Addressing A Concern about Yin Yoga causing your Nervous System to Check Out

By Bernie Clark,

November 3, 2025

I was sent a copy of an Instagram post today. The post, written by Lizzie Lasater, was causing quite a stir and I was asked for my comments. Since Instagram is not well-suited to deep discourse, I decided to respond in an article. I will post a link to this article on Facebook, and I invite responses to this article there. But, to start, allow me to show what Lizzie posted, to ensure I do not misquote her. (I have added line numbers for easier reference.)

lizzie.lasater – Instagram post November 3, 2025

1. 1. 1. For years, I believed that longer holds meant deeper healing.
      2. But as yoga therapist Mary Richards teaches, our tissues don’t actually work that way.
      3. After about two minutes, the mechanoreceptors in your muscles and fascia—especially the Golgi tendon organs that measure tension—stop sending fresh information to your brain.
      4. Your proprioceptive awareness fades, and the stabilizing muscles go offline.
      5. What you feel after that “release” point isn’t opening—it’s your nervous system checking out. The joints may feel looser, but they’re also less supported.
      6. Stay at end range for five or six minutes and you overwhelm your sensory systems. That creates instability in your body.
      7. Restorative Yoga is different. The goal isn’t stretching—it’s opening. We fully support the joints so the body feels safe enough to soften.
      8. Now, as I move into perimenopause, my practice centers on building somatic strength—with shorter, intentional stretches, and lots and lots of Restorative.
      9. Send this post to someone who loves Yin Yoga but might be served by learning the science behind holding poses a bit shorter.

Overall comment:

I don’t believe anyone has ever claimed that yin yoga is good for every body. Human variation is just too vast to allow any one modality to work for everyone. In the comments to Lizzie’s post there are statements from many people who said that yin yoga was not for them. That is fair enough: these people tried yin yoga and found it didn’t suit them, and they stopped doing it. While part of me wonders exactly how they were doing the practice, I recognize that there are many people who do not benefit from yin yoga. However, to say that yin yoga is not good for any body, is a large leap. Yin yoga has been practiced by millions of people over decades. If it is not good for anybody, where are all the millions of broken bodies? Certainly, it has been great for me and many other people who have told me how much it has helped them. Implying that everyone should stop doing yin yoga because it causes harm is an extraordinary claim.

Carl Sagan once stated that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Let’s review the evidence that Lizzie offers.

3) After about two minutes, the mechanoreceptors in your muscles and fascia—especially the Golgi tendon organs that measure tension—stop sending fresh information to your brain.

I wish Lizzie had posted some references for this claim. I have spent the morning trying to locate any studies that support this statement but couldn’t find anything. To understand what she is saying, we need to understand what a Golgi tendon organ is, and what it does.

Golgi tendon organs (GTOs) are force sensors at the myotendinous junction, which means they are located where the tendon joins the muscle (or more accurately, where the tendon blends into the muscle). They are slowly adapting, high-threshold proprioceptors that continue to fire in proportion to muscle force during sustained contractions. They do not ‘switch off’ after two minutes. Rather they form a feedback loop with the muscle spindles, which are sensors along the length of the muscle that detect when the muscle is being stretched too much. If there is too much stretch the spindles activate the muscle to contract. Too much contraction and the GTOs trigger relaxation of the muscle. There is a yin/yang—or gas pedal/brake—balance here.

Physiopedia has this to say about GTO:

When people lift weights, the golgi tendon organ is the sense organ that tells how much tension the muscle is exerting. If there is too much muscle tension the golgi tendon organ will inhibit the muscle from creating any force (via a reflex arc), thus protecting you from injuring itself. This works in concert with the muscle spindles that monitor muscle length.

GTOs are sensitive to changes in tension and rate of tension and, because they are located in the musculotendinous junctions, they are responsible for sending information to the brain as soon as they sense an overload. Static stretching is one example of how muscle tension signals a GTO response. When a low-force stretch is held for more than seven seconds, the increase in muscle tension activates the GTO, which temporarily inhibits muscle spindle activity (thus reducing tension in the muscle), and allows for further stretching.

Even after sustained muscle activity, fatigue, or eccentric exercise, GTOs continue to accurately signal muscle tension to the central nervous system (CNS). There is no evidence they ‘turn off’.

4) Your proprioceptive awareness fades, and the stabilizing muscles go offline.

First, proprioception does not ‘fade’ after a couple of minutes. Proprioceptive input is carried by groups of receptors (muscle spindles, Golgi tendon organs, joint and cutaneous receptors) and continues under sustained positions; it adapts but does not cease. Reviews show these afferent nerves keep signaling limb position, movement, and force during static conditions; there is no documented two-minute shut-down.

For example see this study which notes: [Proprioceptive senses] include the senses of position and movement of our limbs and trunk, the sense of effort, the sense of force, and the sense of heaviness. Receptors involved in proprioception are located in skin, muscles, and joints. Information about limb position and movement is not generated by individual receptors, but by populations of afferents. The authors go on to note that spindles and GTOs adapt somewhat but continue transmitting information throughout a static hold. Proprioceptive awareness does not decrease with time under constant low stress; it’s maintained by the combined activity of several receptor types and by central integration in the cerebellum and cortex

Five minutes or more of a yin yoga pose does not cause your proprioception to ‘fade’. If a few minutes of stillness did that, you would lose all sense of your body when you watched TV for a few minutes, or sat still in a car or airplane.

Secondly, ‘stabilizing muscles’ do not go ‘off line.’ I am not even sure what that means. It sounds like she is saying the muscles relax after a while. Why would this be a bad thing? When we are still in a yin yoga pose or relaxing in a restorative yoga posture, we do not require stabilization. The muscles are intended to relax. If relaxing the muscles was unhealthy, then we should equally advise students to never do shavasana because in these positions ‘the stabilizing muscles go offline.’

