Yin Yoga for Ironman Training

Welcome to Yin Yoga. I'm Angelica. Today we're going to be doing a Yin Yoga practice, which is part of my training for the Ironman 70.3 in Galveston. Pretty excited about it. I always promised myself that I would do an Ironman before I was 50, so I'm training for that and bringing you along with me. Yin Yoga is a great type of yoga to accompany any kind of practice that you're doing. In our yin yoga practice, we are going to be focusing on the connective tissue, things like ligaments, things like bones. We're going to be focusing on our fascia, and it turns out that a big part of our flexibility actually has to do with our fascia. So that's what yin yoga's focus is. Yin yoga is totally different than restorative yoga. And a lot of people get them mixed up. Restorative yoga is for restoring after injury. Yin yoga, on the other hand, should never be done when you have an injury. So let's get to it today. If you have a bolster or you have some blocks, you might want to use them in your practice today. If you don't have those things, or you have a whole bunch of dog hair— oh, okay, it's part of it. Um, if you don't have a bolster or blocks, it's fine. You don't really need them. Uh, yin yoga was actually originally done without any props. But if you have them, they're great to have. And you could always substitute for a cushion on your couch or a pillow. That works as well. Whatever you got, use it. My goal is to get this channel to 10,000 subscribers. So help me out, reach more people so that more people can experience the love and happiness that is yoga by hitting that subscribe button. It only takes a minute and it helps me out a lot. Okay, let's get to the practice. We're going to start today with a wide-legged forward fold. I want you to bring your legs as wide as you feel comfortable. Point the toes back toward you. Inhale, let's lengthen the spine. And on the exhale, just pull in through your stomach as you start to walk your hands forward. In a yin yoga posture, we're not going to go to the fullest expression first. We're going to just go where we hit our first wall. So for me, that's right here, and I'm feeling this on my inner thighs, right? And then if you notice that your feet start to move outward, just pull them back in really nice, because again, yin yoga is not restorative yoga. We're trying to do a little bit of tension. We want to work that fascia. We want to do yin yoga actually in a cool room versus in a warm room. Now you see I got my socks on today. I'm probably going to end up taking my socks off because of hot flashes, and that's how it works. But oh my gosh, okay, so I keep saying I'm going to be 50 next year, which is like, it's accurate, right? But I actually— and let's just breathe here together. I'm just going to talk while we breathe. So, but actually I am 48 years old. And my birthday's in November, so I don't know when this video is going to come out, but, um, I may already be 49 by then. But right now I'm 48, so let's not put the cart before the horse. Let's not cut the avocado before it's ripe. Let's just breathe. Okay, so each— we've only been in this pose for a minute. It feels like an eternity, but it's not. It's just a minute, and we're just going to breathe here in and out through the nose. If you start to feel some tension in your back— I'm feeling a little bit of tension right here— go ahead and just ease up on it, right? And again, bring that focus back into the legs and make sure the toes are pointing back toward us in dorsiflexion, plantar flexion, I don't know, one of the flexions. Flex the toes. Breathe deep in and out through the nose. Here you see, like, I'm not even really using this bolster. I got it here with me, but I don't really need it. So you can use it or you cannot use it. I think it's important to work these legs and just kind of let them relax because I'm using legs a lot in my cardio. You know, I'm doing biking, I'm I'm doing, uh, running, I'm doing swimming, which I absolutely love swimming. Swimming is so much fun, but it's all bringing a lot of tense— intensity, tenseness, those aren't words— into my legs. And so this helps me to kind of release that. And you know, it's free, right? I can just do this yoga for free. You can watch this video for free. We can just do this for free. We don't have to go anywhere or spend any money. You know, and that's the best thing about yoga. I think that we get in this like habit of like, oh, we're going to, you know, if you can, if you want to go deeper, you can. I'm, this is just where I'm at. We're going to do this. We're going to hold this another 2 minutes. But we get into this like, I got to, I don't know if you're ever like this, but I used to always be like, well, I have to have all the clothes. I have to have all the clothes before I can start something. And I need new running shoes and I need this special cap and I need this outfit. Whatever, right? And like, really, you don't need any of those things. You don't even need a yoga mat. You can just lay on a towel, whatever, put a blanket out. You know, back in India, back in the day, they just use blankets. Um, like, actually, when I started, it was a yoga rug. There was no— there was no mats. I was around before yoga mats, and the first yoga mat to come out was the purple PVC mat, and they called them a sticky mat, and you're