WEBVTT

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Hi, Yinis. Today, we’re gonna do a book review. We’re gonna get into this book here.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: You’re watching on YouTube. If you’re not, it’s called Yin Yoga. Stretch the Mindful Way.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: by…

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Cassandra Reinhardt. So, I’ve done several book reviews in the past, will continue to do book reviews, because it’s something that I get asked about a lot personally, plus also in a Yin Yoga Network, I always see people asking about which books

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Nyk Danu Yoga: are the good books for Yin? Which ones to start with, and then once you’ve got those, which ones should we get after that, etc, etc. So…

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Nyk Danu Yoga: If you’re a book nerd, you love yin yoga, stay tuned.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, my friends, but before we get into that, a couple of things. One, I want to share a podcast review.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: This is by Faye in Vermont. Thank you for sharing your knowledge of yin yoga. I have 500 hours of yin yoga instructor training, and there is still so much to learn. I look forward to each new podcast.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Thank you, Faye in Vermont.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: That really warms my heart, to know that, both new and experienced and well-trained teachers alike are still getting aha moments from the podcast.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So that’s awesome.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The other thing to mention, dear yoga teacher, is if you have considered taking training with me and you are not on the waitlist, you should get on the waitlist. I know I say this every episode, but that’s because so many of you listen, you reach out to me on Instagram, either with a question or a question about my training.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But you’re not yet on the waitlist.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So, when you get on the waitlist, you get some free gifts from me, you get a video, and a sequence, and other little nuggets along the way, you get this podcast emailed to you, etc, etc. But also.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: You will get sneaky peeks behind the scenes.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: First crack at registration when it opens, and first crack at the first 5 people to sign up registration discount, which at the time of this recording, the first 5 people that jump on it

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Nyk Danu Yoga: can save 25%. That may be different when you’re listening to this, because podcasts are evergreen, and it could be way in the future when you’re listening to this. That’s very possible. But at the time of this recording, that’s the deal.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And the… that only goes out to people on the waitlist, so whether you’re wanting to do the next round, or around a year from now, get thyself on the waitlist if you want to study with me some more and nerd out.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And then the other thing to mention, Dear reminder.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And then the other thing to mention.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Dear yoga friends, is that, if you’re new around here, you may not know.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I have the soul of a mermaid, but the mouth of a sailor, so if you have small folks around, now’s your chance to grab some headphones.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I can’t guarantee that there will be colorful language, but I also can’t guarantee that there will not be.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: All right, let’s get into the task at hand, shall we? So, book reviews are something that, I’ll probably do, you know, every season, one, two, who knows how many, as well as interviews with the authors, of course. But a book review is an opportunity for me to just give you kind of my two cents on

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The book itself without, you know, being face-to-face with the author.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And sometimes I also do an interview with the author and a separate book review. It really just depends. And I’m open to doing an interview

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Nyk Danu Yoga: with, Cassandra, if y’all want one, then you can just comment below and let me know, and I’ll reach out to her.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So, Cassandra Reinhardt, and I actually don’t know anything about.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Cassandra. At all. I just have this book from… I don’t know, it’s been on my shelf

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Nyk Danu Yoga: You know, sometimes, maybe if you’re like me, and you’re a total book nerd, you just look at your bookshelf.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And you go, holy smokes, there’s a lot of books here.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And, I’ve just finished doing, and I’m still doing, with books, because books is the hard one for me. I’m such a book nerd. Even though I will never have time, probably, unless I’m independently wealthy, to read all of the books currently on my shelf, I still love them.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Excuse me, one second.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So even though I will probably never have time to read them all, or maybe I will, who knows? There’s always hope.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I love having them. So I honestly don’t know when or how I got this book.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yin Yoga, stretch the mindful way.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: somebody could have given it to me, or it’s very likely that I was just in my local used bookstore, shout out to Russell’s Books in Victoria, and anytime I see a book that says Yin on it that I don’t already have, I pick it up and I read it. So it could have been that, but I know it’s been sitting on my shelf for years.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: years. And I just decided to dive into it to talk about it on the podcast, but also because I’m doing my fall purging and letting go, so at the time of this recording.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: when I’m recording this, we’re in fall, and fall is the season of letting go. I’ve done other episodes on that, and so I’ve been going through my stuff. I’ve been going through clothing, you know, accessories, stuff in my storage unit. I, like, cleaned out my whole storage unit and moved it to a