5) What you feel after that “release” point isn’t opening—it’s your nervous system checking out. The joints may feel looser, but they’re also less supported.

The nervous system never ‘checks out.’ The feeling of ‘release’ during a long-held, low-load stretch is not the nervous system ‘checking out’; it’s the normal adaptation of neuromuscular tone and connective tissue viscoelasticity. Research in both rehabilitation science and yoga physiology shows that sensations of ease or softening reflect changes in afferent feedback, muscle spindle sensitivity, and connective tissue stress-relaxation, not neural withdrawal or dissociation.

Studies on low-load prolonged stretch demonstrate that gradual lengthening decreases intramuscular tension and improves range of motion through creep (time-dependent elongation of fascia and muscle) and stress-relaxation (decrease in resistance under constant load) — not through nervous system “shutdown.” (See the study by Lisa A. Harvey et al. (2003) titled “Randomised trial of the effects of four weeks of daily stretch … hamstring muscles in people with spinal cord injuries.” The experimental group had their hamstring muscles stretched with a 30 Nm torque at the hip for 30 minutes each weekday for four weeks. A 30-minute hold is far longer than any Yin Yoga pose would ever be held.)

There is no evidence that these adaptations reduce joint support. In fact, the slow, supported nature of Yin postures minimizes reflex contraction and shear, protecting stabilizing structures far more than dynamic or ballistic stretching does.

Proprioceptive feedback continues during these holds (see Proske & Gandevia 2012, Physiol Rev 92:1651-1697). The nervous system remains engaged, but at a calmer, parasympathetic tone—a key reason why yin yoga practices have been shown to reduce markers of stress and inflammation (West et al., J Altern Complement Med 2019; Cramer et al., PLoS One 2016).

So, the ‘release’ is not the nervous system disengaging; it’s the nervous system recalibrating—allowing tone to drop safely as the tissues adapt. Far from being ‘less supported,’ the body is often more stable afterward, with improved joint mobility and reduced guarding.

6) Stay at end range for five or six minutes and you overwhelm your sensory systems. That creates instability in your body.

There are two concerns with this statement.

First, in Yin Yoga we are not always at end range. Many, if not most, students choose to remain in a comfortable mid-range position. Even when a student does explore end range, the posture is passive, supported, and the tissues are under low load. The danger is not being at end range, but forcing beyond it. When you straighten your arm, you are at the end range of elbow extension. Is that a problem? Should we never fully extend our arms? Obviously not. You can lie in shavasana with your arms extended for ten minutes without joint damage. Properly aligned joints are designed to bear load at end range. In fact, appropriate mechanical loading is what maintains joint health and strength. (This is why controlled stress is essential for maintaining bone and connective tissue integrity.)

Second, the phrase “overwhelming the sensory system” is unclear. Earlier, Lizzie suggested that Yin Yoga causes the sensory system to shut down, yet here she claims it is overwhelmed. Which is it? In reality, the sensory system remains active and adaptable throughout long-held positions. Studies on low-load prolonged stretching show no evidence of ‘overwhelm,’ instability, or proprioceptive failure. Instead, the body accommodates the steady input, reducing unnecessary muscular guarding while maintaining joint awareness.

Again, it would be helpful if sources were provided to substantiate Lizzie’s claims, because current research does not support them.

7) Restorative Yoga is different. The goal isn’t stretching—it’s opening. We fully support the joints so the body feels safe enough to soften.

Restorative and Yin Yoga share many surface similarities: both involve stillness, long holds, and a calm, introspective approach. But physiologically and functionally, they are variations on the same continuum rather than fundamentally different practices. The difference lies mainly in degree of load and intention, not in completely different mechanisms.

In Restorative Yoga, the body is fully supported by props to minimize muscular effort and mechanical stress. The emphasis is on relaxation and parasympathetic regulation; essentially, a quieting of the whole system. In Yin Yoga, the postures are held with a mild to moderate load, enough to gently stress the connective tissues without creating too much strain. This low-level mechanical stress has been shown in animal and human studies to stimulate fibroblast activity, collagen remodeling, and tissue resilience. See Yahia et al., Clin Biomech, 1993; Schleip et al., J Bodyw Mov Ther, 2012.

Both styles aim for ‘softening,’ but Restorative achieves this primarily through complete support and neurological downregulation, whereas Yin combines relaxation with gentle mechanical stimulation. Both approaches can make the body feel ‘safe enough to soften,’ and both can be described as ‘opening.’ It is therefore misleading to suggest that only Restorative opens and Yin stretches; both can open body and mind, each through slightly different means.

I appreciate that Lizzie’s intention is grounded in care and safety, which all yoga teachers share. However, care must be grounded in evidence, not fear. The nervous system is not fragile, and long-held, low-load postures do not make the body unstable or cause the brain to ‘check out.’ They invite awareness of subtle sensation and allow time for tissues and mind to adapt.

Is yin yoga for everybody? No, clearly not. Is yin yoga for nobody? Again, clearly not! Every style of yoga offers something valuable when applied appropriately to the individual. For some, Restorative may be the right medicine; for others, yin yoga’s gentle stress provides the balance they need. Both practices encourage stillness, patience, and introspection—qualities often missing in modern life.

Science continues to affirm what experienced practitioners have long observed: when we approach our practice with curiosity, moderation, and respect for our own limits, the body responds with resilience, not fragility. Yin yoga, practiced mindfully, remains a safe and beneficial way to explore the inner landscape of both body and mind.

At the end of the day, your own unique experience is the best guide you can have. What do you feel when you do your practice? If it doesn’t work for you, don’t do it. If it does, trust your own experience. What are you feeling?