Yin Yoga: The Gateway Drug to Meditation
The Often Overlooked Meditative Aspect of Yin Yoga
Yin Yoga is often viewed as a quieter, more meditative form of Yoga, yet this critical aspect isn’t frequently discussed.
Personally, my journey into meditation was challenging—and at times hilarious.
When I began dabbling in meditation, I jumped from one technique to another, thinking my busy mind was a hindrance to achieving enlightenment. It wasn’t until a dedicated teacher assured me that a wandering mind is a normal human experience that I truly began to settle into the practice.
That’s when I realized something magical about Yin Yoga—it acts as a gentle gateway to meditation with its small, manageable increments of stillness.
Why Yin Yoga Is Perfect for Meditation Beginners
Imagine entering a Yin pose as a mini meditation session. It’s less daunting than sitting still for lengthy periods and allows you to embrace mindfulness gradually.
While your mind will certainly wander, anchoring it with a simple word, a mantra, or even breath awareness turns each session into a practice in meditation. It’s akin to bringing a wandering two-year-old back to the path, with gentle guidance.
Techniques to Anchor Your Mind in Your Practice
Here’s where you can get creative and personal with your meditation during Yin Yoga:
- Words or Phrases: Choose meaningful words or phrases, perhaps a “Sankalpa” – a heartfelt resolve.
- Breath Awareness: Watch your breath as it rises and falls.
- Breath Counting: Combine breath awareness with counting exhales and inhales.
- Sensations: Breathe into areas of sensation within your body.
- Big Sky Awareness: Embrace mindfulness, acknowledging all present sensations without getting attached.
The Gentle Road to Meditation
Meditation isn’t about clearing your mind of thoughts but rather redirecting your wandering mind back to your focal point. Be it words, breath, or sensations, it’s about gently guiding your mind back, like a compassionate parent. You’ll get distracted—it’s normal. What matters is your patience and persistence.
In meditation, as in Yin Yoga, find the “middle way.” It’s beautifully transformative when practiced with compassion—both on and off the mat.
Have you found that Yin Yoga helped you meditate?
Share your experiences in the comments.
Until next time, my friends, may you be at peace and free. 😊
Yin Yoga Is the Gateway Drug – Listen
Yin Yoga Is the Gateway Drug – Watch
Yin Yoga Is the Gateway Drug – Read
WEBVTT
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Hi, Yanice, and welcome back to a yin Yoga, podcast
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Nyk Danu Yoga: if you are new around here, welcome.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: if you are a familiar welcome back.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So before we get into today’s episode.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I wanted to just mention
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Nyk Danu Yoga: that for those of you who have been listening for a while. If you’ve been looking to upgrade your yin Yoga teacher training. If you’ve already got one, you want to do more, or if you don’t have one yet, and you want to start off on a solid footing
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Nyk Danu Yoga: that I am at the time of this recording, I have just decided to increase the length of my yin training.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: It has been a 60 plus hour for
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Nyk Danu Yoga: a couple of years now, and I just have noticed that especially
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Nyk Danu Yoga: lately.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: that the questions from
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and the collaboration from the group have been so good that I feel like we need more time.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I am going to now
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Nyk Danu Yoga: increase this
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and increase the length of the training.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So now you’re going to get 72 h with me.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and then an additional about 25 to 28 h in homework. That’s a guesstimate, because
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Nyk Danu Yoga: some people, you know, do assignments quicker than others.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and so in total, that’ll be a hundred hours.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So if you have been looking for sort of a more in depth training. If you’ve really been looking for either a solid foundation for your 1st year training, or
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Nyk Danu Yoga: if you have been wanting to add on more training.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: If you are a yin Yoga addict and you want more. I’d encourage you to check that out. The link is always in the show notes to check out what I cover, what the dates of the current course are, because, depending on. When you’re listening to this.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I don’t know when they will be but also there’s an opportunity there to get on the wait list.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and you could do that all the way at the top of the page.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: There’s a little button there that you can push. You get a free in sequence when you sign up, or all the way at the bottom of the page as well, and if you hang out for a couple of minutes there’ll be a little polite pop up that’ll whoop! Come in from the side, and that’s also an opportunity to add yourself to the wait list.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So when you’re on the wait list, not only are you gonna get
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Nyk Danu Yoga: 1st notice of registration. So before I start posting it on the socials, or, you know, talking to anybody else about it, wait list gets it first.st That’s 1 thing you get.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: You’re also get access to a 1st 5 of you that sign up, get access to a discount code.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and then on top of that. On the way to the course opening and the registration opening, you get lots of little yin Yoga love from me.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So you’ll get these podcast episodes. You’ll get