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I don’t want to let you believe I have an outside storage unit, just the storage locker in my apartment building. But a bigger, nicer, more well-lit one came up, and so it was an opportunity for me to do my fall purge and move it over there.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And then I got inspired, you know, did my closets, and I’ve been doing my bookshelf, and will continue to do my bookshelf over the next couple of months. And so, as I was

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Nyk Danu Yoga: exploring my bookshelf, I stumbled across this book again, and thought, oh.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Not only have I not actually read that, even though it’s been sitting there for years, I haven’t done a review on it. So, here we go, my friends.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Now, I do want to say, just to preface, two things. First of all, I have notes, because I…

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Nyk Danu Yoga: have ADD, some of you know that, because you’ve heard me say that before, and if I don’t have some notes, then I will not be able to make sure that I hit all the points that I wanted to hit. So I do have some notes here, so if you are watching this on YouTube, and you see my eyes kind of darting around, blah blah blah, that’s why.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And then the other thing I want to mention before we dive into this review is that I’m… very…

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I don’t want to say hard on books.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Critical, I don’t want to say that either.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I hold yoga books to a very high standard.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And I think that’s because

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Nyk Danu Yoga: there’s so much room for growth in yoga books. There’s been so much of the kind of status quo of, like, you know, yoga books with no props, no accessibility, you know, just kind of flexible yogi people doing poses in them without any

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Guidance to us as teachers, or even practitioners, as to how to make these accessible for the average bear.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And so, I’m very critical of that aspect of yoga books, and I’m not speaking just about this book today, but all yoga books, whether they’re yin books or not.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: If they don’t have an element of accessibility in there, I think that’s very problematic. And then the other thing I want to mention is that I’m also not a big fan of yoga teachers.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: putting things in their book that are beyond their scope of practice. What I mean by that is.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: They include whole chapters on things like nutrition, but they’ve never taken a nutrition course in their life, they’re just basing it on blogs and their own personal eating patterns, which I think is kind of irresponsible, because we’re all different.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And let’s just use the example of nutrition. You know, not everybody’s gonna have the same nutritional needs, and so you getting on your yoga

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Nyk Danu Yoga: white horse and talking to people about what they should be eating beyond your scope of practice and expertise. Now, of course, if you’re a yoga teacher who happens to be a holistic nutritionist.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: party on with yourself, but I think you get the idea. Or sequences that, like, are the number one thing to fix back pain, for example. Meanwhile, this person’s not a physiotherapist and doesn’t even have a niche

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Nyk Danu Yoga: in helping people with back pain. So these kinds of things in books, I’m also very critical of, regardless of who the author is.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Anyone who’s listened to my interview with Bernie will know that I asked Bernie lots of frank questions about why he said things, why he did things. I even poked at a couple of them, according to Chinese medicine, and was like, I don’t really think that’s accurate. So…