supposed to wash it to make it stickier, right? And they just really didn't stick at all. I love— this is a new mat I have that's really nice, and it does stick, but it also sticks to all the dog hair and all of the dirt in the house. Um, but before that, we all just had rugs. We had Ashtanga yoga rugs, and that was it. Like, even like in Iyengar classes, they had rugs. Um, so Iyengar is probably closest to Hatha that you're going to get. All right, um, we're going to slowly walk the hands up on an inhale. You're going to bring your bolster and just kind of put it to the side, and I want you to take your hands underneath your knees to be really loving and kind to them and just pull them back. Feet onto the ground, hands behind you. We'll start to windshield wiper back and forth. Just releasing that low back nice and slow. I know I need it because I got an injury once many years ago, actually in a John Friend class. I really like John, he's super nice. Um, I messaged him about something, I'm gonna check and see if he's messaged me back, but it did, it did happen because I was doing things that didn't weren't in alignment with my body. Okay, we're going to do, um, this butterfly pose now, bringing the soles of your feet together. Let your feet come a little bit wide. We'll make more of a diamond shape with our body, and then we're going to just inhale and exhale, just fold forward over the legs and just relax here, breathing deep in and out through the nose. Now we want to come to a point where we feel the tension and start to just breathe and release that. And then when we're kind of no longer feeling that tension and we can find a stillness, we'll just go a little bit deeper and then try to find stillness again. And that's kind of the repetition— lots of dog hair. That's kind of the repetition over and over in these postures, is just breathing and releasing, breathing and releasing until you hit that wall. And then we just kind of sit with that, and we move back a tiny bit from the wall, and we sit with it. See, yin yoga is a challenging form of yoga because it requires us to sit still. And that's something I think that's really hard in today's society. And for me, I know today I'm not feeling like sitting still. I had, um, you know, social media drama, creator to creator. One creator said something inaccurate about me. And then her people came for me, and it got me like all upset. And in yoga, we call this the chitta vrittis. The chitta vrittis are the modifications of the mind. This is the times where we're like, our brain is racing, we're being really upset. I'm just going to come a little bit deeper. It feels right for me to do that now. I'm feeling this inside of my hips, right inside of here, and These chitta vrittis, modifications of the mind, that's from yoga, the Yoga Sutras, uh, yoga chitta vritti nirodha. So yoga removes the modifications of the mind, and yoga is an 8-limbed system. See, a lot of people think it's just postures, but it's actually like all these different things. It's more than just postures. It's, it's also breathing. So when we talk about like Wim Hof Method and breathing techniques, like these things, they're actually yoga. That's actually yoga that you're doing. And meditation is one of the higher forms of yoga. So we are— people like, oh, I can't meditate. You know what? Meditating is just sitting there and being quiet. You don't have to do something special to meditate. You don't have to sit in any special way to meditate. It doesn't have to be perfect. Nothing has to be perfect. Done is always better than perfect. That's it. Done is always better than perfect. You don't have to be perfect. Stop trying to be perfect. You're perfect just the way you are because this is the way that you were made. See, in our brain, we do all this chitavritis, right? We do all this negative self-talk, and it's so unhelpful, but it's kind of the way that we have been about things. I read this book called Judgment Detox by Gabby Bernstein, and you know what's really interesting about that book is that— I'm just going to come a little deeper if you want to— what's interesting about that book is that I really was like that. I really would judge everything, constantly judging everyone, everything. Oh, this person, and oh, that outfit, and myself constantly. Have you seen that show on Apple TV called Physical? I'm obsessed with this show. I'm going to talk about it in a second. We're going to go ahead and slowly come up. We're going to slowly come up. We're going to bring our knees together. We'll bring our hands behind. We're going to lengthen our spine, and we're going to just go ahead and windshield wiper. Right? So in this show Physical, it's all about this woman who— Sheila— who's becoming famous as a fitness instructor, and she really becomes famous on helping women. Let's see, now I'm getting a hot flash right now, so I'm going to have to take these— let's take these socks off even though the air conditioning is on. That's how it is when you get to be going through menopause, even just having the hot flashes. They just say, oh, to avoid a hot flash, you want to do yoga and meditate. No, the hot flashes come every time, all the time. They're all the time. It doesn't matter. There's nothing you can do to escape them. It's fine. Okay, we're gonna do a backbend now, and I'm gonna keep talking about that