Yin Yoga for Healing
In this 60‑minute live‑recorded Yin Yoga class, Angelica guides viewers through a gentle, spine‑focused sequence designed to stimulate the kidney meridian and work the connective tissue (fascia). She begins with a warm, personal introduction, offers practical tips on using props (bolsters, pillows, yoga eggs, blankets) and shares her background (37 years of practice, 17 years teaching, online teacher‑training programs). The class follows Yin Yoga’s two core principles—finding the edge and cultivating stillness—while emphasizing breath through the nose, non‑reactive awareness of thoughts, and emotional processing. The pose flow includes supported bridge, Sphinx, half‑butterfly, Bananasana, various twists, and a final Shavasana, each described with cueing for modifications, intensity variations, and mindfulness prompts. Angelica interweaves philosophical reflections from Taoism and Yoga Sutras about emotions, the liver, kindness, and the nature of good/ bad, encouraging students to sit with sensations and emotions rather than avoid them. Throughout, she promotes her one‑on‑one online yoga teacher training (200‑, 300‑, 500‑hour) and invites viewers to subscribe, follow her social channels, and join future classes. The tone is instructional, soothing, and supportive, aiming to help practitioners achieve physical release, emotional balance, and deeper self‑awareness.
Chapters
The wind is a tad bit windy today, so it might be like, oh, uh, you might hear it in the background, but hopefully you won't hear it in the background, and hopefully we will— hello from Turkey! I've been to Turkey, it's an amazing country and I really like it there. Okay, um, hopefully the wind won't be too bad. All right. Can y'all hear me well? Good. All right, if you have a yoga mat, grab a mat. If you don't have a mat, that is okay. You don't need a mat. You can just get a blanket or a towel or something like that. If you, uh, have a bolster— bolsters are really helpful. If you don't have a bolster, just grab a couple of big pillows. Those are also great as well. I have some yoga eggs. These take the place of blocks, and, um, you can get them at the3minuteegg.com, I think is the name of the website. Um, but they're great because they conform to the shape of your body, so they're far superior to blocks. I think blocks are ridiculous. I don't know, that's so Blocks are so 1980, friends. I still do like tofu. All right, we're gonna do a really chill yin yoga practice today. I'm super glad that you're here, and I'm really grateful for you. I do try to go live and teach yoga every single day, so if you want to join me, please do. I do try to schedule them, but I can't always do that. Just because of my own schedule, but I'm committing to being here with you daily. And thank you for coming. All right, let's go ahead and get started. We're gonna come into an easy seated pose, or you can lie on your back, whatever feels good to you. And we're gonna just go ahead and begin to breathe in and out through the nose. And drop into the space. And I just invite you to close your eyes and just take a few moments to come into the space. Feeling the earth beneath you. It's really driving me insane that it's sideways. There we go. Just feeling the earth beneath you, connecting to the energy of the earth. Oh, that's so much better. Starting to feel the temperature of the air against your skin around you. Noticing the gentle rise and fall of your belly as you breathe in and out through the nose. Deep inhales and deep exhales. Finding your space on your mat again, either in a nice easy seated pose or lying on your back, whichever feels more comfortable to you. Maybe bring one hand onto your heart and one hand onto your stomach. Notice any sensations that you're experiencing in your body. We're just connecting to our body right now. We're not making any judgments on the body. We'll just sit here in this meditation for one more minute, just allowing the breath to come and go. If you've never met me before, my name is Angelica. I've been teaching yoga for 17 years. I've been practicing yoga for 37 years. I host a in online yoga teacher training, 200-hour, 300-hour, and 500-hour. I only work with students one-on-one, so if you're looking to become a yoga teacher, I would love to connect with you. You can go to the link in my bio or the description of this video for more information on all the different things that I offer. All the different resources. And again, I'm so grateful for you being here today with me practicing yoga. Thank you. We're going to work primarily with the spine today and some of the kidney, kidney meridians. We're going to start in a supported bridge today, so if you have a bolster or if you have a Pillow, we're going to take it on our back to create a bit of a curve on our lower back area. So just finding a comfortable way into that curve. And that's how we'll find our way into the supported bridge pose. If you don't have a bolster or pillows, you could also use a block, or you could use a some books. Just try to find the hip area so that it's not jabbing into you. And then we're just going to find a comfortable spot or a place where we're feeling sensation at least, and then we're going to just close our eyes and rest into that. So the first principle of Yin Yoga is to find our space, to come to our first edge. And then the second principle of Yin Yoga is to find stillness. So we're at the finding