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Nyk Danu Yoga: music that I use. You’ll get videos that you can practice with yourself, invitations, to join me for both my free and my paid in classes and workshops. So there’s a lot of little things that you’ll get there on the way to registration opening. And then, when registration opens you’ll get 1st crack at it, including the 1st 5 to sign up discount code.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So if you’ve been listening for a while, and you’ve been kind of pondering. Doing some Morgan training or your 1st year in training. Take a moment
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Nyk Danu Yoga: to just click the link in the show notes and look way up or way down. You can add your name and email there.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: All right, my friends.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: today, I want to talk a little bit about an aspect of yin yoga that is rarely talked about.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So when I
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Nyk Danu Yoga: 1st started doing yin many, many years ago,
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I went to Paul’s workshop. This is back in 2,007 long before I had studied with him. In a formal teacher training. But just it was a public workshop, and then I bought his DVD. And I went home and practiced it a lot.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and
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Nyk Danu Yoga: one of the things that that DVD. Says is that you know yin is the quiet Yoga or the meditative Yoga.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and I think that this yin as the well we’ll just say yin is the gateway drug, perhaps to meditation, is an aspect of our yin practice that doesn’t get talked about a lot.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Sometimes when I have students come into class that are new.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: ¥2,
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Nyk Danu Yoga: they and I say, you know, these are like small meditations, or that yin yoga is, you know, a meditative practice. I can kind of see the look of horror on their face.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: because we all have all these messages right when we’re new to meditating about meditation, what it is. Most of those messages are wrong.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And also
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Nyk Danu Yoga: what it isn’t.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So
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Nyk Danu Yoga: when I 1st started learning to meditate, okay, story time, as I like to say.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I’ve been teaching Yoga for a couple of years, or maybe not even maybe it had only been one year. But somewhere, you know, in the back of my mind, because in my 1st teacher training. Of course we went over the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and I had learned that, like these funny poses we make with our body are to create a body that is able to sit still comfortably in meditation.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And that, you know the Asanas were just one little tiny part
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Nyk Danu Yoga: of what we do in Yoga, and that really the big goal is meditation.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I started feeling kind of to be honest, like a fraud.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: because here I am going around starting to teach Yoga saying, I’m a yoga teacher. But I wasn’t meditating.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and of course I had all kinds of ideas about what meditation meant and what it was and what it wasn’t. But either way, I decided, okay, I need to. I need to start meditating. I need to learn how to meditate.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Didn’t really know what that meant. But
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Nyk Danu Yoga: there we go. I need to learn how to meditate.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So I did what one often does. I got on the computers, and I also went to like, you know, the
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Nyk Danu Yoga: the woo woo bookshops and stuff, and like looked at posters, and, you know, wrote down websites, and
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know where where I lived, and remember, this was also quite, quite a many years ago. Compared to now, meditation is so much more common.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: but most of the places offering meditation were
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Nyk Danu Yoga: temples, Buddhist temples.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And so I would find out what night is their meditation on? And if I could go
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Nyk Danu Yoga: if I wasn’t teaching. I would sign up for either a beginner meditation program if they had a sort of formalized program.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: or I would just go if it was more of a drop in and then try to get some help.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And I had some very interesting experiences.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: As I did that.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So the 1st place that I went to.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: was part of a temple.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and so they had the men and the women sitting facing opposite walls. So you’re on opposite side of the room, and there was the big, beautiful altar there with this amazing Buddha. But you weren’t facing it. No, you were just facing a blank wall.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and then no instruction. Just sit. This is how long we sit for we ring a bell, and then then we do walking meditation. But the walking meditation was more like sprinting around. The facility.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: so needless to say that one did not stick. In fact, I remember, my friend and I that we.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: when we left. We were laughing so hard when we left at this like sprinting version of a walking meditation that I almost fell down the stairs. So that was the 1st place I went. Then I decided, well.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: that wasn’t a fit. Let’s try one of the other places, and I found a place that was really near my house, and
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Nyk Danu Yoga: it seemed really good, but
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I went there for a while, but we were always sitting in chairs.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and the meditation was always guided.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and there was a dharma talk first, st which I actually quite liked.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: But
