Long passive holds targeting fascia and connective tissue. Taoist influences alongside yogic ones. The style I came to first for nervous system regulation and the one with the most interesting intersection with Chinese medicine.

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Where Vinyasa moves fast, Yin asks you to stop almost entirely. This is yoga at its most still, designed to reach tissue that faster, muscle-driven practices never quite touch.

Yin was founded by Paulie Zink, who came to it through a background in martial arts and Taoist yoga, originally introducing it to his martial arts students in the 1970s for the flexibility benefits he believed it offered. It was later shaped further by Paul Grilley, who brought anatomical knowledge into the practice, and by Sarah Powers, who helped carry today's version of Yin into the mainstream. The name itself draws from Taoist philosophy, the Yin-Yang symbol representing the feminine, receptive side of a duality, in contrast to the warmer, more energetic yang poses common in most Western classes.

In a Yin class, poses are held for one to five minutes with no warm-up beforehand, targeting connective tissue, ligaments, joints, and fascia rather than muscle. Gravity does most of the work here, not muscular effort. The poses may look similar to ones you've seen elsewhere, but the names and the intention behind them are different, because the approach fundamentally is. Yin philosophy holds that this kind of deep tissue release helps clear blocked energy, or chi, in the body. Whether or not that framework resonates with you, the physical effect, on stiff joints and chronically tight connective tissue, is hard to argue with.