I’m a certified yoga teacher and practitioner. My daily practice is Yin Yoga.

Yin Yoga uses time holding gentle poses while the joints gradually release within the hold. Other practices use shaking to expel joint and muscle stress. Yin is a container for releasing joint stress by patiently settling into a pose over 1-5 minutes. This stillness can be unfamiliar in a forward-moving culture. Take some breaths, a body scan, become aware of your nostrils and the air passing through. The practice relieves anxiety, stress, aches and pains, increases joint and overall flexibility, and increases focus.

Some people don’t like yoga. One of my yoga teachers practiced by dancing everyday. She taught us that over the long haul, if you enjoy your practice, you’re more likely to return daily, and daily attention is nourishment needed to develop yoga, unity, self-alignment, and be yoked together (yoga). I never actually succeed at daily Yin Yoga practice because the practice is very challenging, and downright impossible at times. The ability to enjoy or procrastinate becomes a weathervane around somatic regulation. Whichever part of the wave Yin Yoga is passing through, this feedback system is a constant reliable measure, and the thing I value most about Yin Yoga.

The first time I met up with the reality of yoga, I was bent over in a triangle pose in a dojo. A panic attack overcame me, and I fled from the dojo and walked around in circles until I could catch my breath. I realized the medicinal value of yoga at that moment. It has taken me decades to get from that day of panicking in a triangle pose to holding a forward fold for 2-3 minutes.

It happens to be the secret of world class martial artists, too.

Taoist yoga practices which include breath, movement, meditation and flexibility training along with other techniques are found in the martial arts. To be able to move low to the ground like a monkey, flexibility is essential. In order to develop the range of motion needed to embody the nature and movements of the monkey, one’s own primal nature must be restored.