podcast Michael here, and we have a special guest with us today. He he disappeared for a while. No, just kidding, but Paul's with us today. Fresh out of jail, yeah. So yeah, I'm excited to have Paul back on the podcast.

0:17 It's been a minute since he's been with us. I mean, we we put the podcast on hold for a year, so that's also a thing. But yeah, it's good to have you back on the podcast. Paul, how are you? Doing quite well. Yeah. So you have a 2 year old? Officially no. 2 1/2 year old son and yes, my son chipped his tooth about 2 1/2 weeks ago and we've been dealing with that. They thought that they might be able to save the tooth, but they're not going to be able to

0:43 save it. And it luckily it's a baby tooth, but it's been a big process going through getting the tooth pulled. He had to get his tooth pulled. Yesterday it was. Fresh. Fresh. Very fresh. Fresh. Trauma. More trauma for me than for him. I I can definitely.

0:58 Tell Right. Well, I'm glad to hear he's doing better now and he's playing around, enjoying himself. Thank you. So, yeah. So today I think what we're going to do is we're going to talk about Yin more or less, or at least the style of Yin in which is popular within our school. Maybe we could put it that way.

1:15 Not necessarily talking about the training that you have, the Yin Yang training that you have, but more so just kind of the understanding of what it's about. Or what your style of yen training is as it relates to Fosha. Having talked about Fosha a few times on this podcast and then just kind of intertwining it all together to kind of connect some dots, I would say welcome to the Going Pro Yoga podcast. If you love yoga as much as I do, then this podcast is for you.

1:46 We talk all things yoga related for teachers in order to supplement and compliment and even support after a 200 hour yoga teacher training. Or if you've never done a training before, this podcast is all about just learning more about yoga in an authentic way. Together with Paul Tioto and Byron De Marseille, we put together this podcast to provide you with a free resource to learn more about yoga.

2:08 Whether you want to share yoga or teach yoga or just practice yoga, this podcast is talking all things yoga related and we're trying to talk from the teacher's perspective and also the students perspective to make sure we get a full 360 degree angle on what yoga is all about and how it's evolved in the modern world. Welcome to our podcast.

2:26 So maybe with regards to Yin, just in case you know we we don't want to assume everyone knows everything that's going on. Like what is YIN? OK, so yin yoga. It's a style of yoga that actually began its roots in the West, in America and Canada, and it started actually in martial arts.

2:48 So there was a man named Pauly Zinc. Who used to have a stretching class, basically he called it a stretching class, but he became very popular and he would hold these floor poses for long, long periods of time like 3578 minutes. And it became pretty popular in California in the 1980s. And a guy named Paul Grilli found Poly zinc in 1989 and beginning they actually began studying together. And and then he started bringing these principles into supplemental classes in Santa

3:23 Monica, in his Astanga classes. So it would be a supplement or like an end of the Astanga. They'd do this, this practice. And they originally called it Taoist yoga. And Paul Grillie's one of his top students was a woman named Sarah Powers. And they kind of.

3:40 They kind of created this style together. So it was Taoist yoga and then it became Yin yoga. What's important also to to note is that Paul Grilly never claimed that Yin yoga was his. So you can practice a style of Yin yoga and if you weren't trained by Paul Grilly, if you're not doing exactly the way that he does it.

4:03 You can still call it Yin Yoga. So he's not saying like it has to be my style even though he created it's. Brian Kass is very similar with the name Power Yoga. He doesn't claim to own it right. But what I find when I teach Yin is I I do a lot of techniques and and I I structure the class similarly similarly to Paul Grilli. But there's a lot of ways in which I've kind of made it my own as well.

4:31 Right. So thank you for that history. So 1989, basically, so like 30 or so years ago, that's pretty recent, very super recent and started from martial arts. So that's kind of interesting. And then yeah, so like, what is the actual practice itself? I mean, not to assume that everyone knows what that is, but what is yet, like what is the practice again? So when people think of a yin yoga practice, what they think of is a is a yoga class that you go to where the emphasis is on taking poses and holding them

5:08 for long periods of time while relaxing the body, breathing deeply and surrendering to gravity. And that's basically the emphasis of my yin class. So when I teach yin. I always like to say to my students that we're not stretching.

5:24 What we're doing is we're holding shapes while doing three things. Breathing deeply through the nose, relaxing the body, holding still reasonably still. We don't have to be completely still during in that's not realistic. And then surrendering the body to gravity and surrendering the mind.

