Yin Yoga For Your Neck and Shoulders

If you are new to the practice of Yin Yoga check out my Yin Yoga for Beginners Post.

Yin Yoga for the neck and shoulders is one of my most requested sequences.

Often times people think that Yin Yoga is for the lower body. And it’s true if you look at most of the Yin Yoga books there is very little for the upper body. This is the first of a couple of posts where I focus on some Yin Yoga for the upper body starting with the neck and shoulders.

When I first started teaching Yin Yoga I too mostly stuck to the lower half of the body from the waist down. But my students (who by then had fallen in love with Yin Yoga) kept asking if there was any Yin Yoga poses for their neck and shoulders.

So Why Yin Yoga for the Neck and shoulders?

Sitting at a desk all day working on a computer tightens up the neck and shoulders a lot. My friends that are tattoo artists have the same complaints. And I, as a former hairstylist of 12 years, also had some brutally tight muscles and fascia in my neck and shoulders.

Neck Pain

So I got to thinking about how I how could take some of my beloved poses for the neck and shoulders and practice them Yin style and as it turns out, it’s pretty easy to do.

During one of my training’s with Paul and Suzee Grilley, a few of us asked them why there weren’t any poses for the neck and shoulders. Suzee had recently added ‘Graceful Bow’ for the neck but that was the only pose they were offering. The Grilleys mentioned that it hadn’t occurred to them to offer poses for the neck and shoulders simply because in their bodies it wasn’t needed. But as always they were completely open to us offering them ourselves.

The fascia in the neck and shoulders isn’t as dense as the lower body so we often don’t need to hold the poses as long. So most of these poses are in the 2-3 min range typically.

I hope you love this practice video Yin Yoga for your neck and shoulders as much as I do.

 

 

Happy Practicing

xo
nyk

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