When Less is More: Do We Really Need to Go Deeper?

When Less Is More: Do We Really Need to Go Deeper?
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[00:00:00] Today on the Yin Yoga Podcast, we’re gonna talk about this idea about going air quotes deeper. In your yin poses, do your students need to go deeper? Do you as a teacher, need to encourage your students to go deeper? Do you need to give some sort of a cue partway through the pose that invites them to go deeper?

That’s what we’re gonna talk about today. Stay tuned.

Welcome to a Yin Yoga podcast. I’m your host, Nick Denu, certified yoga therapist, mentor of yoga teachers, yin yoga, teacher trainer, and total yin [00:01:00] yoga geek. If you have a crush on yin yoga. And are ready to dive deep, then you’re in the right place here. Myself and my guests will discuss all things in yoga, including anatomy, philosophy, traditional Chinese medicine, meditation, Taoism, teaching tips, and so much more.

You can expect these conversations to be long format, informal, lo-fi, and delightfully imperfect. So whether you are a yoga teacher or a yin yoga student, I welcome you to the inside.

Welcome back to a Yin Yoga podcast. For those of you who are familiar and welcome, welcome, [00:02:00] welcome. For those of you who are brand new here, couple of quick things I want to address before we jump into today’s topic. First, I want to share some podcast love.

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So if you have small people around, please take a moment to grab some headphones now. Okay, let’s get into today’s topic. So today’s topic came up in, my teacher training. And this is something that I have heard before. I’ve heard lots of other yin teachers do it. , And so when the question came up, I was like, Ooh, I forgot to mention that, but I’m so glad somebody asked.

There’s this common thing in yin circles that I hear teachers do, and that’s when you’re a teaching in class and your students are in their shape and maybe they’re halfway or three quarters of the way through the pose, and you pipe in and you say, [00:08:00] ah. See, if you wanna go a little deeper or something to that effect, some kind of a cue that lets them know that they could go deeper.

And so the question was from my wonderful student, you know, that’s something that she’s always done, probably because she’s was taught that in other trainings or has heard other yin teachers do it. And what did I think of that? So I’m gonna tell you what I think of that. Totally unnecessary is what I think of that somewhere in our minds, culturally, we think in yoga, physical yoga, the yoga asana, whether this is yin or other kinds of yoga, that the point of the pose is to keep going deeper and deeper and deeper and keep getting more and more flexible forever into oblivion.

But that’s actually not the goal. Of a yoga practice, of any yoga practice. We could say [00:09:00] even classical, haha, yoga, which by the way, there’s this, , misunderstanding that the word haha yoga is a style of yoga. It’s not haha. Yoga is the big umbrella that all the other yogas fall under. So although it’s commonly used in our sort of industry to denote something that’s like not vinyasa or not flow, , haha yoga isn’t really a descriptor.

It would be like saying martial arts. Sure martial arts is like a big family and then we’ve got kung fu and karate and Jiujitsu, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So haha. Yoga is the same way. Haha. Yoga is this yoga that we do here with our bodies and the different styles of haha yoga. Fall under that umbrella.

So just thought I would clear that up first of all. But we have this idea often as teachers and also as practitioners, that the point of the yoga

poses is to get more and more and more flexible and to go deeper and deeper and deeper into oblivion. [00:10:00] But actually in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. He talks about Asana as a tool to get a body that feels strong and supple and open enough to be able to sit in meditation for an extended period of time to reach somebody.

So the whole point of the physical poses was designed to create stability, flexibility, openness, and a hopefully pain-free enough experience to be able to sit in meditation. For many hours at a time. And now of course you bring yoga to the west where it’s all about six pack this and buns of this and you know, uh, getting your bikini body and getting your yoga butt and all of these things and your yoga air quotes work out that suddenly now we are bringing in concepts that weren’t originally to yoga.

[00:11:00] So, and then there’s styles of whole styles of yoga where, you know, somebody’s quoted as saying, practice, practice and all is coming, right? That was Patabi Joyce, which I don’t know why anyone still quotes that, that man, but that’s a rant perhaps for another time. Uh, no practice. Practice and all is not coming.

