Ethical Maturity in Yin Yoga
Ethical Maturity in Yin Yoga is not about doing more.
I have been teaching Yin yoga since 2012, and training teachers since 2018. Staying with a practice that long probably means something. I have stayed with Ashtanga for almost as long and still practise both, although lately I have needed to adjust things.
Practice does change. Bodies change as life changes. Teaching should, too.
Today I want to talk about Yin, because it is the practice I have taught the longest. I remember when I first started teaching Yin at a well-known studio in Glasgow, and no one came. No one had really heard of it then, unlike now, where it has grown exponentially in popularity. But back in 2012, classes were dead and like any new teacher, I was devastated, and I took it far too personally.
I think I did that a lot in my early years of teaching. Trying hard to fit into every box. Wanting everyone to like my classes. Wanting to feel needed. That was insecurity. And I would be lying if I said those moments never still creep in. That quiet voice that says, who do you think you are? No one will come.
But slowly, they did.
I would sit in meditation after my morning practice and try to visualise queues of people waiting outside for my Yin class. Eventually it happened. I felt grateful, but alongside that was an immense sense of dread. That one day they would find me out. That I was not the person I was pretending to be.
I tried very hard to be the dedicated yogi. Most mornings I got up at 4am to prove my devotion. I stopped eating meat. I chanted the sutras. I spent hours meditating. I did everything I could to control my anxiety. From the outside it probably looked like discipline. Inside it was fear dressed up as commitment.
I was new to teaching, and looking back now, in my early thirties, I was also a bit too gung ho in my application of asana. Too many postures, too much doing and far too much talking and endless explaining. Trying to justify myself in real time. I think that is what many of us do when we are new. We over explain because we do not yet trust ourselves.
Teaching Yin was especially challenging for me. I had come from a hot yoga background, a Bikram dialogue that never gave a student a moment of peace, where my mouth would be dry from over talking in a room heated to 42 degrees. I was still new to Mysore style practice at that time, and I had no idea that the amount I spoke mattered. I did not yet understand that silence is not empty. It is potent. And it affects people differently.
The practice itself has not really changed over the years. Those long holds, student dependent. The stillness, and the simplicity. But something in my teaching has changed fundamentally. My understanding of responsibility.
What once felt like teaching well began to ask something else of me. A deeper attentiveness to students needs settled in. And it had nothing to do with how clear my instructions were, or how beautiful a shape looked. Instead, it had everything to do with how what I offered was actually being experienced in someone else’s body. In their nervous system. In their history and how it might affect their day, or their sleep.
Yin is often described as simple, I have said this myself. Long holds, stillness, a quiet space. But stillness has a particular effect on people that is easy to underestimate. For some it is grounding, for others it is confronting, for some it feels safe and for others it does not.
Ethical maturity begins when we stop assuming that our experience of a practice is universal. It asks us to hold what we offer with more care and responsibility. Yin is not passive because it appears quiet, there is often a great deal happening beneath the surface. Asking someone to stay still is not neutral. Language, pacing and tone matter just as much as sequencing and none of this is for us to summarise or interpret for students. Our role as teachers is to hold clear boundaries, prioritise safety and work within our scope of practice.
It is also the point when we stop trying to prove ourselves through the practice and our teaching. When we no longer need the class to validate us. When we can tolerate uncertainty, both our own and our students.
This is not about being perfect. I still get it wrong sometimes. I still notice moments where I want to fill the space, rescue the room, or be liked. But I see those impulses with more clarity and most importantly I understand that they are mine, and not something I need to pass on to a student through their practice.
Yin has taught me that ethical teaching is not about delivering the perfect class. It is about staying awake to the impact that class is having, moment by moment, on the students in the room. It is about knowing when restraint is called for, and knowing when less is enough. And being willing to change when what once worked no longer does.
Over the last years, this shift has shaped how I train teachers. Less focus on doing more. More attention to language, pacing and nervous system response, and what responsibility actually looks like in a Yin space.
If you are new to teaching, and you feel unsure, please know you are not failing. If you have been teaching for years and find yourself questioning your language, your pacing, or your assumptions, that is not a step backwards. It is a sign of maturity. Yin does not ask us to be certain. It asks us to question, adjust, and to take responsibility for what we offer.
This is where my work now sits within Deeside Yoga Institute. A wider container for teacher education, continuing study and longer learning pathways. Yin Yoga Foundations is one module of this work. It can stand alone as a 50 hour training, and it also forms part of slowly developing 300-hour pathway for teachers who want to grow over time, rather than rush towards an endpoint.
Not a new method, not a reinvention, just a more mature relationship with Yin, and with what it means to teach it responsibly.
What has changed in how you teach, even if the practice looks the same?
Warmest
Gem x
