Yin Yoga 50+ News and Events

Creep in yin yoga.Relieve issues with your tissues

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 14:48:47 GMT

Why creep in your yin practice is good for you

When we hold poses for a long time in yin yoga, we can experience creep. Rather than being something a bit spooky, creep helps us release physical tension and relax our bodies. Let’s explore what creep is, how it affects your fascia, and hopefully relieve a few aches and pains along the way.

What is creep?

In science, creep is where a solid material slowly deforms or moves when it’s physically stressed. In your body, creep is when you slowly subject your connective tissues – fascia, ligaments, and tendons— to a slow, sustained stress.

Think of it like putty. If you pull it apart quickly, it can snap. But if you pull it apart slowly and gently, it will stretch to a surprising length. This slow, gradual stretching is what we're after in yin yoga. When you hold a pose for several minutes, you apply a low-intensity stress to the deep tissues of your body, allowing them to "creep" and lengthen over time.

And that’s good because…

Fascia is the web of connective tissue that wraps around every muscle, bone, and organ in our bodies. When our fascia is healthy, it's flexible, slippery, and smooth, allowing our body to move freely. The problem is that with daily stress, repetitive movements, or a lack of movement, fascia can become stiff and restricted.

Yin yoga's long, passive holds create the perfect environment for creep to happen. By relaxing your muscles and allowing gravity to do its work, you apply a gentle, constant load to the fascial network.

The benefits are these:

Lengthens tissues: creep allows the fascia and other connective tissues to lengthen for a short time, creating more space and mobility in your joints.
Improves hydration: The gentle compression and release of a yin pose acts like a sponge. As you hold the pose, you squeeze fluid out of the tissues. When you release the pose, you draw back fresh, new fluid, improving tissue hydration and overall health (1).
Helps repair your cells: This stress on your tissues stimulates cells called fibroblasts to produce more collagen fibres. Over time and with proper rest this helps your tissues become more resilient and strong (2).

Creep gives you better health and well-being

The magic of yin yoga is how it creates creep to benefit your entire system. You shouldn’t force your body into a deeper stretch but find your edge—that Goldilocks moment of not too little, not too much—and then get still and hold for time. Staying still in the pose for time is where the true work happens.

Physical benefits: When you try to attain creep in yin yoga you can increase your range of motion, improve joint health, and help release tension. The slow, meditative pace even helps work through scar tissue and adhesions, increasing your mobility.
Mental and emotional well-being: Creep has a powerful effect on your nervous system too. Yin's long holds and slow pace activate the parasympathetic nervous system—your body's "rest and digest" mode. This helps reduce cortisol levels, calm your mind, and give you a sense of inner peace. It's an opportunity to practice mindfulness, which can improve your emotional strength and your relationship with your body.´

Be a bit careful after a yin practice

Your tissues may be temporarily weaker, so giving your body some time to recover allows your tissues to adapt and come back stronger.

Yin Yoga isn't just about stretching; it's about gently influencing the very structure of your body to promote lasting health, mobility, and a sense of well-being. If you “get” creep, you get a greater understanding of the subtle, powerful effects of yin yoga.

References and additional reading

(1) and (2) The claim about yin yoga's effect on tissue hydration is based on a growing body of research in the field of fascia science. While there are not yet many studies that directly measure the effects of a yin yoga class on the human body, the principles behind the practice are supported by scientific literature on connective tissue and mechanical stress.

Dr. Robert Schleip's Research

Dr. Robert Schleip is a leading figure in fascia research. His work, often conducted at the Fascia Research Group at Ulm University , has demonstrated how connective tissue responds to mechanical loading and stretching. A key study from his group, "Strain hardening of fascia: static stretching of dense fibrous connective tissues can induce a temporary stiffness increase accompanied by enhanced matrix hydration," found that tissues subjected to stretching and subsequent rest showed a decrease in fluid content immediately after stretching, followed by a "super-compensation" phenomenon where matrix hydration increased to levels higher than before the stretch. This provides a direct scientific foundation for the "sponge effect."

Dr. Carla Stecco's Contributions

Dr. Carla Stecco, a professor of anatomy at the University of Padua, has conducted extensive research on the anatomy and function of fascia. Her work highlights the importance of the hyaluronic acid-rich layer within fascia, which facilitates the gliding and sliding of fascial sheets. In her book, Functional Atlas of the Human Fascial System, she provides detailed anatomical evidence for the interconnectedness of fascia and its role in movement and pain. Her research on how manual therapy and movement can affect the viscosity of hyaluronic acid and the gliding of fascial layers directly supports the idea that practices like yin yoga can improve tissue health and hydration.

