close up view of a woman sweating
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Last week, I was too scared to jump right into the actual hot yoga but now that I’ve tried warm yoga I figured I was ready to go!

This class was called Hot Yin/Yang

This class is designed to offer the balancing effects of yin (passive) yoga and yang (active) yoga. The relaxing Yin practice long holds ensure safe opening of connective tissue while stimulating, releasing and calming the body and mind. Postures are kept simple and emphasis is on targeting all of the meridians (energy lines) of the body. The Yang portion that follows works to enhance muscular effort by working already-warmed and open muscles to their full potential.

  • Yin tissues = ligaments, bones, joints
  • Yang tissues = muscles, blood, skin
  • Yang is rhythmic and repetitive, and is intended to stress the muscles.

I could DEFINITELY feel the difference between a yin yoga class and a yang yoga class. I really struggled with a lot of the poses in this class because my balance really isn’t great and my legs were shaking so bad in some poses I could barely hold them for the whole time. So, you could tell it was meant to be more of a workout than a mindfulness exercise (or that’s the way I felt).

On my Fitbit, you can very easily tell which parts of the class were yin focused and which parts were yang focused based on my heart rate.

After trying both yin and yang, I think yin yoga might be more my cup of tea.

I’ve tried yang yoga a couple of times now throughout my life and I just never enjoy it as much as I did in my yin class last week. But at least I gave it another try and it was still a great learning experience!