stillness stage here, just coming back to the breath. In yin yoga, we're focused on the fascia, not on the muscle, so we stay in these postures much longer than in a more yang practice like a vinyasa or a ashtanga. We're gonna hold these poses for longer so that we can get into our connective tissue, so we can have an effect on the body without doing a lot of work. Physically, and so we can also just connect with the mind because ultimately yoga is for the mind. If any thoughts come into your mind, remember that yoga isn't about removing thoughts. It's about having awareness but not reacting to Those thoughts. I'm gonna stay in this posture for 3 more breaths, stimulating our kidney energy. On the low back. So let's slowly walk our feet back in. Let's just slowly lift our hips up just enough that we can slide the bolster away, and then just ease on down to your mat. Let your knees fall in together as your feet are wide, just feeling the counter of the posture. So we're gonna just roll over onto our side and then make our way onto our stomachs. I'm gonna grab a drink of my water and then we're gonna move into Sphinx Pose. So from here, you might want to grab on to opposite elbows. So you can grab on to opposite elbows here if you want. You can bring your arms more forward if you want, or you can rest your elbows on a bolster if you want a little bit more sensation. You're doing great. I'm so glad that you're here. Thank you for joining. You could also rest your chin into your hands. Whatever option feels good to you. Hi, Lisa, I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for coming. If you're not following my friend Raw Food Romance, definitely go and give her a look. She's on YouTube and on Instagram, and she makes the most incredible raw foods, raw vegan foods. I ate some with her when we were in Sedona, and she lives in Vegas, and I am from Vegas, so we get to spend a lot of time together. And she's an incredible human being, so definitely check her out. Mmm, wind is coming up a little bit out here in the mountains of Colorado. Let's just breathe into this pose. If you want a little bit more, you can bend your knees. That'll bring a little bit more into the low back. We might find ourselves slightly uncomfortable in this posture, and that's okay. That's normal. That's— we want to have a little bit of discomfort. But remember, if there's anything that you're feeling pain or experiencing something that is just too intense for you, it's totally okay to back off. I'm not there with you now, so I can't know what your body is going through. And honestly, even if I was there I'm not inside of your body, so I can't know what's going on in your body. If you want to come a little deeper, you can come into what's called seal pose. You bring your hands slightly forward. And straighten the arms. This will create more intensity in your low back. Personally, I'm not really a big fan of that pose, but some people really love it. And that's the thing I found about yin yoga, is that everyone is very, very different in what they like. So find what works for you and stick with that. [FOREIGN] Try to come back to the breath if you feel yourself moving away from it. Just breathing in and out through the nose. We're going to try to avoid breathing in and out through the mouth. We want always everything to come through the nose. This helps to to lower the fight or flight response, brings us into a calmer state. We find our own individual pose by getting to know our bodies and understanding where we are individually. The whole yoga practice is really about getting to know ourselves on a deeper level, going within. We're gonna slowly lower down and just turn our head to one side. Rest your cheek on your palms, and the same direction that you turn your head, slide your knee toward your elbow on the floor here. It'll give you a little opening in the hip. I'm just noticing the sensation of what you feel here. Mm, then bring that leg back down. Turn the head to the other side and bring the opposite knee up towards your elbow, feeling a little bit of an opening in the hip here as we turn our head and counterpose for our cobra. We're gonna bring that leg back down and we're gonna slowly make our way into a child's pose. So pressing back, if you want to, you can bring your knees wide or you can bring your knees closer together. Whatever feels good to you. If you have a bolster or some pillows, you can put them right in the middle here and fold onto them. It actually feels really good. You can extend your arms forward, you can bring your arms back. Now again, if you don't have a bolster, it's okay, you don't need one. You could just use some pillows or a cushion off your couch or nothing at all, but I really like the bolster. Good, and slowly walk your hands up. We're gonna come into what's called a half butterfly. So just come over onto your side, your right or your left side, whatever feels more comfortable to you. We're gonna extend the right leg out and pull the left leg in toward us. So this is like a half of a Butterfly. Drink some water if you got it. If you want a little bit more challenge in this pose and it feels safe for you to do so, you can take the bent leg and bring it around so that it's more like with the foot behind. That's not super comfortable for me, so I don't really do it, but for you it might be, and it's important that you do what works for you. We're going to turn toward our straight