Other Relevant Literature

Langevin, H. M., et al. (2001). "Dynamic and Viscoelastic Responses of Connective Tissue to Unloading." This research, while not specific to yin yoga, provides a foundational understanding of how connective tissue adapts to mechanical stress and how it affects fluid dynamics.
The Fascia Research Congress. This bi-annual conference brings together leading scientists and clinicians from around the world to present and discuss the latest findings on fascia. The topics covered often include the biomechanical, physiological, and neurological properties of fascia, providing a platform for the research that underpins the claims about yin yoga's benefits.

These studies and researchers have shifted the scientific view of fascia from a passive packing material to a dynamic, responsive tissue that plays a vital role in movement, hydration, and overall health.

Is yin yoga your way to a younger you?

Sat, 26 Oct 2024 10:01:36 GMT

How old are you really? Most people will tell you how many years they’ve been alive. But what if your biological functions – your respiratory system, muscular strength, endurance, etc., showed that you were actually younger (or older) than your chronological age?

What affects our biological age?

There are many factors, starting of course with our chronological age, which there is no getting away from. Yes, I think I have the body of a 35-year-old, but my internal organs and especially my DNA might have something to say about that. We may also contract some disease or illness though external factors like a virus or infection that creates inflammation that can quickly decrease our immune system and significantly increase our biological age.

The question is, can we actively put on the brakes for our biological system through nutrition and lifestyle changes?

Nature or nurture – the age-old question about age

Science tells us that biological ageing is gradual damage to our cells over time. As our cells age, they lose their ability to regenerate and repair themselves. This can be triggered by environmental factors like stress, or genetic factors like family history. But which is which? Nature or nurture? Let’s start with nature.

DNA is the unique genetic code that makes up our bodies. It’s hereditary, meaning it comes from our parents, and is why we look like them, and show similar traits to them. And even get the same diseases at roughly the same time in life as they did.

As we age, our DNA gets damaged and can mutate. The obvious examples of DNA damage are cancers.

Telomeres are structures that carry our DNA and act like bumpers, protecting our chromosomes from deteriorating. Every time our cells divide for normal repair and regeneration (which is all the time), our telomeres get shorter. That means they get shorter as we age. Research suggests that if you have shorter telomeres, you are more likely to die early or develop diseases ⁽¹⁾ .

According to a study by Glasgow University ⁽²⁾ we lose a chemical tag (DNA methylation) from our DNA. This can result in age-related diseases such as chronic kidney disease, cancer, heart disease, lung disease and more. They term this “Epigenetic clocks” which they see as the ’gold standard’ for measuring biological age accurately. The clock calculates the ageing of blood and other tissues by tracking methylation. By comparing chronological age to the blood’s biological age, scientists used the clock to predict each person’s life expectancy. The older your biological age, the lower your life expectancy.

How about nurture?

So our physiological or biological age can differ a lot from our chronological age. The question then is, can we positively affect biological age through lifestyle decisions?

The American Heart Association offer the “life’s essential 8 ^(3)” guidance, which includes:

Eat Better: Include whole foods, fruits and vegetables, lean protein, nuts, seeds and cook in non-tropical oils such as olive and canola.
Be More Active: 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous physical activity per week.
Quit Tobacco: No explanation needed.
Get Healthy Sleep: Aim for an average of 7-9 hours,
Manage Weight: Optimal BMI should range from 18.5 to less than 25.
Control Cholesterol: High levels of non-HDL, or “bad,” cholesterol can lead to heart disease.
Manage Blood Sugar: Over time, high levels of blood sugar can damage your heart, kidneys, eyes and nerves. Monitoring haemoglobin A1c can better reflect long-term control in people with diabetes or prediabetes.
Manage Blood Pressure: Keeping your blood pressure within acceptable ranges can keep you healthier longer. Levels less than 120/80 mm Hg are optimal.

This has now become “Life’s necessary 9” that includes psychological health ⁽⁴⁾ . They found that screening for and treating depression can have far reaching effects for cardiovascular health, reducing mortality.

Exercise, food for our fitness

We all know what we should eat and drink (and it isn’t a lot of trans fats and alcohol), but how should we exercise? Think about balance exercise, which reduce the risk of falling, strength exercises to increase muscle mass and reduce the chance of osteoporosis, endurance to push your breathing and heart health, and stretching

– which is where yin yoga comes in.

Yin Yoga: Turning Back the Clock?

While it might sound like a miracle cure, Yin Yoga may offer a path to improving your biological age beyond your chronological one. The slow-paced style of yin yoga focuses on holding poses for longer time, 3 minutes upwards, hopefully relaxing your muscles and targeting your connective tissues, your bones, ligaments, tendons and fascia.