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Nyk Danu Yoga: No one is safe from a critical lens and critical thinking.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: That being said.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: let’s get into this. So I just wanted to let you know that I’m a critical thinker, and that, I’m looking at these books critically, so you’re going to hear all the things I love about the book, but you’re also going to hear things where I’m like, room for improvement, or the, I’ll call it, wish-was-better section.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, so let’s get into this book, shall we?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: In yoga, that stretch the mindful way. Those of you on YouTube will see all my little sticky notes, which I’ve now condensed into a list, so I will not need the sticky notes likely anymore.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: If you can’t see that, that’s okay.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: You’ll probably see it in the image for this episode.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: You can see the book with all my post-it notes sticking out of it.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So, first of all, I do want to say I don’t know anything about Cassandra at all. I don’t know who she is, what her training is, nothing, so I’m shooting blind here. The only thing that I know about her is the bio in the book itself.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So yin yoga stretched the mindful way.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I only know what it says in here about.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Her from her little hello in here.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And I don’t even think there’s a bio, an author bio on the back. Nope.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So… Nothing personal, because I don’t know her.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But I will say that there’s a lot of good things about this book, actually. I was pleasantly surprised.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Here, I’m gonna go into the things that I loved about the book first, and then I’ll go into the things where, I wish that things were a little different.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: First of all, number one, love. She has a section in the beginning on props. She actually talks about things like bolsters and blocks and straps. Oh my, I love that. Thank you, Cassandra.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So many books don’t talk about props, don’t include props, and that’s problematic in all yoga books, period, whether they’re yin or not, because props, in my opinion, are required to make things accessible for all bodies.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Even though you may not need them, other people will. But especially also, I think, in Yin, there’s this really weird misconception that, as soon as you pull out props, you’re doing restorative, not yin. And I’ve done a whole episode on that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: This might be a good time to remind you that there is a… in the show notes, there’s a link that says, see all episodes at a glance.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: You can go into there, into that link, and that’s just a simple Google Doc that I use to keep track of all of the episodes in order from the season, when they were posted, and they’re all linked there for you to listen to. So if I mention a bunch of different episodes in here, please know that resource is always there for you, or if you’re just new to the podcast.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And you want to go on a bit of a binge fest.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Feel free to click that link. See all episodes at a glance, that’s where you’re going to find links to all the episodes I’ve done thus far.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, so number one, yay, yay, gold star, section on props. Thank you, thank you for that. Thank you for including that, for acknowledging that props are important, and that, you know, to make things accessible. Love that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The second thing I absolutely love about this book, it includes upper body poses.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So many of the OG yin books do not have any.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: or very few upper body poses. And I’ve done a whole episode on upper body yin, you can check out if you want to learn more about that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Paul didn’t originally teach upper body poses, so this has been kind of an add-on from,

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Nyk Danu Yoga: from other yin teachers as we went along practicing.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So, I love that there’s a good amount of upper body stuff in there.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I also love…

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Nyk Danu Yoga: she just calls it leg with a strap. There’s plenty of names for this in Hatha. One of my teacher trainees

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Nyk Danu Yoga: told me that another teacher she took it at yin training with called it, foot to sky, or foot cross to sky, which I love, love that. But when you lay on the back, and you loop a strap over your foot, and you stretch your hamstring that way, she actually includes this

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Nyk Danu Yoga: In a few different versions in the book, which I love, and I’ll tell you why I love it.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I love it because it’s a very effective way to isolate the hamstring.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: If that’s your intended area, and without involving the spine.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So it’s the number one pose that I would go to myself, personally, and do often with my students. If I’m looking for hamstrings specifically, perhaps calf as well, but mostly hamstring.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Because anytime you do a seated forward bend, now you’re involving, you know, the whole spine and other things.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But, when you can land your back and grab a strap, it’s a really great way to specifically isolate the hamstrings.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Why is that helpful? Well, it’s good, you know, for people, if you’re looking specifically for the hamstring.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But also, some of you may or may not know that I have a bit of a niche with back pain. I work with a lot of people in yoga who

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Have had, back injuries, or whether they’re, you know, actually dealing with disc issues or other things, or whether they’ve had, they’re just generally really sore and tight.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Either of those.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I work with those people a lot, and, this is my go-to for stretching the hamstring, because your whole spine is supported by the floor. So, it makes a hamstring stretch not only accessible, but safe for a wide variety of people.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So, yay, yay, yay for including legs with a strap. So happy to see that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Thank you, Cassandra.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The third thing that I love…

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Nyk Danu Yoga: It includes meditation. She’s got a section in there on meditation. Thank Goddess.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: You know how many yoga books have nothing on meditation? As if meditation and yoga were separate, and as if meditation wasn’t actually part of the OG yoga practice. So thank you so much for including that on meditation, and it’s very simple, very user-friendly, little, you know, just a couple pages on how in the world