5:44 I like to say to the present moment or to your five senses, so if you surrender to your sense of sound. Listen to music, listen to the sounds of nature. You surrender your your skin, you surrender your muscles to the moment, and all of that creates A relaxation response, which is basically my intention for yin yoga is to focus on giving you a practice that's going to allow you to start to really get in touch with your parasympathetic nervous system.

6:15 Yeah, great. That's what I was thinking. It sounds very much like a nervous system focused practice. Absolutely, Yeah. My classes, yeah, the poses are secondary. Right. Yeah. So is there, have you taken other types of Yens that are like slightly different just to compare and contrast what you do?

6:31 Is there something that like or a class that you've taken before or, you know, back in the day when you were taking in classes that you're like, Oh yeah, this is a style, but like, I'm gonna tweak it a little bit. Yeah, basically.

6:43 The classes that I've taken were very physically oriented. So it's very much about like how you know, how is the body being placed, what what target area are you looking for or are you paying attention to. And in many in classes you would hold a pose and then you would sit up and then you would take the pose on the other side or you just go right into another pose, right. Whereas when I do it, the class.

7:12 I'll have you hold a pose, and then I'll have you slowly come out of the pose and then maybe do some soft final waves or breathe deeply a few times or like, really softly gently wiggle your body. I find that it just allows the spine and the joints and whatever area was in the pose to to relax and come back to a state of equilibrium, and I find that that's what feels best to me.

7:39 And most of my students really enjoy that as well. So I I I don't just hold poses and then sit up, hold pose #2 sit up hold pose #3 sit up hold pose #4 and then lay down shavasana, which which was and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. But I've found that I've been practicing in now for nine years and I've been teaching in for.

8:08 Seven. And I've done 3 trainings on Yin and I've just incorporated what several of my teachers taught me. And then also a lot of the things that I learned through meditation that in terms of how to relax the body and how to relax the nervous system, right.

8:23 And upon teaching all these classes and especially teaching at the yoga barn where you literally get people from all over the world, you get all different types of bodies that come to yin. All different types of nervous systems that come to Yin at different temperaments.

8:38 I found that when I guide the class that way, I'm really able to help the students relax. Yeah. To get more than just a stretch, which is, which is a good thing to highlight, is because I think a lot of people think Yin is just like a lot of people think yoga is just stretching.

8:57 Yeah. But Yin specifically, they're like, Oh yeah, you don't. You just like lay on the ground and stretch for 5 minutes at a time. And I say that's what's going on, on the outside. But what's going on, on the inside is the nervous system being is beginning to deeply relax.

9:11 And I think that the the the more I've taught Ian, the more I've tried to challenge myself, to make the class more colorful, to make it the more sophisticated. And to me that means really getting into deeply relaxing the nervous system. And then a lot of times I'll pose questions for my students just to get in touch with the different feminine qualities within themself that they might have, that might be sleeping. A lot of times, that's what I'll

9:42 say. So qualities like vulnerability or empathy, the imagination, creativity, paying attention to nature. Appreciating the beauty of life, connection to children, connection to animals. So all of these qualities are are ways that you can allow your life to be more vivid. And while holding these poses and breathing deeply, you can use your imagination to to recognize the the places in your life, your imagination and your intuition to recognize the places in your life that have

10:20 gone dormant. And a lot of times these are qualities that the world doesn't necessarily celebrate. So you need to just celebrate them within yourself, within your own heart. Like like if you love painting, you know most people that love painting aren't able to pay the bills with painting. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't paint. It means you need to give yourself space to still continue doing the things that you love.

10:48 And I think that that a lot of people have told me in my classes while we're holding these poses, while you're breathing deeply. They've gotten in touch with parts of themselves that they forgot and put part like a like a it's like a flower that needed water, a flower that needed sunlight and nourishing. Those qualities.