So there’s that idea again, even with that quote, or even in particular lineages where if you just keep practicing, we’re all gonna be the bendy Barbies, right? Or as one of my, one of my students, sue from the UK called them bendy Wendy’s. So we’re all gonna be bendy Barbies or bendy Wendy’s. We just have to keep practicing and eventually we will all be able to do all of the advanced poses and that, after all, is the goal of yoga, is it not?

Are we not doing this to put our foot behind our head? Is that not what’s gonna bring us enlightenment? No. And yet, even as [00:12:00] well-meaning teachers who know this and don’t think that they’re teaching their students in a way that encourages them to keep going deeper and to keep striving for more and more and more, and more and more in their poses, it’s still happening.

And one of those ways that it happens in Yin is that we encourage them partway through the pose to go deeper. So I’m gonna tell you why I don’t love that., You’ve already picked up on some of it probably and what you could do instead of now, you can go deeper. So the reason I don’t love it is because going deeper is not the point of yoga.

It’s not the point of yin yoga. It’s not the point of yoga overarching, but let’s talk about yin specifically here. Yin yoga is a functional form of yoga, so there is no air quotes, full pose or goal pose or a eventual destination that you’re supposed to be getting to. The whole [00:13:00] point of the pose is to feel a stretch in the intended area or what other yin teachers commonly call the target area.

That’s the point. Can you feel sensation there? Now, not everybody will. People that are, I’ve already reached the end of their bone structure or that are quite flexy, may not feel sensation of stretch. They might feel other things in the poses. I have a whole episode about that already. What to do when you don’t feel a yin pose, which I can link below this or in the show notes, but just know that.

Even those well-intended teachers who know this logically in our minds that like that’s not the point. We still are saying this in our class, which leads our students to think that the point of this practice is to someday get somewhere that we aren’t right now. Whereas I would argue in my in practice, I’m trying to encourage the students to be where they are right now [00:14:00] in that moment.

In their body with their breath, noticing the sensations there in that moment, present moment, interoception and awareness of what’s happening inside of them. That’s my goal. So partway through class, saying a cue to get them to go deeper is giving them the idea that there’s somewhere else to be. Coming up or in the future, or if they get used to your teaching style and you always do that, they’re gonna be waiting for that.

They’re gonna be waiting for that point in the pose where you say, and now you can go deeper. Like you hold the permission slip for them to explore the ranges in their body from the get go. So here’s why this is problematic. , It encourages people to go deeper, which is not the point.

It’s not the point in classical. Haha yoga, it’s not the point in yin yoga. And in yin yoga we’re looking for a functional practice. So are they feeling sensation in the desired area or if that, if not because of you [00:15:00] know, their own personal bone structure, are they able to be present to the sensations in their body in that moment, present moment awareness.

Is the point, interoception is the point, not an eventual goal of doing a different version of this pose someday with your body because of course that will bring you enlightenment. And in our culture we are so goal-driven and achievement based and you know, there’s nothing wrong with having goals. And, you know, evolving and, you know, have making achievements.

I mean, if we didn’t have any desire to evolve past where we are, we’d still be living in caves without fire. So, you know, it has its place, but it is overdone culturally, way overdone. So we have so many people that are pushing, striving, efforting, uh, competing goal setting, you know. Hustling. What am I forgetting?

I’m sure I’m forgetting a bunch of other [00:16:00] words. In our culture, right, and this is sort of the common thing. This is the soup. We’re all swimming in, and I think that a yin practice is one of the few places where we can turn that off. We maybe it isn’t about doing more, being better, you know, some sort of goal.

There’s no goal pose, there’s no, you know, end destination. That the point of the yin practice is to, to quote ramdas, be here now and to notice when you’re not, and then to come back gently, compassionately. So to me, that’s the point of the practice. Can you be present to the sensations in your body? Notice them.