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Nyk Danu Yoga: We might start meditating.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, I love that she’s got a section on there in breath, on pranayama.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I will just make one disclaimer there, though. So, she includes 3 breaths. I would have loved to see more, actually. There’s so many more breath techniques that you can use that are down-regulating for the nervous system, but she may have just only included the ones that she particularly knows and practices.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Which would be smart. We don’t want to include things in books that we have no experience, training, or expertise in.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So she includes, alternate nostril breathing, which is lovely.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And she also includes, the humming breath, or the bee breath, which is lovely. Again, great for soothing the nervous system. She also includes what she calls, and what Bernie calls, ocean breath.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Which is not an original, you know, OG name for breath.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And some people call that a, air quotes, soft ujjayi. I’m not a fan of that particular breath technique.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: for yin yoga. I’ve talked more about that in my episode with Bernie. And the reason for that is that, first of all, I think it can be a crutch.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: People that come from other styles of yoga and think that they’re doing Ujjayi will then do that through the whole practice. And even though we’re not… we’re saying ocean breath or soft ujjayi, people still don’t denote the difference between soft ujayi, ocean breath, and ujjayi, in my opinion.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So I don’t love that. Also, that breath technique works a little bit more with, like, bandhas, and it’s a little bit more rib cage expansion, and I prefer to keep, some of my breath work a little bit more low down.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: In the body, for yen. So it’s just personal preference, not in love with ocean breath, regardless of whose book it’s in.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But she does include two other pranayama techniques, which… both of which I love, and both of which would be soothing to the nervous system. She includes alternate nostril breathing.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And, I love that. Which would be even more soothing would be, I believe it’s called Chandra Bedna. My Sanskrit pronunciation is probably not accurate on that, but that’s where you just do the left nostril. We’ll maybe have a whole episode on breathing techniques in the future.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But I do love that she includes some breathing techniques in there.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The next thing that I love about this book is she includes human versions of forward bends.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Now, there are definitely going to be people that are way tighter in their body than the pictures that she even shows for forward bends, but in her forward folds, she’s not showing you nose-to-knee, etc, etc. She shows human versions of people doing forward bends, which I quite like.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: She shows the lying quad stretch.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Which, is just essentially Sphinx Pose.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: With a bent knee and a strap pulling your foot towards your bump.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The reason I love that she shows this is because this is something that comes up all the time when people are like, my students can’t do saddle pose.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Because of their knees. And yes, people will say, what if you put a washcloth or a blanket? Yes, yes, yes. Sometimes that will work, sometimes it will not. There are people that will never do saddle posts.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And should they not, too, benefit from having a quad stretch? Yes, they should. And she shows one… she just calls it lying quad stretch. I just think of it as a sphinx variation, or a saddle alternative. So love that she includes that there with… she shows both with hand and with a strap.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So, yay, thank you again. Thank you. Thank you for that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: She also, when in the pictures with the saddle pose, she shows it with a bolster.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Not somebody going flat to the ground, she shows it with a bolster.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Thank you!

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Thank you.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Thank you, Cassandra, for trying to make these things accessible.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Of course, there could be way more that you could go up and down.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: From there, you could use two bolsters, no bolster.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: all the things, right? But she at least shows the initial pose with the bolster, which I loved.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: She also shows, a strap in Happy Baby, which I love.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Because,

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Nyk Danu Yoga: not everybody can reach their feet, and so… and yoga teachers often don’t think, anytime your hand can’t reach your foot, just put a strap there. So, she shows a strap version of Happy Baby, which I love. She includes,

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Nyk Danu Yoga: what she calls reclined child’s pose, which is another one that teachers really struggle with when they try to put people in child’s pose, which is not accessible for everybody, by the way. There could be all kinds of reasons for that. It could be foot or ankle, limited range of motion.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And their bone structure, or just tight on the top of their feet. It could be their knees, it could be their, their girth, their body size, there’s all kinds of reasons why Child’s pose is not a happy place for a lot of people. So she includes what she calls reclined child’s pose, which is essentially hugging your knees into your chest.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And I always just give… I always give that as an alternative. I say you could take child’s pose, or if that’s not a good pose for you, flip onto your back and hug your knees into your chest. So I love that she included that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I love that she included fish pose on blocks.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Love that, because a lot of people will call