right leg. You're going to inhale, lengthen the spine, and then you're just going to exhale, fold over that leg to the point that feels comfortable to you. Now maybe you can come down further than me, maybe you're not as far down as I am. It really doesn't matter. I just went on a 6-mile hike, so I'm not trying to push myself crazy. We just want to feel it in our connective tissue. Remember that yin yoga is about the connective tissue, so it's about our joints, it's about our ligaments. We're not necessarily trying to just stretch the muscle. We're really trying to connect with ourselves. It's allowing the body to come to the place that it feels good, allowing ourselves to be in the space, noticing what our body likes. Accepting our body exactly the way it is, connecting with the beauty of our body being able to do these poses at all, and gratitude to be in this space, like the gratitude I have for you being here today. Thank you so much, all of you, for joining. And if you're watching this later on YouTube Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm so grateful for you to be here today. Thank you. And P.S., don't forget to subscribe. Breathing and folding in, waiting for your body to invite you deeper into the pose. You notice that any emotions or thoughts begin to come up in your yoga practice to today. It's completely normal and fine. Our bodies actually hold on to all kinds of tensions and traumas and experiences. We use our yoga practice as a way to work through that, and that's why it's so important. And we're not trying to get rid of thoughts, but we're acknowledging those thoughts and then not reacting to them during our yoga practice. And that teaches us to do that in our regular daily life. According to Tao tradition, the liver is the home of kindness. And if we find ourselves angry often, we're damaging our liver in that thought, in that thought theory of Taoism. The stronger your liver, the kinder you are. Good reason to not drink alcohol. We're going to really slowly here just walk up. Can lean back, both hands behind you, open the chest, and maybe just pause here for a moment. Maybe bring the legs back to the center and maybe just rock them back and forth. If you want to, we can do what we call the windshield wipers, where you bend your knees and just let the knees go back and forth nice and slow. No rush to get into the other side, but When you're ready, we'll go ahead and do the opposite side. So extending your left leg and bending your right leg. I really needed this practice today after doing a long hike. Again, if you want to, you can take that bent leg and bent it under so that the foot comes behind you, or you can leave the foot into your inner thigh. And let's just turn and face our left leg. Inhale, lengthen, and then exhale, just fold over that left leg to the point that gravity takes you to. And we're just breathing here, just folding. Noticing where your body feels, what it feels like. Noticing whether any emotions are coming up in your body as you're folding into the posture, as you're holding it maybe longer than your normal time of holding a pose. What kind of emotions are you feeling? And if you're feeling happy, then be filled with gratitude because that's a great emotion to have. But remember that all emotions are really great emotions because we cannot have happiness without experiencing sadness. The roller coaster of the human experience is just that. It's just a game. Allow yourself to move deeper into the roller coaster of life. Enjoying the ride. In yoga, we call this sukha, is a good space, happiness, joy, and dukkha is bad space or negative. Really, the Yoga Sutras say that there is no good, there is no bad. These are just labels that we put onto things, and that's not really a reality. Everything works in oneness. There are no labels. If it feels good to go deeper into this pose, please do. If it feels good to back off, please do that. It's really important that you're honoring yourself and your own body in our practice today. In all of our lives, we have times that things don't go the way we want, and this can create suffering if we choose to allow it. Or it can just be part of the experience, adding to the challenge of the game of life. We create the suffering. We choose the level of suffering that we're going to experience. Either everything happens for a reason or nothing happens for a reason. We choose the reason. I'm just breathing here for a few more breaths. Really, really nice and slow, just make our way back up. Oh, that feels so good, right? We're just gonna lean back, bring the legs straight in front of us, and do any pose that feels intuitive, organically to you. Any kind of counter pose that your body feels would be best. Maybe it's the windshield wipers. Maybe it's leg bumps. Maybe it's a backbend. We're gonna come into my favorite pose now, Bananasana. We're like gonna be like bananas. So you're gonna go ahead and just Lie on your back, and we're going to start with the right side. So take your right leg out to the side, take your right arm out to the side, take your left leg over the right leg, and take your left arm up over, creating a banana, kind of like a half moon. But we're going to call it Bananasana because that's what Yin yogis call it. All of us vegans love the bananas. And we're going to feel the extension all along the left side of our body. So this is Bananasana, and feel free to really just relax into