11:07 I think for me that that's made my yin teaching more sophisticated. I really like how it's focused more on the nervous system, which I assume you're not the only one that does that. But I I just think that the the nervous system itself is such a thing that requires so much balance and the the world that we live in, in order to survive even, you know, not in the ways in which we had to survive hundreds of years ago. But the way we need to survive now is just, you know, different different obstacles, different

11:47 challenges. The nervous system requires the down regulated times. Like a yen practice to be able to go into, you know, states of being that are different from your usual daytoday 9 to 5. You know, kids, all this stuff. And then once you're in that different place, in that different state, you can start to cultivate or you can start to explore, become curious or water, some of these qualities that you just talked about. And I think if you're not in

12:12 that state of being from a nervous systems perspective, then it's almost like it's not important at that time because survival is the only thing that's important. So that's kind of how the nervous system works, I guess in the senses, you know, there's the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system, which we didn't talk a lot about that in the podcast, but we'll just kind of briefly mention it.

12:32 You know, the the two major parts or at least one of the theories of the two major parts of the nervous system is the sympathetic fight or flight, right. The survival mechanism, the thing that kind of drives us to be able to, you know, look for food, look for water, avoid danger, lions Saber tooth, this type of stuff, right, Which is very important part of our nervous system.

12:50 And then the parasympathetic, which is the rest, the digestive parts, the rejuvenation. And you know they don't work like a light switch, they work and they intertwine between each other and they kind of it's almost like the nervous system to me. Is is is a way that your body, your deeper intelligence of your body, learns how to be more efficient with its energy. Beautiful.

13:11 So like when you have times that you need to not fight, but you know, have that survival instinct, you need to have that part of you awake and alive. And then the parts that require rest also have moments for that as well.

13:26 And The thing is is I couldn't agree with you more and the fight or flight, but I mean we're all, we're all these primitive mammals that lived in you know in wild territories all the time for millions of years. So we're pretty wired to for fight or flight. But if you really think about, I mean, anybody who comes to my my yoga class, they're not really in survival mode, although the brain is telling the body we're in survival mode, but they have food, they have a place to

14:04 sleep, they have enough money to to be in Bali, to be at a yoga class. So the real survive. It's not real. It's the primitive brain. Saying I am in danger or I need to do or whatever and and it's it needs to be balanced out and I think that's it's also the same side of education unfortunately that is you know it's it's overemphasizing math, science, intellect, all of these things are great and underutilizing art, music, intuition, sensitivity. Emotional intelligence.

14:44 So that's also what I want. And as a musician and as a as a person who spent several years as an artist, I'm wanting people to get in touch with that side of themselves. You know, it's like going to the gym every day. People work out. I see you work at the left side of your body was like the left side of your brain, but you don't lift. Like I'm not going to lift with my right side. That side doesn't make me any money, right. You know, it makes no sense.

15:09 Right. Yeah, that balance in between so. The thing that I like in addition to all this is the I mean, we're talking about the nervous system. We're talking about balance between the sympathetic parasympathetic, finding more ways in which we can cultivate these qualities, these yin like qualities, feminine type qualities.

15:26 And I think the the balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic and also the balance between the left side of the brain and the right side of the brain as well. So I'm I'm also catering my class towards the right side of the brain. So my my queuing is very imaginative. My queuing is very sensorial.

15:42 My cueing is not mathematical at all, unless I see a student who's in a position where they're like twisting their knee or something like that. I try to try to give more vivid, imaginative, energetic cues, like thinking.

15:59 Like, imagine that your skin is melting into your mat, or imagine all the tension being pulled out of the center of your chest, you know? Yeah, that creates a certain environment which allows a lot of positive things to happen.

16:12 Absolutely not just stretching. Yeah, right. And I think that's, I mean, I don't know, I haven't taken a lot of yen classes outside of yours and a few others here. So, you know, I'm always curious to know like whatever other people's perspectives is on yen. But I would say to me having taken the, the ones that I have taken is that.

16:31 To me, it's definitely not about stretching at all. No. It's all about softening. Not just your physical body, but softening, you know, your energetic body, your emotional body. Allowing things to be to be in this parasympathetic state with no, with no goals of any of any kind.

16:47 Just be there and just see what happens. See what comes up, see what flows through, see what you know, what is important to you might reveal itself in that state of being. And there isn't a lot of. I don't want to speak for the world, but I wouldn't say there's a lot of opportunities or a lot of environments where people feel safe enough to be able to tap into that place.