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Nyk Danu Yoga: it’s like there was no option even to grab a cushion and sit on the floor, and it was the meditation was guided the whole time, so they weren’t really teaching me how to meditate.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So I let that one go.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I went to another place, and you know nothing.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know. Negative happened per se. But it just wasn’t a good fit. And then finally.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: finally, finally I went to another temple.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: where I met a man who ended up being my teacher for many years, and still would be if I lived in the same province and he was guiding a beginner meditation course, and it was 6 weeks.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and you know I’d gone the 1st week and was sitting and struggling, and I’ll talk more about the struggles.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: In a moment.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And
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Nyk Danu Yoga: then at 1 point, he said.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and if you find that your mind wanders away and gets pulled away into thinking and planning and
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Nyk Danu Yoga: writing lists and all of those things that’s normal.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Everybody has this tendency.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And I was like, what the fuck.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Why hasn’t anybody told me this? So here I am, hopping from meditation technique to meditation technique, you know, guided, not guided online audio. Take a CD out from the library, go to another temple, another temple shopping around for meditation, thinking that it wasn’t air, quotes working for me because my mind was too busy
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Nyk Danu Yoga: only to find out.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Oh.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: everybody’s mind is busy in meditation
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Nyk Danu Yoga: that this is actually part of being human.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And wow! Did I ever, was I ever more able to settle in
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Nyk Danu Yoga: then to learning that practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you see, because I thought
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Nyk Danu Yoga: that
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you would just sit cross-legged, and you’d find some ancient mudra, and you’d close your eyes and
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Nyk Danu Yoga: focus on your breath, and then, Bada bing, bada, boom! Your mind would be clear, and you would be on the road to enlightenment.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: But no, really, what happens is you sit especially when you’re new to sitting on the floor. And you’re uncomfortable. Your back gets tired, your hips ache, your knees ache, you get fidgety. You’re bored.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Your mind is thinking
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you have to reestablish your posture multiple times because you start slouching. So all of these things are. What happens when you 1st start to learn to meditate. You get frustrated, you get impatient, you get sleepy, you fall asleep. All of these things.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and they’re all normal and human. So this is why this man became my teacher for many years, because he was able to take what felt like to me some of this kind of esoteric stuff and make it really clear and really practical.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So I want to talk a little bit about this sort of meditated aspect of Yin, and how for ourselves, as practitioners or for students.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yin Yoga can be a little bit of the gateway drug to meditation.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and let’s face it.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: All of us could use a little more.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Be still. Sit down and shut up in the world.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, so is Yin Yoga a gateway to meditation. I think so
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Nyk Danu Yoga: often, though, when I tell my students that Yen’s nickname is the meditative Yoga, like I mentioned, I get this look of horror and shock like, somehow I tricked them into meditating.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Here they were thought they were coming for this Yoga practice to get more flexible. And now someone’s talking to them about meditation.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So the fact that meditations become so separate from what most of society
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Nyk Danu Yoga: thinks of as Yoga practice is already horribly unfortunate, and maybe a rant
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Nyk Danu Yoga: that we don’t need to get into.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: But you know, originally the Yoga practices were designed to create a body that was stable
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Nyk Danu Yoga: to sit in meditation.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and unfortunately that aspect of Yoga, as it got, you know, imported to the West, has been thrown in the trash. And now it’s all just about, you know, getting your bikini body and blah blah blah.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So whether or not it’s accurate to say that all yoga
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Nyk Danu Yoga: should could
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Nyk Danu Yoga: have meditation in it.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: It most of the time doesn’t.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And so when a student hears meditation, they
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Nyk Danu Yoga: often panic and start looking for the door.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: But here’s the thing.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: In our busy, rushed, multitasking culture. We just don’t value sitting still and focusing on one thing at a time.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Not only do we not practice it, but most people don’t even see the value in doing that.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: But meditation often isn’t what you may think as a teacher listening to this, or if you’re a member of the public