Witness them. Check ’em out. Be curious. When you notice that the mind is whoop left the building, you just come back gently, compassionately to your body, to your breath, to that moment. So to [00:17:00] me, that’s the goal of the practice. So it wouldn’t serve me one iota to then say to my student, you know, I don’t know, halfway through oppose, or three quarters of the way oppose.

And now you can check it out and see if you can go deeper. Why am I encouraging them to go deeper? Is deeper better is more better? I don’t think so. In fact, I would argue in a world that is obsessed with competing, pushing, striving, efforting, and not listening to themselves, that actually maybe be encouraging them to back off a little bit is wiser.

Especially for those in the group like myself that are recovering a type personalities. And I’ll often crack that joke. You know, for those of you that are recovering a type personalities, going to, recommend 50 to 60% of the most you could do. And oppose might be your challenge here. That might be the hard part.

That might be your practice is giving yourself permission to [00:18:00] not go to your extreme range of motion or what other yin teachers call your edge. . And to back off actually, and to swim in that 50 to 60% range. Now, is it true that sometimes partway through a shape, people do feel like they can easily, comfortably go?

Deeper because they’ve maybe gotten through that kind of surface muscular tension and now they’re starting to sink into their deeper tissues and starting to be able to explore their own bone range of motion. Of course, that is very common. Very common. But do we need to encourage that and what if that isn’t happening and what if you have that hypermobile a type personality person, and partway through, you’re encouraging them to go deeper.

Yeah. What about that story time? So when I did my very first 100 hours with Mr. Paul Grille, [00:19:00] my teacher, I am fairly adept, both bone structure wise and just in eight flexibility in the pose in called pigeon called sleeping swan in yin. Now, when I say fairly adept, I just mean. I don’t have a lot of tightness in my hip butt, glute area.

It’s just, you know, one of the very few areas of my body where I was genetically flexible and have a good joint range of motion. I have a really decent amount of external rotation and a good amount of internal rotation. Now it’s all over. When it comes to my shoulders, don’t, don’t envy me because what I have in my hips, I definitely lack in my shoulders.

But anyways. So I can easily do swan or could easily do swan, , in that front leg kind of 90 degrees without hurting my knee or my hip. That is very rare by the way. So if you’re one of those teachers out there that’s still teaching people to bring their shin parallel [00:20:00] to the front of their mat, please stop doing that.

That’s a rant for another time. Maybe an episode for another time. But I have that ability very comfortably genetically. And I was pretty much doing that, and I was laying down over my leg and my chest was like flat on my leg. I lengthened my spine a little to see if I could go a little deeper.

And I was pretty much as flat on the floor as I could get. And I was feeling a stretch, but it was kind, , 50 ish percent, not a lot. Yeah. And so I said to Paul after class, I said, this is my experience in this shape and I do feel sensation, but it’s pretty soft. And I imagine within six months or a year or so maybe that sensation even might go away.

Then what do I do? And he looked at me like I had gone mad. He was like, then you’re done. Like there’s, there’s no more. There is no further in that pose. He goes, then you move into maintaining. The mobility flexibility you [00:21:00] already have. There is no further, unless you want to carve a hole in the ground. He said in front of you, you wanna carve a hole in the ground, , for your chest.

Maybe you’ll be able to go deeper. And so this was early on in my Y training. But of course I had also come from this yoga culture that we all do. Which I would argue is an actual yoga culture. It’s sort of western culture where the goal of the pose is to always keep getting more flexible, to always go further.

That clearly that was gonna make me a lightened, being a kinder human, more rich, whatever we think it’s gonna bring us. But none of those things are true. Going into that pose and falling into the fullest expression, air quotes, , comfortably. Didn’t make me nicer. Certainly didn’t make me richer, thinner, any of the things that we’re, you know, obsessed with in our culture didn’t get me a [00:22:00] nicer house or brand new car.

It just meant I felt less sensation in my hip when I did that post. That’s all. So that’s the question then. Then why are we encouraging our students to go deeper? Now, here’s an alternative approach. What I do is I tell them in the beginning that we’re looking for this 50 to 60% zone, and that that 50 to 60% zone will change over time.