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Nyk Danu Yoga: what I call heartbed fishpose in Yin. I don’t know why.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So they’re very different. Heartbed is where you’re sitting in front of a bolster and you lay your spine on the bolster. That is a very different pose than fish pose on blocks. They access different areas of the body. Fish pose on blocks is far more specific and also more… a little more intense.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So, I love that she included that fish pose on blocks because it’s one of my favorite versions to teach, and I don’t even… I don’t even consider sitting in front of a bolster and laying down on it fish pose. That’s not even fish pose to me. It doesn’t access the same areas as half a yoga’s fish pose would.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So that one I consider heartbed, and I do fish pose on blocks, so I loved that she included fish on blocks. Thank you.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The other thing I loved… was that she included half monkey.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And Monkey, also, which very few people can do, monkey being full splits, but she included half monkey, which is not commonly in a lot of yin books, and I think should be, especially if you’ve just done a little dragon.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: She’s got a… another thing that I quite liked is she had a whole bunch of fun, different dragon variations, so there was lots of different dragon fun in there. Some of them had different names. So for example, what I learned from Paul Grilley, a low lunge, is just called Dragon.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: She calls it baby dragon, which is a little confusing, because a lot of us call laying on your back and hugging one knee into your heart with the other leg straight, maybe with a bolster or block under your sacrum. A lot of us call that baby dragon or lazy dragon, and it’s an alternative for people who can’t be on their knees.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So that’s a little confusing, but again, in Yen, there’s always confusion with names from one teacher to the next. So she calls that baby dragon. I would have learned that it’s just dragon, but then she’s got a whole bunch of other fun dragon variations in here, which is… which is great. So…

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I like that she kind of really fleshed out the dragons. What else do I like about this book?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: There’s a couple poses there that, although I was kind of vaguely familiar with, I don’t practice a lot, and I think I’m going to start practicing with them more. One is side seal, where you’re basically side-lying, kind of holding yourself up on your elbow or on your hand, so it’s a side body stretch.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Which is not something I do often, but I think I want to add in a little bit more into my practice.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And then what she calls seated swan.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Which was… which is if you are sitting, and you bring your soles of the feet to the floor, and then you cross your right ankle over your left thigh in kind of that figure four, but instead of lying down and hugging your knees in, you’re actually seated and resting back in your hands. I do that pose a fair bit in my more…

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Nyk Danu Yoga: movement-based classes, but I haven’t done it a lot in yin, simply because you’re kind of holding yourself up with your hands the whole time. But you could also put your back to a wall.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So, that’s something I’m going to play with a little bit more as well.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So something that’s, you know, it’s kind of there in the memory bank, but I don’t do it a lot, so she’s inspired me to explore, side seal and seated swan a little bit more.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: What else? She has lovely sequences in the back.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Which I think is quite nice.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I do want to just say, though, that this is where we fall into a little bit of the teachers speaking on things that they probably don’t really have the training for. So, although I love that there are sequences in the back, I’m going to say, but with a grain of salt, with two of them.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: A yin yoga for digestion sequence.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I looked at the poses. I don’t think there’s very much empirical evidence at all that that would improve your digestion.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: That might just be personal opinion on her part. And then the other one was sciatica.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: It’s a nice sequence, probably pretty lovely for folks with back pain, but sciatica has many causes.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And so you can’t just say, this is a sequence for sciatica, because first you would have to know what is the root cause of the sciatica, and then sequence around that. So each individual may have

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Nyk Danu Yoga: different reasons that they have sciatica, so you can’t do these blanket, this is for this. Just like, for example, I could do a sequence for anxiety, and it will probably be helpful to a lot of people, but not to everybody, right? So we have to watch that

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Nyk Danu Yoga: These blanket statements about, this is for digestion, this is for sciatica, dot dot dot.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So, I love that there’s sequences in the back, they’re great sequences. I like that she included a range of different lengths of sequences, too, like some are 60 minutes, some are 90 minutes, some are 30 minutes, etc.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: There’s even, like, a little upper… a couple upper back ones, and neck ones in here. So I love that, but I would just say alleviating sciatica pain with a grain of salt, and improving digestion.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Again, with a grain of salt.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And she’s got a full body sequence in there, which I love.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So those are all the things that I really like about this book. I think she did really well. The other thing is, really nice color photographs, use of props. The other thing I wanted to mention that she does for pretty much every pose is she’ll show a pose, and then she’ll have a little

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Nyk Danu Yoga: photograph that says, make it easier. And there’s a way to modify it with a prop, or do a different version to make the version that’s in the photograph a little softer.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And then she has a make it harder for those who maybe don’t feel it and need to do a little bit more. Now, I love that she included those, and I mean, really, you could do pages and pages and pages of pose