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Nyk Danu Yoga: or
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Nyk Danu Yoga: It’s not what you may think, and it may not be what your students think.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So most people think like I did that a meditation practice is sitting cross-legged.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: picking a mudra, closing your eyes and bam blissful, thoughtless awareness. Nope.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So when I started to meditate, as I mentioned, I was shocked and horrified that when I sat down and closed my eyes there was a circus going on in my mind, and so I thought I must be doing it wrong.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I just obviously need a different style of meditation. This kind of meditation is in air, quotes working for me, so I need to find another one.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and so I tried another style
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and another style
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and another, and luckily I’m tenacious, because finally, as I mentioned in that beginner class, my teacher said, if your mind wanders into thinking and planning, that’s normal, it happens to everyone.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And then I realized that I wasn’t alone. Everybody’s back was kind of aching. Hips were kind of sore knees were kind of a thing.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Their mind was going crazy or they were falling asleep.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Turns out I’m not that unique nor special. Nope, we all have this busy brain. It’s human, it’s normal.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And so I just kept studying meditation. But I made very little air, quotes
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Nyk Danu Yoga: progress
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Nyk Danu Yoga: until
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Nyk Danu Yoga: dun dun dun enter yin yoga.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So
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Nyk Danu Yoga: what I noticed is that when I entered a yin shape
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Nyk Danu Yoga: for a few minutes
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Nyk Danu Yoga: it was an opportunity to practice meditation.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and then
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Nyk Danu Yoga: we’d come out and we’d enter a new shape, and that would be another opportunity to try again to practice meditation.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And these bite-sized meditations, you know, for 3 to 5 min at a time.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: often feel more doable and accessible than trying to sit for 20 to 45 min straight.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Of course the mind still wanders, but it feels less daunting and a little easier
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Nyk Danu Yoga: than a longer sit.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: This small regular practice can kind of chip away at the mind, and it often adds up to the mind slowly, being less rebellious.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And this is how we develop this in our yin practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So rather than coming into the shape, and just letting your mind run amok and the thinking, the planning, the list, writing, the analyzing all the things
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Nyk Danu Yoga: rather than that happening
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Nyk Danu Yoga: when the mind goes off on a tangent, which of course it will, because you’re human, and this is normal. We can just gently refocus it on an anchor.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Now, there’s different styles of meditation out there. And you know, there’s probably more than this podcast can go into.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: But a lot of them, especially for beginners are concentration techniques or an anchor is another way to think of that.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So the mind runs away
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and you come and bring it back to this one simple thing.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and there’s so many ways that you could anchor the mind.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: But I’ll share a few beginner, friendly ones that I share in my classes with my students, and also in my own practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So a word or phrase.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So something that’s meaningful for you. It could be something you’re hoping to get from your practice, or something. You’re trying to keep top of mind in your life.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Often called your son Culpa.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: which is unfortunately often translated as
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Nyk Danu Yoga: intention, but actually like heartfelt desire or heartfelt resolve might be a bit more accurate.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So you could use what’s called the sunculpa.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: If you’ve studied with a teacher in depth, and they’ve given you a mantra. You could use a mantra
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Nyk Danu Yoga: traditionally, historically, you wouldn’t just kind of pick up a yoga book and pick a mantra that you liked and and do that that would be given to you by a teacher. So a word or phrase, whether that’s mantra, or whether it’s just a song, culpa, that can be a way to anchor your mind
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and practice
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Nyk Danu Yoga: meditation to bring your mind back to that word or phrase.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So how I describe this often to my students is that this
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Nyk Danu Yoga: word or phrase is sort of like.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: if you imagine a record
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Nyk Danu Yoga: or an album or vinyl depending what generation you are.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And you know you’re