That what feels like 50 to 60% at the beginning of the shape may not feel the same a minute in two minutes, in three minutes, in, four minutes in. And so that they should always feel. Willing and able to check the version of the pose that they’re in as time goes on and decide, is this still the current version I want to explore?

Maybe their body opens over time. [00:23:00] Maybe the opposite is true. Maybe they were overly ambitious in the beginning, and then about minute two and a half, they’re like, well, there’s no way I can hold this for two more minutes, and they back out. Or maybe the sensation’s the same, but they just need to make an adjustment to get more comfortable, to grab a prop, to kind of wiggle around a little, to find kind of a new spot or the new nest to be in.

All of that can happen, and I explain it at the beginning and just say, you know, partway through this, your body may change, you may shift, you might grab a prop, you might do a different version of this pose, et cetera, et cetera. That we can be still without being stagnant, we can be still without being stagnant.

And then I just let them be because I’ve already planted the seed that partway through their body might shift. It might feel more open, it might feel less open, or they might [00:24:00] just need to adjust to get more comfortable. So I don’t need to bring that up again partway through the pose, but. If I wanted to, let’s just say if I wanted to, I might say, take a moment to check in with yourself and see if the version of this shape and the sensation that you’re feeling right now is still serving you.

And if not, make any little adjustments that you need to Notice how I asked them to check in, but I didn’t say you could go deeper. So maybe that is a good way to bring them back, right? Maybe they’re often in la la land with their brain. There’s a circus or a soap opera going on, and there’s a way to bring them back.

That could be a way to bring them back to their body, to their sensations by saying, Hey, take a moment to notice how this shape feels now compared to when you started, and make any little adjustments that you may or may not need to do. So same. I’m doing essentially the same thing, but totally different because I’m not saying [00:25:00] now you can go deeper.

If you feel like it now you can go deeper. I’m not giving them the idea or the impression that the goal of the pose or the goal of the practice is to keep going deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper until when, I don’t know, we fall through the earth. We end up in the continent below us, how much deeper are we going here?

So I like to do that. I like to just mention at the beginning and then I’m quiet because I would rather them be working with their body and their mind. Um, and I don’t really interrupt to talk about how they might be feeling in their body, you know, and whether or not they wanna go deeper, nor do I interrupt and say.

Check out how your body feels now in this pose, and decide if you wanna adjust anything or tweak anything. But you could. What I would be more likely to say is, notice if your mind has wandered away from your body and your breath in this moment, and if it has, gently guide it [00:26:00] back. So that might be more likely what I would do partway through a shape if I felt called to do anything at all.

But if you are in the habit of saying you can go deeper and you feel like, oh man, how am I gonna reprogram that? Now? I’ve been saying that forever, then maybe you might say, now that we’re partway through the pose, check in with yourself and see if the version of this shape that you started with is still serving you.

And if so, stay here. If not, feel free to make any little adjustments that you might need to.

So notice how I didn’t say,

you know, check out your body and see if you can go deeper. I just said, check out your body and see if you wanna adjust anything. Maybe they do go deeper. Maybe they back off. Maybe they just grab a prop. Maybe they wiggle around and you know, find a new comfy spot. So that could be an option for those of you that are used to saying, okay, we’re this far in, now, go deeper.

Now. The only time I would say that I [00:27:00] sometimes do this, although I never use the language of go deeper, is sometimes if I teach FX pose and I wanna incorporate seal pose, which by the way, as yoga teachers, we probably don’t realize a very small percentage of the people can do seal pose. That’s, that is gifted.

In your lumbar spine to be able to do that. But in that case, I might say, you know, if we’re in Sphinx pose, let’s just say for five minutes total, and maybe I wanna give those people who you can tell are just itching to go into seal pose. ’cause that’s where they feel it. And maybe I might say, you know, at minute two three, I might say, for those of you who love and adore Seal pose and that’s part of your practice, feel free to go into that now or stay here in Sphinx.