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Nyk Danu Yoga: variations for different bodies. The only thing I don’t love is the language. I don’t love this make it easier, make it harder language, simply because I think there’s been so much, sort of, of this competitive attitude in yoga, and so much of this, like.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: to do the air quotes, complete pose. And so it just feels a little bit too much like that for me. So I don’t know what else I would have used, I’d have to brainstorm that, but I don’t really love make it easier, make it harder. I wish there was a different phrasing on those, but I’m being picky there.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But I love that she includes them. She includes a little snapshot that says, if this poses too much, here’s what you do. If it’s not enough, do this.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Then here’s what I don’t love. So that’s the list of all the goodness of this book. I definitely think it’s worth purchasing, especially if you’re a teacher, or if you’re a committed or dedicated yin practitioner.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: What I don’t love.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I don’t love that she’s got a second section in the chakras in the front.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: this is a personal pet peeve of mine, but I’m a lot more aligned with, sort of, the Taoist version of the inn, and I just think

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that…

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Nyk Danu Yoga: chakras and yin. And even my teacher, Paul Gurley, does it, so, you know, I’m not calling her out, as the only teacher who does this, but I just don’t love blending those two. So, I don’t really know why chakras need to be in a yin book, when actually Hatha Yoga, or bandhas, or

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Nyk Danu Yoga: mantra might be a more effective way to spend time with your chakras. We’ll just leave it at that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: There are some cues in this book that feel like…

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Nyk Danu Yoga: They are a hangover from Hatha Yoga.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So when we start to teach yoga, if we really, really understand the intents and purposes of a yin practice.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Then we want to let go of some of these alignment cues, or just some of these cues that don’t need to be there at all. So, I’m going to give you a couple examples from the book. One in Sphinx Pose, she says, draw your shoulders down.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Why? Why do we need to do that? We don’t need to draw our shoulders down. That’s a very, sort of, hatha cue.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But… Irrelevant.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Actually, in all styles of yoga, actually. There’s no, like, reason, unless you’re trying to strengthen those muscles that you use to draw your shoulders down, why you would need to draw your shoulders down in Sphinx Pose. In fact, in a yin practice, sometimes letting the shoulders come up a little and kind of softening and hammocking into your shoulder

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Nyk Danu Yoga: girdle can actually make that pose far more comfortable. So, not in love with that. The other example that I noticed, there might be many more, I’m just pulling out too, is that in deer pose, she has the legs set up as 90-90, which is what physiotherapists call it. So, front leg at 90 degrees, back leg at 90 degrees.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: That’s a very tiny percent of the population that could ever do that pose.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: In a 90-90 way.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Very small percentage of the population. You have to have very good external rotation.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: For that front leg to be able to do that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: to 90 degrees, and very good internal rotation on the back leg to bring that to 90 degrees. And very few people have a high degree of external and internal rotation.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: If all of this isn’t landing for you, internal, external rotation, and you’re a yoga teacher, and you have not watched Anatomy for Yoga with Paul Grilley yet.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Please watch that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: it’s some of the biggest light bulbs I had, was shoulders and hips, and he talks a lot about internal rotation, external rotators, and people that can do both.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But just know that there’s very few people that could ever do that pose in a 90-90 position, regardless of how long they’ve been doing yoga and how flexible their tissues are. That’s a bone structure thing, not a flexibility thing. So I would have rather seen it demonstrated in a more accessible way.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And then maybe if she really wanted to, she could have put the 90-90 as a… make it harder, or just leave it out altogether.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But I don’t love that the main picture is the 90-90 set up a deer, because very few people can do that, and then yoga teachers think… even yoga teachers or practitioners think that the goal of… and she did it, I believe, in swan pose as well. I believe that front leg was at 90 degrees, and that is also

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Almost impossible for most of the population.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So, I wish that those were photographed with a little bit more awareness of

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Nyk Danu Yoga: skeletal variation in just the average human, because I think that setting that front leg up to 90 degrees in either deer or swan is very problematic, and there’s so many people out there that are actually hurting their bodies because they think that’s the air quotes goal, is to get your legs to 90 degrees.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And then the 90 degrees in deer pose in the back, super problematic. Again, unless you’re a really, really strong internal rotator, you’ll never be able to do that. So I would like to pick that particular