show Physical. So if you have, um, a bolster, you can put it right here. If you don't have a bolster, then, uh, roll up some blankets or get some pillows, get your couch cushion, whatever you got. It doesn't matter, doesn't matter. I'm actually going to turn it this way so that my head can go backwards. I'm going to keep my legs in baddha konasana, the soles of the feet together, and we're just going to lean back. Oh yeah. Okay. So this show Physical, I'm going to take my clippy out. So this show Physical, she's becoming a famous instructor. And I don't like how this is on my head. So if you have this situation where your blood is rushing to your head and you want to, you can take a block and just— oh, there, now I got the backbend but my head is supported. So if you have something, book or blocks, you can do that. So this show Physical is about this woman that's becoming a famous, um, fitness personality. And try to get into your spot, you know, get the fidgeties out and then find stillness. That's what we want to do in our yin yoga practices— find the stillness in the posture, find where you can be still. So she's becoming a famous fitness instructor, and one of the cool things is, is they kind of make fun of all the old fitness people that I grew up with. So when I was growing up, I would watch ESPN I would watch like Denise Austin, which is really my style of teaching now, is very Denise Austin. Like, you can do it, you're doing so great, so awesome, you're doing great just because you showed up today, which is true. You are doing great just because you showed up today. You don't have to do anything magic. You can just show up. Showing up is enough. End of story. Anyhow, or they have like, they have this wheel-o-meal that's kind of like deal-o-meal, and like there's a guy that's kind of like Richard Simmons, and, um, it's all really fascinating. But the really fascinating thing to me is her inner voice and how she talks to herself. And you know, one of the things is, is that we are constantly just talking terrible to ourselves. We are constantly saying things that make us feel bad about ourselves instead of supporting ourselves. Like, I don't know about you, but so often I'm saying things like, "Oh my gosh, you're so stupid. I can't believe that you did that. Oh, why would you even think—" I'm just like embarrassed about some of the choices that I've made in life and constantly thinking about, "Oh, I can't believe I did that." You know, I just had something come to my brain just now that I was like, oh, why did I make that choice? And you know, the thing is, like, we make these choices in life and we do these things, and it doesn't make us bad. It's just part of the process. You did what you did at the time because you knew what you knew, and now that you know better, you can do better. And if you don't do better, you just made a mistake. Like, we have to stop being so hard on ourselves. We have to— just checking the time. Oh, that beeping sound is my bread machine. We have to just start being kinder to ourselves because the world isn't going to be kinder to you. You have to be kinder to you. The world isn't going to start instantly loving you. You have to love you. And it is true that the way the brain fires is the way it wires. So if we're thinking in our brain things like, "I'm not good enough. I'm terrible." That is constantly being fired together and it's wiring our brain. But instead, if we say, "I'm not good enough." No, wait, no. Cancel, delete. I'm perfect and amazing just the way I am. I am getting along every day and doing the best I can. And now my brain is wiring differently. And we just continue to have that conversation and continue to wire differently, and eventually we forget this connection. Now we only have this connection. And that is actually neuroscience. It's not fringe, it's real. That is how the brain actually works. And so if you want to create a different reality for yourself, the way to do that is to start consciously rewiring your brain. Let's take our hands to our knees and bring the knees together. If you watch that show Physical, put it down in the comments below because, uh, I would love to know if that's something that you're doing. All right, let's roll over onto our right side and use our left palm to press our way up. Ooh, nice backbend. Move that out of the way. I'm going to go ahead and move this block out of the way as well, and then I'm just going to lie back onto my back and hug my knees into my chest and just roll around a little bit to get a nice counter pose. In this posture. So yeah, you know, people say like yoga solves all our problems. Well, we're going to let the knees fall to the left as you bring your hand out in like a cactus position and just turn your head to the right so that you're getting a nice stretch all along this side of the body. You might actually get a stretch in your armpit a little bit here, and then you might feel it right here on the glute, which is the largest muscle in the body. And just relax here and breathe here, in and out through the nose. If you want to, you can take that bottom leg and extend it down. I like to keep them bent, but it's up to you. This is your practice. I think you should do what you want to do, not necessarily what I'm saying. I mean, I'm just here to experience, share my experience, strength, and hope. I'm not