17:10 Ideally their homes, they get home and they feel that. But you know, at the same time, I would say, well, there's a couple things. One, it's the environment that is really important to allow people to feel safe enough to enter into their parasympathetic And then also having the tools to be able to do that. Yeah, which would be the breath or, you know, guided. Meditation or guided voice from a teacher for example. And unfortunately I think a lot of people don't have both of those, if not one of them right

17:38 a safe place and then also the tools to be able to tap in. So yen is a place that can provide that. I would say assuming the teacher can hold space in a safe way and then also providing tools in which they can tap into their breath and hope to surrender their body so that their body will soften, their emotions might reveal or soften.

17:57 To show something that is important, that would be that creativity or what have you. Absolutely. And I think one of the beautiful things about Ubud Bali is that it is that the yin yoga here I think is quite good because Bali is a feminine space. It's a it's a yin.

18:18 Ubud for. Sure. And Ubud especially is a yin as energetically A yin city. And a lot of the yoga teachers that come here are very creative, artistic, right brained people. So you're getting these yin classes that are taught by right brained people, which I think is beautiful.

18:37 So if you go to like a yin class in another city, you might get a very skillfully taught class, but there's lacking that that soul, that imagination, that spirit, that heart. You know, so here you get a lot of the heart.

18:53 And then I think the teachers that are experienced and well trained enough to be able to structure within the creativity are able to deliver some really fantastic experiences. And I think that that's that's really the The thing is that there are teachers that teach, that, teach the breath and they teach all of these things. But there's no you don't feel their heart when they're teaching.

19:16 You don't feel their soul, you don't feel their their their creativity. And here in in in Bali, it's quite good. Yeah, the room for connection. Yes. Room for connection, which is really what we all want, whether we know it or.

19:32 Not, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Cool. So the other thing I wrote down, just because we've talked about it and we've shared up with other podcast episodes to talk a little bit about Yin and just with regards to being completely relaxed versus slight. Movement or slight activation or slight engagement. So what are your philosophies or thoughts on that? Yeah, so I I personally am a devotee of Jason Crandall, the the teacher from San Francisco.

20:03 And a lot of times I will tell my students to listen to an episode of his, which I shouldn't tell all of you guys to listen to our podcast, but Jason Crandall, his take on Yin yoga, Jason's take on Yin yoga, it's a Yogaland podcast.

20:18 It's really good. And it talks about the the benefits of slight engagement. So like if I'm taking a forward fold, am I going to let my my back be completely relaxed? Am I going to not flex my feet at all? Or am I going to take a slight engagement of the lower abdomen as I'm routing my spine forward and I'm going to keep a slight engagement in my feet to to engage the superficial back line? And my take on it is what I always tell my students is to engage slightly.

20:53 So it's a very slight emphasis on alignment for the first minute, minute and a half of of a pose. And then as you start to relax into the pose, you can release that engagement until the engagement is only like 5%, but to never completely relax. Your entire body in any especially a super deep pose. So if you ever take my my training, I've broken down Yin yoga poses into level 1 poses, level 2 poses, Level 3 poses. Those are both difficulty and intensity. So I would never tell a student

21:32 or almost never tell a student to relax completely in a Level 3 pose right if it's a level 1 pose, which would be like Savasana or Pentacle. Or Supta Bata, Canasna. Those would be poses where it would be fine to completely relax, but any type of pose where you're doing a side bend and you're going to have to engage the body a little bit.

21:56 If you're seated and doing a side bend, you have to engage the core slightly. What you're not doing is you're not pulling, you're not pulling as far as you can, but you're engaging enough that there's a certain degree of stabilization.

22:09 And that to me, protects the body. And then also allows you to feel safe enough to relax more deeply. Right. And I'd love to hear your take on it. And then we'll also talk, I'm sure, about like how long you should hold poses and how I and you both agree that, you know, certain poses don't need to be held as long as some people are holding them. And.

22:28 And why? Why? That's our philosophy on that, right? What do you think? Yeah, cool. Thank you. I'll top on. I'll jump on that. I'll just say that the The Yoga Land podcast, it doesn't have, it says season one finale. You might just need to look that up.

22:42 But it was released in April 2019, so have a listen to that one. It's a good. It's a good perspective to get as well. Yeah. For me, I'm all about making sure the body is safe, right? And that yoga is accessible to as many people as possible. Because I think yoga is such a beautiful thing that I wouldn't want just, you know, skinny, flexible people to be able to do yoga and also just do yin, right. So I think that.