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Vinyl is playing along. It’s doing its thing. Everything’s going well.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And then all of a sudden it gets stuck in a scratch, and it’s on like, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: right. So, using this word or phrase is sort of like picking the needle up and beginning again.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So when you’re focusing on being present, and then the mind wanders away. When you notice it, pause.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you can say that word or phrase to yourself and bring it back.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Or if you were using a mantra
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, maybe given to you by a teacher, you might use that mantra repeatedly throughout the whole meditation.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: so you could use a word or a phrase or a mantra. Again, if you are interested in mantra meditation, I highly recommend picking up
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Nyk Danu Yoga: some training with a skilled teacher.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: You can watch your breath.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So the great thing about the breath is, it’s always with us, and nobody has to know we’re doing it
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Nyk Danu Yoga: so
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you could fall. Watch the rise and the fall of your belly as you breathe.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and you can either picture this.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: or you could focus on the physical sensation of it. Whatever makes more sense for you.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and it could be the belly, or the ribs, or the chest, or even the nostrils.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I find the nostrils tricky, but you know some people might find that a little easier.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and you’re just literally going to be aware of the breath.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: following it as it moves in and out of one of those areas of your body.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and then, of course, your mind will wander, and when it. Does you come back to that technique.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: one of the most simple ways of meditation, of beginning a concentration practice which can leave to a meditative state sometimes, if you’re lucky.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: That I was introduced to by my teacher. The one I mentioned was breath counting
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Nyk Danu Yoga: so similar to watching the breath in the belly. So you’re still aware of the breath, perhaps physically, in your body, but then you’re adding a count to that rise and fall, so inhale, exhale one.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: inhale, exhale 2,
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Nyk Danu Yoga: inhale, exhale 3, etc. Etc.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: There’s no goal number. It’s not like you get a trophy when you get somewhere, and when you notice that your mind wanders, you just begin again at one.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I had a student once who told me that she used this technique, but she swapped out the breath, count for the alphabet.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: because she was number averse, which I thought was very clever.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: so that might be something
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Nyk Danu Yoga: breathing into areas of sensation.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So as you come into your yin shape, and you found sort of your sweet spot or your working position.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: that sort of 50 to 60% where you’re feeling sensation. You could send your breath directly into the area that you are
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Nyk Danu Yoga: feeling
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Nyk Danu Yoga: almost as if you could breathe directly into that area bypassing your nose, your mouth, your lungs, your trachea, and breathing into that spot.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So that’s an option.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And then sometimes there’s what I
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Nyk Danu Yoga: often think of as big sky awareness, or some people might call mindfulness.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Now, as I mentioned before, for beginners, or if your mind is quite busy, the techniques I gave you above that are a bit more of a concentration technique are usually helpful at the start.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: but sometimes over time.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: with practice, or just some days.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: we can notice that we reach this big sky awareness.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: where we are sort of aware of everything in the present moment.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: sounds, sensations, smells the air in your skin, the weight of your body on the earth, but in a very opal, open and kind of gentle, soft way.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: You’re not kind of grasping or getting stuck on repetitive thought loops. It’s just wide open.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Present moment awareness.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: sort of like. If you were lying on the earth on a warm day watching the clouds float by, but without making animal shapes or telling stories about each cloud.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: From my experience this big sky awareness, Aka. Mindfulness, is kind of rare and fleeting.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: but if you do find that at some point in your practice, then you can let go of these more specific anchoring techniques and float in that mindfulness for a while, for however long it lasts.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: If you find that the mind starts to kick up a storm again and gets busy. Well, you could return to an anchor for a while
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Nyk Danu Yoga: the thing I see most often with students other than thinking that they are the only ones who can’t meditate. Oh, all these other people! They’ve got their shit figured out. But me. No, no, I’m complicated.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So that that is one thing that people students think often. And I used to think, too.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: But the other thing that I notice is just this level of frustration with how busy the mind is. So please be gentle with yourself