here to force you to do whatever you like. Just do what you want. Your life is short. We got to enjoy it. We got to breathe into it. We got to accept ourselves just the way that we are. There's never going to be a form of perfection. You know, a lot of like body image. I work with a lot of people that have body image issues, and I have body image issues. You know, I'll be thinking about how, oh, I wish I'd just lose weight, right? But a lot of the problem isn't even us. Like, there's a lot of junk in a lot of the food we eat, even fruits and vegetables. I mean, I surround myself with people who are like fruitarians, and most of my friends are vegans, you know, because I'm a vegan. So It's like, well, I want to hang out with other people that are eating the way I eat because it's just easier. But, um, people that just eat vegetables mostly also struggle because they put so many pesticides on our food. And our food, the soil is so depleted that we aren't getting the nutrients we need. You know, B12 actually comes from the soil, and they supplement, bring it back up to the center, and Oh yeah, switch sides. I'm gonna have to move this bolster out of the way. Mow! Switch sides. And they supplement— oh, left arm comes out, turn, look at the left side. I feel that right here. And they supplement B12 with the animals, with the B12, and that's why people get B12 from animals. But the B12 actually comes from our soil. So, you know, a lot of what's happening isn't even your fault. So if you're struggling with weight and you're feeling like, oh, I'm, I'm so overweight and this is all my fault and I have no self-control, that food is meant for you to have no self-control over it. It is chemically altered so that you will not have control, so that you will keep eating the food. It is meant to be addictive. So in a lot of ways, it's not your fault. So please do not— time is too short. I recently had a very close family member pass away, someone that I grew up with, my uncle. He was like a brother to me. He's only 6 years older than me, died at 55 years old from colon cancer, leaving behind a 5-year-old daughter and a wife who had moved here from another country to be with him, and she's probably going to have to move back to the other country. Because they don't have enough money to stay here. And, you know, the thing is that we don't know when our time is coming, and I certainly wouldn't want to spend my time here on this planet, every last minute of it, just focused on what I'm doing wrong. You know, focus on what you're doing right. Focus on how beautiful you are. Did you look in the mirror today and say, I love you? Because if you didn't look in the mirror today and say, I love you, I want you to do that when we're done practicing here. All right, let's go ahead and just bring it back up to center again, hugging the knees into the chest. Good. We're going to do a half happy baby. Now you're going to extend your— ooh. I'm going to move up. You're going to extend your left leg out, you're going to bend your right knee, grab onto your right big toe and bring it into your armpit. And then you can extend out the left arm, or if you want to, you can just bring it up, whatever feels comfortable to you. We're just going to lay here for a moment. I love the half happy baby, it really makes me happy. Ah, and just breathing here. The yin yoga practice allows us to take that time to kind of just let go and relax, be in the moment. So if you are experiencing any of the things I talked about today, you know, And if you share some of those things, share it in the comments so that we can start a discussion. Let's talk about it. You know, let's, let's talk about what's going on in our life. Let's share with each other because when we isolate, when we say like, oh, I am, this is happening to me, I'm terrible. We don't realize that everyone's doing the same thing. I'm telling you, I have the same conversations with myself and my own brain. It's not as bad as it used to be because I have rewired my brain. But it definitely happens, you know. And there's something else I saw recently in that Barbie movie, right? He saw the Barbie movie where she was— America Ferrera was talking about how women can't want to lose weight, we can only want to, to be healthier, you know. Like, dang, you know what, I, I want to lose weight. Like, it's okay to just say it. Just say it like, I do want to. I also want to be healthier and I want to live a long life and I want to be able to do a lot of physical things, but I want to lose weight. I would like being thinner. You know, there's nothing wrong with that. Why we put such connotations on things? It's okay to just be you. Oh, where are we at right now? What time was it? 5:05. 