So how can yin yoga keep your friskier for longer? Here are some suggestions:

Improving your flexibility and mobility: Holding poses for several minutes allows your body to release tension and increase your range of motion. This can help counteract stiffness you often get with age.
Better joint health: Regular yin practice can nourish the cartilage and synovial fluid in your joints, reducing the risk of arthritis and improving overall joint health.
Reducing stress: yin yoga helps you feel more relaxed, reducing stress. Going back to the “Life’s necessary 9” above, it can help combat the negative effects of chronic stress on our bodies. And of course, help you sleep better, which is a big factor in staving off the effects of ageing.
Boosted immune system: If your mind – and your body – feel calmer, it can lead to a stronger immune system, helping you fight off illness and age-related diseases.
Deeper connection with our bodies: Yin Yoga encourages mindfulness and body awareness, letting us listen to our bodies’ needs and prevent injuries.

Yin – or yoga and meditation should be in – according to the research

Your chronological age will always increase at a set rate as the years pass. But as we can see from the above, you can make lifestyle choices to improve your biological age.

In an Study to explore the impact of Yoga and Meditation based lifestyle intervention (YMLI) on cellular ageing published in the national Library of Medicine ⁽⁵⁾ showed that “making Yoga and Meditation an integral part of our lifestyle may hold the key to delay aging or aging gracefully, prevent onset of multifactorial complex lifestyle diseases, promote mental, physical, and reproductive health, and prolong youthful healthy life.”

As a yin yoga practitioner and teacher, I’ve experienced at first hand the profound effects yin has, both to our minds – and our bodies.

As the old adage says, when you stop trying, you start dying.

(1) https://www.jax.org/news-and-insights/minute-to-understanding/what-are-telomeres

(2) https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/archiveofnews/2023/october/headline_1011859_en.html#

(3) https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-lifestyle/lifes-essential-8/lifes-essential-8-fact-sheet

(4) https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/news/adding-9th-psychological-health-metric-lifes-essential-8-enhances-mortality-risk-prediction

(5) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5278216/

Yin yoga and Chinese medicine – the way to good holistic health

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 14:20:22 GMT

If you’ve ever tried yin yoga, you’ll know all about the fantastic benefits you’ll feel from it: Holding stretches for longer helps increase your range of motion, reducing pain and inflammation. Breathing in a controlled way stimulates your parasympathetic nervous system, helping lower our heart rates, relax our muscles, and lower our blood pressure.

So far, nothing but good. But can it be better?

Just add Traditional Chinese Medicine?

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been around for thousands of years, and offers a holistic approach to health, contrary to the western approach, which is more about treating conditions with drugs, or even replacing joints and organs.

According to TCM, Qi or Chi (think Qigong, Tai Chi) is a life force, energy that runs through everything, including our physical bodies. Practitioners believe that when our Qi is out of balance, we suffer both mentally and physically. One way to put back that balance and improve the flow of Qi is yin yoga.

So what are the health benefits?

If we look at the yin yoga-TCM combo, when a person is in various yin yoga poses they are freeing up the flow of Qi through their meridian lines – the channels of energy that flow through our bodies. This is done by acupressure – acupuncture without the needles.

As an example, When you do the Sphinx and/or Seal pose you stimulate the Kidney, Bladder, Stomach and Spleen meridians. TCM suggests the health benefits are these:

TCM – believe it? Or not?

As mentioned above, the great thing about this traditional form of medicine is that it takes a holistic view of the person, thinking about inward causes of outward signs that something is not right. But does it hold up against modern medical science?

Seoul University says yes

On the plus side, researchers at Seoul National University in Korea think they have found the existence of meridians, which they call the “primo-vascular system,” a part of the vascular system. They discovered that meridian lines are not confined to the skin, but are a duct system where liquid flows, and that this liquid forms stem cells ⁽¹⁾ . This has of course been taken as proof by proponents of TCM and acupuncture.

Most other research says no

Studies both before and after suggest there is no verifiable evidence that Qi exists and that problematic or unverified or misleading claims regarding TCM can be problematic ⁽²⁾ .

And that if we take acupuncture, that stimulates the meridian lines, there are claims it can treat everything from cancer, stroke, Parkinson’s, asthma, heart disease and even autism.

Other recent studies suggest that acupuncture can work by electro-stimulation in legs, but not by stimulating points on stomachs. The only problem with the study? It was done on mice ⁽³⁾ !

Or maybe Fascia = meridians?

If the fascia network of the body is indeed the physical

substrate of the meridians of TCM, there are important clini-

cal and research implications. Speciﬁcally, if evidence contin-

ues to mount in support of this view, then the fasciae should

receive greater attention in both diagnostics and treatment

[45]. An important ramiﬁcation of fascial meridians is that

this view favors a more holistic approach to medicine, in

which the body’s interconnections and interactions are con-

sidered [45]. Further research resolving the neurophysiology

of perineural receptors and facial architecture should help

inform therapies for chronic pain, spasticity, and perhaps

other thus far poorly understood idiopathic conditions.