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Nyk Danu Yoga: in this practice, my teacher always used to say, and I remember I just wanted to hug him the 1st time I heard it.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: In this practice. We’re not trying to stop thinking
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and to say that a couple more times in this meditation practice we’re not trying to stop thinking.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: In fact, the best way to think is to try not to think.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Instead, we are redirecting the mind when it goes off course.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: from what we were choosing to pay attention to, whether that’s your word, your phrase, your breath.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: or sort of present moment awareness and mindfulness.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So I often think of my mind like a two-year-old.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: because it helps to soften the judging aspect of my mind. The part of me that’s a little bit hard on myself, because I don’t have this all figured out yet, and I’m clearly not enlightened yet, despite all the practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So an inner 2 year old. Imagine, if you will, you’re walking down the street in a quiet neighborhood on a warm summer day, with a 2 year old.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: It wouldn’t take long, likely, before you would get distracted repeatedly along the way
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Nyk Danu Yoga: they would want to look at every flower, every rock, every caterpillar, every insect, would be a distraction from the walk.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and my hope is that you wouldn’t get impatient with that small one, and Yank on their hand, insisting that they hurry up and let’s get back to the walk. We have places to be things to do. No, instead, you would just acknowledge the distraction
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Nyk Danu Yoga: to this little one, you would say.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Oh, look! That is a pretty flower. Okay.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: come this way. Let’s continue.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So try to have that same compassion and patience with yourself.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: The mind will wander. This is normal.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and it’s to be expected.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: It’s amazing how much easier meditation practice gets whether you’re doing it in your yin class or on a formal
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Nyk Danu Yoga: meditation practice seat sitting your butt on a cushion.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: It’s amazing how much better it gets
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Nyk Danu Yoga: when you let go of the expectation to have this mind that is clear and void of all thoughts. And you just realize
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I’m going to get distracted here.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: but I know some skills to help me. When I do
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Nyk Danu Yoga: so.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Please be gentle and compassionate with yourself. The mind will wander away. It’s normal. It’s to be expected. When it does, you just gently return it to your anchor or to present moment awareness.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: There’s a reason that this is called Yoga practice or meditation practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: That’s because it’s a practice, and any new skill is going to take practice, repetition, and patience.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So I know that I have practiced
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Nyk Danu Yoga: my yin yoga in a really distracted way, right where I’m just sort of.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, daydreaming, thinking, planning. I’m making the shapes of my body. I’m setting a timer, and then I’m just
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Nyk Danu Yoga: letting the mind do what it does. So I’ve done that. I’ve done that a lot.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, resisting the urge to pick up my phone.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and I’ve also done my yin practice where I am dedicated and committed, and I bring my mind back each time it wanders away
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Nyk Danu Yoga: to whatever anchor I’m using for my practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and I can tell you that the second one bears far more fruit, not only for your mental state for your nervous system, and I would argue for the physicality of your body
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Nyk Danu Yoga: when you can be present to what is happening in the moment
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Nyk Danu Yoga: your practice will be way more healing.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and you will get more insights into not only your mind, but also your body and your spirit.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So I can tell you from experience that one has way more benefits when not just when I’m on the yoga mat, but also when I’m off the yoga mat.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So
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Nyk Danu Yoga: if you are a yin Yoga lover or completely intimidated, I hope that those techniques will help you to settle into practice a little bit more
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Nyk Danu Yoga: sometimes, having these sort of more concrete anchoring techniques can be helpful.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I would love to know from you in the comments. If you’re watching this on Youtube, you can let me know in the comments. If you are on spotify. We have a new comment, feature now on spotify
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Nyk Danu Yoga: or if you’re on my blog, you can also add comments there. So I would love to know from you what has your experience been like with meditation