this pose and really just let go and just breathe here. In and out through the nose. Just fully enjoying the smoothie of the body. And once you find a comfortable spot, we'll just pause here for stillness. That's what we're trying to cultivate in our yoga practice, is a stillness in our body and in our mind. This is a nice time to find stillness in your body and in your practice, just noticing where you're feeling any of the stretch. Noticing what's in the mind, but choosing not to react to it. Ooh, it's getting really windy here. I was checking to make sure the tripod didn't fall down. It's really beautiful being able to I teach all of you yoga here in the mountains. It's the beauty of the internet, being able to be everywhere and anywhere and still connect with people like you and share the love of yoga. I'm so grateful that this has been my life for so long, just being able to connect with people in this physical space, in the physical realm. I've been doing online yoga teacher training now for about a year and a half, and I switched from doing group trainings to working with people one-on-one. And doing that has so enhanced my life, and it's so enhanced the education that's students get. It's absolutely incredible. I just, I'm just blown away with what people are able to achieve in 10 to 15 weeks taking training online with me. It's absolutely amazing. We're just gonna take 3 more breaths here, just noticing what your body is experiencing right now. And we'll very slowly release back to center. Any spot that feels really good to you, pausing in the center, doing some kind of counter posture, whatever feels organic to you individually. Maybe it's hugging the knees to the chest. Maybe it's coming into a happy baby pose. Oh, I love the happy baby right here. This is so good. Nice, really good. We're gonna find our way into the other side, banana asana on the left side. So bring your left leg to the side, creating a curve on the lower part of your body, and then bring your right leg on top of that left leg. Curving the upper part of your body, bringing your left arm up, and then your right arm comes towards your left arm. We want to try to keep both of our bum cheeks on the ground, keeping our hips a little bit more even here as we're creating our banana asana. And then you'll just feel the tugging on the right side of the body. And not very far on this pose will still be really effective. Just a little bit in this pose really feels great. Just come to your first point and then just breathe in and out through the nose. When you feel like coming deeper, you can Definitely do that. Any thoughts or emotions that come into your mind at this time, just acknowledge them and accept that they're a part of you. That's okay. You can choose how you want to react to them. We can feel all these sensations in our body right now, however our body's feeling, and then we can choose how we want to react to these sensations. We want to just breathe deeper into them and stay in the space of quietness so that we can cultivate a deeper connection with our own body. We can choose to get out of it and go and do something else. We can choose to breathe through it. We can find acceptance. Or we can move away from it. I often find that emotions that we are feeling and that we're trying to run from, if we take the time to just sit with them, if we take the time to just meditate and be quiet with those, we'll find that we often can move to a new level of awareness with these emotions so that they are no longer plaguing us. And for many of us, including myself, that have experienced a lot of trauma throughout our lives, we have unhealed wounds with our families and we have things that have happened outside of our families that have made our lives somewhat not as pleasant as we would like all the time. I found that sitting Sitting with those emotions and not soothing them with the comfort of moving away or alcohol or drugs or food, cigarettes, any of the things that I know I've tried in my life to numb emotion. All of those things, if we instead sit with them and just let the emotion just explode and just become full, you find that it's actually not as scary as we thought it was, that we can just experience these emotions and breathe through them and be stronger on the other side. That's really what our yoga practice is teaching us how to do, is to become stronger on the other side as we sit with these emotions. We're just going to have a few more breaths here. Really slowly bringing it back to center with the torso and then bringing the legs back to center. And that should feel really good. And then again, anything that feels really counter to you. Maybe it's the windshield wipers, maybe it's hugging knees to the chest, maybe it's the happy baby pose. Whatever your counter pose is that feels good to your body, that you've connected with, come into that. We're gonna finish up our spine work today with a nice easy twist. Again, if you have a bolster It's nice to twist onto the bolster. You don't have to. Hugging your knees to the chest and letting your knees fall to the right onto the bolster and letting your head fall to the left. If you don't have a bolster, you can just move your legs to the right and turn your head to the left. Maybe you make some cactus arms here, like a saguaro cactus, or if you're from Phoenix, you call it saguaro. I used to call it fajonix all the time when I lived there. But just moving