23:12 In order for yoga to be accessible to everyone, there's certain criteria that helps to keep the body safe. And if we're going to, you know, talk about yin mostly, then I'd say certain positions are not going to be super comfortable for the modern body or a particular body that is not super flexible. Thinking about seated postures where you're folding forward and like your hamstrings are pulling on your pelvis. Which is basically making your lower back round. And if you don't know what

23:38 that's like, basically if you have height, tight hamstrings and you have a hard time reaching to touch your toes, that's what I'm talking about, is because of the tightness in the body, which could cause a discomfort. And then it's like, how do you fully relax in a yin pose?

23:52 It's like, well, if you did fully relax there, you might actually be putting some pressure on the spine that might not be super supportive. So obviously there's ways to support that with blocks and bolsters, but the certain level of engagement that you were talking about within the core.

24:05 To ultimately protect the spine, to stabilize the spine, to stabilize the pelvis in order to reach that place of somewhat of a surrendered position or a place where the body can at least relax, you know 80 to 90%. And then from there they might be able to relax the full 100% at at some particular point and going bringing it back to the nervous system if the body has certain areas that are tighter. And you move into that tightness. And if the body doesn't feel

24:37 safe within that tightness, because there's no stability there, because there's no core engagement or for whatever reason, it's just it's not comfortable. Maybe the props aren't set up properly or something like this for that person, or they're just new and they don't know what they're doing, Right. That slight engagement is going to help to keep them safe but also allow their nervous system to be like, oh, OK, cool. Like I'm I'm, I'm, I'm being supported here a little bit. Right.

25:00 And. From there, they might actually be able to relax a little bit more here, some of the words that are being shared. And then then their body will soften, some of the fossa will soften. And then some of that tension or that, let's just say fight or flight neurons that are kind of swimming throughout the body or the the sympathetic neurons fight or flight.

25:19 They might actually start to ease a little bit. And then at that point it's like OK, cool and you know, a little stretch probably happens, maybe some of that tension releases in the hamstrings. Now the rounding in the lower back has become less. And it took like a minute to do that or two minutes to do that. And then now you could probably soften a little bit more and then get additional benefits from a physical perspective. Yeah, I think that the the most

25:42 of the research shows that the the deep relaxation response begins between 90 seconds and two minutes. So I've tried, I've tried to hold most of my poses for at least 2 minutes, but I also am a believer that there's there's very few poses where I feel like.

26:00 Holding them for 7-8 minutes is beneficial, especially at the the classes that I teach which have so many different levels of experience, so many different body types. Like if I if I were to try and hold my students in pigeon for seven minutes, within 3 minutes half of the room would be so wiggly and so nervous and so uncomfortable that it would mess up the entire energy of the class so.

26:27 For my classes, I especially in that type of environment where it's a lot of people, lot of different bodies, a lot of different levels of experience, I hold them for four minutes. And you know, sometimes people will come out to me like you don't hold the poses for very long.

26:44 I'm like, well, if the class is really about the nervous system and you and you think that you are a more experienced or advanced in Yogi. You have all the tools and all the techniques that you need to be able to relax deeply in 4 minutes, yeah? Quicker than others, exactly.

27:00 Yeah, so you don't need 7 minutes because because again the practice is about finding the shape and doing those things, breathing out deeply through the nose, pausing at the bottom of the exhale to feel surrendered, relaxing the body and then surrendering to gravity if you do those things.

27:17 And then I also will introduce some some breathing techniques and also I do. The honeybee mantra brahmery, which is the basically only with your mouth closed, it's like this, yeah, so we do that and that has been proven to stimulate your vagus nerve, which helps you go into deeper states of relaxation. And on top of that, I also encourage the students to practice another yin technique of listening. So you listen to the room and when you're making that sound. What Michael did, and we both

27:56 did very intuitively, is that we we we found each other's pitch. We found each other's tone. So you feel the sense of yoga. So what's yoga? Yoga is the the uniting, the union of the individual with everything. You can experience that through your own voice, through sound, vibration. So we all hum together and the room hums like an orchestra playing a note.

28:17 And then this connection starts to happen, and then people feel safer. More connected and then they go deeper into the poses and then they go deeper into the class. So I I usually introduce that technique around 20 minutes into a 90 minute class and then I I keep them doing it throughout the entire. Practice.

28:36 That's great. It makes me think of the nervous system again. Yeah, because my science brain cannot turn off Co regulation. Oh. The word Co regulation where you are. In a room with people who are doing a similar, they're basically doing the same thing. The tone is or the the pitch is remaining somewhat the same, the frequency.