Considering fascia as

If the fascia network of the body is indeed the physical

substrate of the meridians of TCM, there are important clini-

cal and research implications. Speciﬁcally, if evidence contin-

ues to mount in support of this view, then the fasciae should

receive greater attention in both diagnostics and treatment

[45]. An important ramiﬁcation of fascial meridians is that

this view favors a more holistic approach to medicine, in

which the body’s interconnections and interactions are con-

sidered [45]. Further research resolving the neurophysiology

of perineural receptors and facial architecture should help

inform therapies for chronic pain, spasticity, and perhaps

other thus far poorly understood idiopathic conditions.

Considering fascia as

If the fascia network of the body is indeed the physical

substrate of the meridians of TCM, there are important clini-

cal and research implications. Speciﬁcally, if evidence contin-

ues to mount in support of this view, then the fasciae should

receive greater attention in both diagnostics and treatment

[45]. An important ramiﬁcation of fascial meridians is that

this view favors a more holistic approach to medicine, in

which the body’s interconnections and interactions are con-

sidered [45]. Further research resolving the neurophysiology

of perineural receptors and facial architecture should help

inform therapies for chronic pain, spasticity, and perhaps

other thus far poorly understood idiopathic conditions.

Considering fascia as

A study published in the national Library of Medicine ⁽⁴⁾ found evidence that acupuncture meridians and fascia were actually linked and that fascia formed part of acupuncture meridians. The study also suggests that parts of muscles, tendons, and ligaments follow the meridian lines too.

They suggest that their observations build an anatomical basis for examining TCM principles and therapies to offer a holistic approach to the diagnosis and treatment of diverse diseases.

If it works for you, great.

The jury’s out on whether TCM is an added bonus to yin yoga or a great sales pitch for people looking for alternative spiritual experiences.

But many ailments such as heart disease, high blood pressure, stomach ulcers, eczema and even some cancers are a result of stress, i.e. psychosomatic disorders ⁽⁵⁾ . If you believe that TCM does aid in relieving these symptoms, you’re on to a winner.

⁽¹⁾ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2005290113002082

⁽²⁾ https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/16/health/traditional-chinese-medicine-facebook-intl-hnk-wellness/index.html

⁽³⁾ https://hms.harvard.edu/news/exploring-science-acupuncture

⁽⁴⁾ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6448339/

⁽⁵⁾ https://patient.info/mental-health/psychosomatic-disorders#:~:text=To%20an%20extent%20most%20diseases,physical%20effects%20from%20mental%20illness .

Paul Steele

Yin Yoga: Your Way To Happier, Healthier Hips

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 14:20:22 GMT

Hips don’t lie, and as we get older they’ll certainly tell us the truth about our bodies. But hey, they’ve been carrying us through decades of dancing and running, lifting and lazing around – in the wrong position.

Yin Yoga, with its long-held stretches, is like a soothing symphony for your joints. Yin Yoga's slow-paced poses act as a gentle massage for your hip sockets, increasing flexibility and easing stiffness.

Here are five Yin Yoga poses that’ll bring back that hip happiness you might have missed:

Butterfly Pose: Bring your feet together and let your knees drop open. You’ll feel the pressure just dropping away from your hips.
Dragon Pose: Stretch one leg back, sinking into the hip of the extended leg. You'll feel the stretch in the front of the hip.
Saddle Pose: This can be a bit of a challenge but stick with it. Kneel down and lean back onto your elbows, opening up the front of your hips.
Sleeping Swan Pose: Fold one leg in front of you and extend the other behind you. Your hips will thank you as you find that sweet stretch.
Dragonfly (Straddle) Pose: Sit down, spread your legs wide, and fold forward. This is a great pose for hip mobility.
It’s time to go with the yin yoga flow. Embrace the slow, sink into the stretch, and let your hips bask in the glory of well-deserved relaxation.

Unlock That Stiff Back Through Yin Yoga

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 14:20:23 GMT

Ouch! There go those twinges down your spine again. But what can you do to stop them recurring? The answer of course is yin yoga – your way to a happier, healthier back that's ready to groove through your golden years.

Yin Yoga targets the deep connective tissues, the ligaments, the tendons and the fascia, helping release those tight spots in your back that can cramp your style – literally.

By holding poses for longer periods you're giving your spine the stretch it's been craving. Yin yoga doesn’t just put the flexibility back in your back, it helps iron out those aches from all the years of sitting, lifting or generally overloading your lumbar regions.

Add the tranquility Yin Yoga offers and you can give yourself that

mental vacation at the same time.

So try some yin yoga for your back and wave goodbye to stiffness. Then say hello to a spine that's ready to salsa into the sunset.

Check out the 15-minute fix section to boost your back, as well as the sequence for relieving stiff backs and sciatica in my book, Yin Yoga 50+.