into this twist and then closing your eyes and breathing deep in and out through the nose, just letting yourself come into this nice twist. I'm gonna hold this twist for about another minute, so just breathing into the pose, feeling the sensation of this twist and how it feels in your body. Just noticing where you're feeling it in your body. What parts of your body are feeling this twist? One more deep breath here. And on the exhale, let's just really slowly move it back to center. And just pause here in the center. Any kind of counterpose that feels good to you, maybe circling the knees, maybe you're doing the windshield wipers, whatever feels right to and then when you're ready, we'll go ahead and twist our legs to the left as we turn and look to the right. You can do cactus arms, you can bring your arms out straight, whatever feels good to you. Really want you— I really want you to connect with your own body. Remembering that the yin yoga practice is simple, but it's not easy. It's not easy to hold the poses for long extended periods of time with stillness. It's not easy to sit with our minds and accept our condition, but it certainly comes with reward. So I invite you to find silence in this posture and just breathe in and out with detached awareness of thoughts, non-reactive, non-attachment. You are creating and cultivating space for yourself and happiness within. Acceptance of who you are and knowledge of your own greatness, the beauty within you. You're perfect and divine exactly the way you are. And here we'll just very, very slowly move into the center space again. We're going to come into our final resting pose, Shavasana. So extend your legs out straight and just let your feet fall out to either side. Now if you have a blanket that you want to put on yourself, you can do that. Have this nice big sweater. Just bring your arms to your sides and let your palms face up. We're gonna take a deep inhale through the nose and then sigh it out the mouth. Ah. Let your shoulder blades roll under and open them up. Let your palms face up. Your feet come out wide. And then just breathing here in and out through the nose. Let the thoughts in your mind start to dissipate. If it's easier to think of one thing, like maybe repeating a mantra in your mind, I am happiness. I am love. I accept myself exactly the way that I am. Everything is okay in this moment. I am a part of the divine. I'm beautiful exactly the way that I am. I accept myself. I accept myself exactly the way that I am. Or maybe you just find that it's okay for you to just be still and not have any thoughts. Maybe focus on the breath is enough. Maybe focus on the ether of the sounds around you. Like for me, the sound of birds wind. Just find the deep relaxation through the body. Maybe you want to scan your body, starting with your toes and slowly move up to release tension throughout the body. However you best find your final relaxation, please find that now. This is the juiciest, most important part of your yoga practice. This is truly the entire reason why we practice yoga. From here, begin to just reach your arms over your head, stretching your fingertips and stretching your toes, and then just bending your knees and rolling over onto your right side. Let's use our arm as a pillow here as we relax. When the time feels right, rolling up into an easy seated pose. Hi friends, you did great! Oh, I'm so glad that you're here again. Thank you for practicing with me today. We're going to close this class together with a final om. So bringing your hands to the heart center. Lengthen through the spine, relax down through the shoulders, and maybe tuck your chin a little bit as you close your eyes. Take a moment to thank yourself for being here and practicing yoga today. Take a moment to thank yourself for putting yourself in a position of first in your life so that you can show up for others in a position of love. Know that anything that has happened on this planet in this lifetime has not affected you on the inside of who you are. Is a part of your experience as a human on this planet. You are perfect and divine exactly the way that you are. I'm so grateful that you came. What a great and wonderful class. Thank you so much for attending today. I hope to see you in future future classes, if you're looking to do yoga teacher training, please reach out to me. All the information is in the description of the video and in my bio and all of that. I love, I love just being with you and being in this space, and I'm so grateful to you. Let's take a deep inhale. Om. The light within me honors the divine and beautiful light within each and every one of you. Namaste. Yay! Thank you, you did Great, that was awesome. Thank you, Lissa, for being here. Thank you, my friends from Turkey. Thank you for everybody who attended the class today, and thank you for all of you that are going to attend this class later on. I will save it in my Instagram profile, Yogalebrity, and also on my YouTube channel. I'm going to upload this, also called Yogalebrity. Again, if you are looking to become a yoga teacher or you already have you're 200, you're looking to get your 300, I do one-on-one online yoga teacher training, just you and me making your dreams happen. So do reach out to get in touch with me and talk about that. I would love to get to know you more. Thank you. Mwah! I'll see you guys, I'll see y'all tomorrow for more yoga. Mwah, mwah, mwah, mwah, mwah! Bye!