28:59 And you know, it's everything's leveling out, coregulating if you will. And I talk about this a lot. I don't know if I talk about it on the podcast, but I definitely talk a lot about it in classes, about how it's really important for us to coregulate with or not coregulate.

29:16 But it's very important for us to learn how coregulation works because. People are familiar with the saying, like, oh, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You know what your environment is like is going to affect, you know, your mood and things like that. And it's basically talking about Co regulation, right. So yeah, being in a room that is safe, that is where people are focusing on their breath is still mostly and you know, doing some of this honeybee stuff

29:46 which kind of collectively unites the room with sound. Create such a beautiful Petri dish or environment to to cultivate so much good. Yeah, inside, you know with the nervous system in in that as well. So yeah, you ended such a beautiful practice.

30:03 Yeah, I love teaching it. I love teaching it. And and sometimes people will say like, oh, don't you get bored teaching in or this that like now there's so much there's so much to look for you know there's so much there's so many ways to to try and and. And help the students go deeper, but they have to be soft and subtle and you just learn.

30:22 You know one thing I'll also we say it in all of our trainings, but in Yin, like I tell all my students that are in the teacher trainings that you are teaching the class and the coteacher of the class is silence. Shut up.

30:35 And let silence teach the class. Silence is a better teacher than you most of the time, so the more a student who's who's or, the more a teacher. Is teaching yin and they say less but just let the things that you say really land and and I just I just was a guest teacher on on a 300 hour teacher training and we had a nice yin module and we did some practice teaching and that that really like the students got to see like I would slow them down and they'd want to give like 5-6

31:11 cues and I would stop and I'd say instead of that. Say one sentence, pause for five seconds and then say another sentence and then another sentence and it it. I could tell. Like for a lot of these students who had been teaching mostly vanyasa, it was a very different feeling for them, but just watching how much more effectively their things their cues started to land, but also when that started happening. The things that the teachers started saying, they went from just cueing the body to saying

31:51 something beautiful about life or sharing something, sharing a beautiful piece from their heart and their their their teaching became so much more colorful and vivid. And it was the type of teaching that I think really allows the student teacher connection to start to to bond where where the person's like wow you know I go to SO and so's class every Tuesday night for my yin because not only does.

32:14 She guide me through a good practice, but she says the most inspiring things and she shares from her heart and she just reminds me of things that I've forgotten and all of that, you know, And that's what starts to happen when we slow down.

32:28 Not just the students, but the teacher needs to slow down and then trust. And I, you know, a lot of times we'll say take a risk as you're teaching, you know, so taking a risk in YIN, you know, sharing something more personal, sharing a quote. Talking less is risky, you know, Doing the Brahmery with the group, all of those things are are ways to just color your class more vividly.

32:58 Well, I feel pretty good, feel pretty good about everything we talked about. We could talk more within 30 minutes and you know, we could probably build on this conversation even more. But one thing that I'll just kind of wrap up with. Or at least my final thoughts anyway is with regards to just the technical part of Yin and the part that we've been emphasizing mostly, which is like the the somatic side, the right brain side.

33:26 Obviously there's a certain level of technique in like a knowledge and understanding of poses and you know, stuff like that. How to, how to you know, Oh my God, can you think of the word modify? Yeah, with props and stuff like this.

33:41 But I think that's probably the easier thing with yen because I mean if you think about yen, like you could put a 90 minute class together with like you know, less than 10 poses. Yes. You know, so it's like is that really harder than a vinyasa class?

33:55 Technically, I would say probably not even close. Yeah. The harder part is what basically what we emphasize and what you emphasize, it should say a lot, which is the, you know, the holding space, the saying less, you know, speaking from your heart, sharing things about the. Just somatic side of the brain getting into vulnerability, allowing people to enter into that space And and that I'm saying this, but I'm also saying it to myself, you know, even in teaching a vinyasa class,

34:21 sometimes I will talk a little bit left brained, right, because I am left brained with my science, you know, So my queuing and everything is on point. But I'm also like Oh yeah, but sometimes I don't need to necessarily cue, yeah, sometimes my cue can be an energetic cue or it can be an inspiring thing or something like that. So that's kind of a reminder for me as well and hopefully for anyone else that's listening.