Notice I didn’t call it deeper. I didn’t call it more advanced. I didn’t say it was like better in any way. Just like for those of you who do this, [00:28:00] feel free. Okay. So that’s the basics about. Why I don’t say you could go deeper. There’s one more thing I wanna mention here though, which may or may not be appropriate for you.

Depending, right? We, we can all check in for ourselves and see if this is the case. Sometimes we’re saying something partway through the shape, like you could go deeper because we feel like we need to talk, like we feel like, oh, it’s been 2.5 minutes or three minutes and I haven’t said anything. I should say something.

So if that’s the case, then I would check out the episode called Dear Yoga. Dear y Dear Yin, yoga teacher or Dear yoga teacher, I can’t remember. Please shut up. I’ll link it. So maybe you’re doing it just because you feel the urge. The urge to break the silence because you are feeling uncomfortable with the fact you haven’t spoken in that long.

In that case, definitely check out that other episode ’cause you don’t need to say anything. Right. But if you are truly wanting to guide them into their own [00:29:00] body, into their own being, and into their own experience, and have them check it out and be curious and notice what’s changed, then instead of saying, can you go deeper?

You could say, you know, take a moment to notice your, the shape that you’re in and see if it feels different than it did when you first started. And if so, if you wanna make any adjustments. Please feel free. Right? So you’re still giving them the same cue to kind of like, oh, if your mind is wandered, let’s come back to our body.

Let’s drop in. Let’s notice what we’re experiencing. Let’s see what we’re feeling, and giving them an opportunity to explore a different version without saying, let’s go deeper. Because the point of the pose is not to go deeper. The point of a physical practice is not to go deeper. Even if you are under thinking about hatta yoga and the yoga sutures of [00:30:00] Patanjali, the point of the yoga asana, please, let’s remember, it’s not to become bendy Barbies or bendy Wendy’s as, , as my student Sue says, but instead to create a body that feels stable and strong so that you can sit in meditation and hopefully reach some body.

So if we’re looking at the yoga shapes under, in that way. Then going deeper is definitely not the point. In fact, continuing to go deeper and deeper and deeper might actually create a body that is not feeling stable and pain-free to sit for hours in meditation, right? If we push ourselves to the point of injury while then sitting cross-legged on the floor, and meditating’s gonna be pretty challenging, isn’t it?

Okay. So I think that’s enough on that. So do I ask, invite my students to go deeper partway through? No. And that’s why I don’t actually invite them partway through to do anything other than perhaps come back to being present. But if I did want to, [00:31:00] I would invite them to check out what they’re currently feeling, see if the version of the post that they’re doing now is still working for them like it was in the beginning, and to make any adjustments that they may or may not need to do.

And maybe that is going deeper. I don’t know. That’s up to them. Or maybe it’s actually going. To back off a little, or maybe it’s just adjusting the way they are or grabbing a prop so that they can be more comfortable for the second half of the pose or the second last minute of the pose or what have you.

So I hope that some of you found this helpful and I realize that some of you may have heard your yoga yin yoga heroes say this, go in and check out if you can go deeper. And they just picked it up and automatically started doing it. But remember. We should question everything and everyone always including our beloved yoga heroes.

So just because you’ve heard it, just because that’s the way you were taught doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the best [00:32:00] way. And maybe you hear all of this and you go, yeah, you know what, Nick, screw you. It is the best way. That’s fine too. But at least take a moment to pause and consider it. Why am I doing this?

Am I uncomfortable with the silence? And I’m just finding a way to interject my voice again or am I, is there a little part of me, a little secret hidden part of me that actually believes the point of these poses is to go deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. And if so, until when? When do we stop?

Okay. I’d love to know your feedback. Let me know either on Instagram or in the comments. If you’re listening on Spotify or if you’re on YouTube, you can also leave a comment. Let me know how this lands. Were you one of those teachers saying to go deeper? Has this made you rethink it or not? Let me know, and until we meet again, bye for now.

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