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and meditation practice? And has Yin Yoga helped you with that.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Have you found that your Yin Yoga practice has helped you to gradually
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Nyk Danu Yoga: branch out
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Nyk Danu Yoga: into a more formalized seated practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: because, as I said before, yin Yoga can be a gateway drug to meditation.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: so I’d love to know more about your journey with meditation. Have you tried it? Did you fall into any of these stereotypes that I mentioned, where you thought that your mind was supposed to be clear.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: You were just going to sit cross-legged and be enlightened, bam, just like that. Any of that come up for you. I know it did for me.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and I’m so grateful that I found my teacher.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and I’ve you know I have been on and off with my meditation practice
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Nyk Danu Yoga: especially over the the Covid Times. I switched my meditation practice to all Meta practice all loving kindness. I’ve done a whole episode on that.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I’ll leave the link in the show notes, or you can just find it on my blog, or wherever you’re listening to this.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So in times of
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Nyk Danu Yoga: stress or strife, whether that’s personally for me or just the world.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I have repeatedly used my Meta practice as my concentration technique, because those are sort of like words that you’re putting out there into the world. So again, I’ve done a whole episode on Meta.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and you can check that out if you’re interested in a loving kindness practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And recently, I have just committed to taking a course.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: It’s a teacher training like a facilitation course on mindful meditation. We’re starting soon.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So that’s another way that I’m kind of branching out and also reestablishing my commitment to my formal seated practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and over the years I have offered a course called Meditation 101, which is suitable for the public or teachers. If you really need a way to kind of establish a meditation practice sort of from the ground up.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Then you can reach out to me. It’s not online now. I don’t have any dates right now in my mind, but by the time you listen to it there could be, and if there is. I’ll put a
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Nyk Danu Yoga: a link in the show notes, but if not, you can always reach out to me on Instagram
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Nyk Danu Yoga: or you know, send me a
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Nyk Danu Yoga: an email on my contact form on my website and let me know that that’s something you’d be interested in. And I’ll add you to the short list.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, friends, I hope that you find this helpful. And most importantly, I hope that this has allowed you to cut yourself some slack
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Nyk Danu Yoga: right.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Please don’t be harsh with yourself in meditation.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: We want to find what the Buddha would have called the middle way.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: laying in your poses or seated on your cushion, just letting the mind do what it does with no discipline whatsoever.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Not helpful.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: We’re already real good at this right? I’m sure. Right? You’re really good at thinking, planning, list, writing all the things I have, like a Master’s degree in it by now, so not helpful to have our practice be that.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: but also not helpful to be harsh, or judgmental or critical with yourself. What’s wrong with you? Why can’t your mind be still? Blah blah blah! Which I did for a while.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So that’s also not helpful, because that’s just going to make you think even more. It’s also going to jack up your nervous system, which is going to make settling even harder.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: so can we find the middle way.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: The mind wanders away. We acknowledge this is normal and human, and oh, there it goes again, and with gentle dedication we bring it back
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Nyk Danu Yoga: to whatever anchor you’re using or whatever technique you’re using.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: gentle, gentle, patient, dedicated compassionate presence
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Nyk Danu Yoga: again and again and again the mind wanders. You return it back home to your body, to your breath.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: to this moment.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, my friends, I hope that you find that helpful.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Please give me some feedback in the comments either on my blog or you can also contact me on Instagram or Youtube or Spotify apple doesn’t have a comment option. But
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Nyk Danu Yoga: if you are on apple, you can just message me on Instagram, at Nick, Danuyoga, or at Yan Yoga. Podcast. Both are in the show notes.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and until next time, my friends
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Nyk Danu Yoga: bye, for now.
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Heidi Lennon
Love this topic. What a great listen. Meditation was a fundamental piece of my first YTT and for that I am very grateful. But I think that too often the meditation and mindfulness aspect can be overlooked for the outcome based methods of teaching. I love the idea of yin being meditative, as the slowing down of the breath and the static postures of the body invite interoception and a state of calm. This is such a fun podcast, thank you for sharing with the yoga community in this way so that those far and wide can experience your wisdoms and ideas <3
nyk.danu
Thanks so much for listening and taking the time to respond