34:41 Absolutely, yeah. And I think it's also important to say like if you are a more left brained person, then teach a left brained class. I'm not telling anybody to, to not be who they are, you know. But just, you know, the challenge for you, like you said is to is to give a few more energetic cues just so the class becomes a little bit more balanced between both of them. Yeah, you know, I think that's a that's that's at least my advice to any.

35:07 Newer yin yoga teacher would be that. And then I want to ask you a quick question before we go off. I know we're at 30 minutes, but what's your take on holding poses for more than 5 minutes as a physiotherapist? Like do you see a reason why 5 minutes might not be as good as seven or eight if it's a deep hip opener or deep forward fold or a deep side body bend? I would say if we're doing yin type poses in the sense that we're going to a tender edge

35:40 where we're expanding on that tender edge, then yeah, there would be a certain point where I would say it's probably enough and my my intuition is telling me around the four to five minute mark as a maximum. Me too. That being said, if it's like a restorative class where you're entering poses but you're not going to that tender edge, you're going to like a. Almost a complete relaxed state where your body isn't tense and any points?

36:04 Yeah, then sure. Fucking stay there as long as you want, you know what I mean? 10-15 minutes, Fine, right. That's a different type of conversation. But I think from this, the the little bit of physical stress or physiological stress that goes into certain areas in the body, the joints in particular, where we're playing with the end range of motion of a joint, That's the most vulnerable point of a joint, yeah. And yes, we do want to connect with our nervous system and like breathe and allow things to

36:31 soften so that we can createspace in that range of motion. But I would say that we don't want to overdo it and allow these areas of our body or a range of motion to be overstretched, even if it is in a relaxed state. Because everything needs to be done gradually and I think if anything is tried is is done a little bit too much. Then it'll have some downsides to it. And intuitively, I mean, you said it, I said it in my experience and this this doesn't

37:03 just apply to like holding in post. I think about like myofascial release techniques and stuff like that. Like I say like 5 minutes is the Max you would work on a spot and to be honest, 3 minutes is probably a sweet zone. Yeah, and it's a similar thing.

37:15 It's like you could kind of, you know what is myofascial release, you pull a ball here and you know this type of stuff to help release some of the tension in the muscles and stuff. But it eventually gets to a point where you're just bruising you and bruising your muscles, right?

37:28 So it's like there's a point of optimized time. You know, in a lot of my studies with physio, it's like, oh, you do this technique for this amount of time, You hold a stretch for this amount of time. And the benefits or the science shows that the benefits peaks here.

37:41 Yeah, And after that, it's either a waste of time. Or it actually has the downside? Effects. Yep. Absolutely. So I don't have anything to back that up right now with regards to that, but my gut is telling me that, yeah, 4 to 5 minutes is like solid. Yeah, that's that.

37:54 That's a maximum, Yeah, 4 to 5 minutes for 4 to 5 minutes for the lower body and then two to three minutes, usually around 3 minutes for the upper body. That's how I go. Cool. All right, I have one question for you before we go. Yes.

38:08 Supine twist or twisted roots. Yeah, twisting. Yen poses you hold them less, yeah. Yeah, like like 2 minutes. Yeah. I don't see the reason. I don't know why somebody would want to hold A twist for four or five minutes. Yeah, doesn't really make sense to me.

38:23 Yeah, I didn't think so, but I just wanted to hear your thoughts on it. Cuz to me, I thought that the spine is there's just too much going on there for that period of time. Yeah. So I'm glad to hear that We're on the same page.

38:32 Yeah, but if you got, if you have a real reason why you should hold A twist for four or five minutes, send it in to us and I'll listen to it, yeah. Absolutely. Podcast@goingproyoga.com As always, if you have questions or thoughts about anything that we talked about today or if you have anything to add, then we'd obviously always love to hear from you. Otherwise, Paul, any final words? No, come visit us in Bali.

38:56 Yeah, it's beautiful here. All right. Have a beautiful day and we'll speak to you next week. Take care. All right, Before you go, let me just tell you about the goingproyoga.com platform. So right now you can go to goingproyoga.com and check it out for free for seven days where you can actually learn more about yoga in the ways of alignment, queueing, sequencing, yoga, anatomy. So that if you've done a 200 hour teacher training and you want to continue to learn,

39:22 practice and grow, this platform is definitely for you. So I definitely suggest checking it out goingproyoga.com right now. You can try it out for free for seven days.