5:05. It's afternoon here in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada. I don't know what time it is where you are. I don't know when you're watching this video, but I'm glad that you're here, and I'm grateful for you. I truly am grateful. You know, I think about that all the time, about how we— let's do another minute in this before we switch sides. I think about how fortunate I am, how fortunate I am to teach yoga. I still be teaching yoga after 20 years, having taught yoga in schools, yoga studios, my own yoga studio, gyms in 7 different countries. I've hosted yoga teacher trainings in 3 different countries. I now host online yoga teacher training and a YouTube channel, TikTok, and Instagram. Like, that's crazy. There are some people that never get to do this, or they graduate from teacher training, they never get to do anything. And I will tell you that the secret to my success— let's go ahead and very slowly release. Oh, stretch, stretch, stretch, stretch, stretch, stretch, stretch. One side to the other side. Oh, foot cramp. And then the right leg stays extended. Now Bend the left knee. Left leg comes up for half happy baby on the left side. The secret to my success is never giving up. That's it. That's it. Never giving up. I think that in success there's a little bit of— what time is it? Okay, I'm just going to look at the time so I can time out how long we hold this. We got to hold it for the same amount of time that we held the other side. I'm sorry, I didn't say, but if you're— if it's too much for you to hold on to your big toe, you can just hold on to your inner thigh. You don't have to hold on to the big toe like I am. Um, you can do your inner thigh, it's totally fine. Anyhow, grateful to be here today, grateful for you. So glad that you're here, so glad that you're doing something that's really good for yourself. That you're choosing to take care of your own body. If you want a little bit more too, you can just bring your hand onto the foot. You don't have to hold on to the big toe in a yogi toe lock. You could just hold on to the foot too. That's also okay. I'm so glad that you decided to do something nice for yourself today versus doing something destructive. We often choose destructive things. Instead of choosing things that are good for ourselves. And I'm not sure why we do that. I'm not sure. If you know why, drop it in the comments. I don't know why. I don't know why we do that. We just do. It's part of being alive, I guess. Part of being a human. Humans consistently make mistakes. That's how, that's how we are. It's all right though. It's all right. Life is good, but it's only good if you think it's good. Life can be bad if you think it's bad. Let me check the time. Mm, probably going to be like, oh, it's been a minute. Oh no, it's all right. It's been the time. Look at that. All right. Whoa. Slowly bring that leg back in. Oh, I'm going to bring both knees together. And we're gonna do some hip circles. In, out, and out, and in. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, Y'all ready for a little bit of shavasana? Let's extend our legs out. Adjust your pants, adjust your shirt. Arms come to the sides. Rotate the shoulders under to let the shoulder blades open wide. Breathe in deep through the nose. Sigh it out the mouth. Ah. Let your mind get really quiet. Let your breath slow down. Allow yourself to come into a state of relaxation. Shavasana is the most important part of your practice. Why? Because meditation is a higher form of yoga than asana. So don't let yourself skip this part. Let yourself experience this part. But if you are going to skip it, please do hit that subscribe button before you go. Like this video and leave a comment. I really appreciate it. It helps me get my message out to more people. It helps me be able to reach more people, and it helps me to help more people, which is ultimately my goal in life. I used to work in corporate and it was grueling and awful. But now I do online yoga teacher training, do private session online yoga teacher training. I work with students one-on-one to help them reach their goals, and it's magic. It's magical. It's magical to watch people transform over a 10-week period or 12-week period if they're in the 300-hour. All right, so just breathe deep in and out through the nose. I'm gonna go ahead and get quiet for a moment so you could find stillness. Slowly begin to wiggle your toes and your fingers, allowing your awareness to come back into the room. Bend first your right knee and then your left knee. I like to rotate my hips under. Hug your right knee and then your left knee to your chest, and let's just roll a little bit, giving ourselves a nice back massage. Again, allowing yourself to slowly come back. Roll over onto your right side into a fetal position. We roll over onto our right side because we want to protect our heart. The heart is on the left side, it beats down, so we're not moving the blood flow. If you're pregnant, you would go to the other side, you would go to the left side. Use your left hand to press your way up, coming into an easy seated pose. I'm gonna spin around here so you can see me, so I can see you. Fix your pants if you need to. Sometimes I need to keep the dog hair off if you got that. Good. I appreciate you so very much. This is a really beautiful class today, and I appreciate you being here with me. I will be releasing a video every week on YouTube at Yoga Liberty. My goal is to reach 10,000 subscribers so that I can reach more people. Please do help me by hitting that subscribe button. Bring your hands to the heart center in Anjali Mudra. The light within me honors the divine and beautiful light within each and every one of you. I appreciate you so much for taking out that time from your day-to-day to practice yoga with me. Let's seal this class with the sound of Om. Taking a deep inhale. Om. Aah. Namaste. Thank you so much. I'll see you next Saturday. If you want to see me before then, check me out on Instagram or TikTok.