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Nyk Danu Yoga: pose apart. I don’t love the way it’s presented in the book. And then there’s just other little things, like Shoulders Down and Sphinx. I’m sure there’s a whole bunch more.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: In there. That, to me, you know, don’t need to be there. Those are useless cues that are a hangover from hatha yoga.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Then the other one that is just not accurate, in my opinion, from my experience, in seal pose, she has an option where she says, bend the knees to make it easier.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But actually, for most people in Sphinx or Seal, if you bend the knees, that’s going to add more compression into your lower back, which would not make it easier. So I don’t know if that was a typo, or if she actually feels like in her body, when she bends her knees in those poses, it gets easier.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I don’t know, but that would be a bone to pick.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: That bending the knees, if you’re in Sphinx or Seal, you bend your knees and bring your feet to your bum. That does not make it easier for any human that I’ve ever met. It’s possible it does for someone. So I don’t know if that’s a typo, or if that’s just your own personal experience, but I…

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Nyk Danu Yoga: A little critical of that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I did mention that she calls, Dragon, baby dragon, so lunging.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: You know, low lunch, she calls that baby dragon, which is a bit confusing, just name-wise, because

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Nyk Danu Yoga: just called Dragon most of the time. I did mention that I love that she includes some fun dragon variations, and then she also does a little bit of,

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Nyk Danu Yoga: a little bit of confusion with the swan names, so she calls the one that is, just regular swan, or Sleeping Swan, she just calls it swan, and then she calls laying on your back, doing that sort of figure four, which I call Keyhole, she calls that one Sleeping Swan.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Which is very different from how Paul would have done it.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, it would have been Sleeping Swan is you come into pigeon in half the Speak, and you fold over your front leg to come to your elbows, or a bolster, or whatever. That’s called Sleeping Swan. But she calls Sleeping Swan the one laying on your back. So again.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, opposed by any other name. I did a whole episode on that, too, but it is just a little confusing.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And that’s really it. Those are kind of, if I was going to be real critical about the book.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: That would be it for me. I think overall, it’s a really, really good book, and I think if you are a yoga teacher, I would add it to your collection, just simply for the upper body poses, the prop stuff, the variations.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: There’s probably things in here that you’re maybe not doing in your class because you didn’t learn it in your regular, Yin training. So I do love,

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I do love this book for… especially for teachers.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I think it’s a great idea to check this book out, or if you’re an experienced practitioner, if you’re a committed practitioner of yin, then I would definitely think this is one to add to the collection. So it’s called Yin Yoga Again, Stretch the Mindful Way by Cassandra Reinhardt.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And, yeah, it’s got some good variations in there with props. Again, we could always do more with props, but I love the fact that she included, hey, we can use bolsters, blocks, and straps, and here are some of the ways in which you could do that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Loved that. And again, my little bones to pick were pretty small, but again, they could be things I could say about most yoga bugs.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Or a lot of yin books.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So that’s my thoughts on this book.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: You know, usually when I kind of go through my yoga books, and I decide, which I have a… I’m looking over there, for those of you on YouTube, because I have a pile of books that on Saturday I’m taking to the used bookstore, because I can sell them, and then I can get credit, and then I can get more books. Hmm? Yes.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So, I’m looking over there, and I’m like, yeah, there’s a lot of yoga books that I will pick up and I’ll read, and I’ll be like, that was a nice experience, and then I

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Nyk Danu Yoga: quickly let it go, because I don’t need it. This one might stay around for a while. I think there’s some… some fun variations in here. A couple things that I don’t practice often,

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And she’s got some nice variations, with props, so I would say that this is definitely one to add to your collection. If you’ve already got Bernie’s book and Paul’s book, and you’re looking for some more Yin books, check out Yin Yoga, Stretch the Mindful Way.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: It’s great. It’s a… it’s a… it’s a great yearbook, actually. I was, pleasantly surprised.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Alright, I think that’s it for now.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: on that, check the book out, and let me know in the comments if you are watching this on YouTube, or if you’re on Spotify, let me know in the comments if you’ve already got this book.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And what you think of it. And if you would like me to pull on Cassandra.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: reach out to Cassandra Reinhart, see if she wants to do a podcast interview. Let me know. And also, maybe a topic idea, because I don’t just bring people on just to interview them. There’s always got to be, like, a

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Nyk Danu Yoga: topic of some sort. So if you want me to reach out to her, you have a topic idea specifically for her, let me know, and I will reach out to her.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But until we meet again, that’s it for me.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Bye for now!