Are you going to work your spine today? Perhaps your hips are the area of interest. Maybe you want to focus on a particular organ. Is your liver feeling a little stressed from a hard weekend of partying? Knowing what you want to do makes it a lot easier to decide which postures to choose to use. In the section on Asanas you will find the benefits of the poses most commonly practiced in Yin Yoga. Pick out a few key poses that will help the areas you want to focus on and then you will be ready to link them together.
Not all asanas are equal. Before going deep into a back bend you will want to do a gentler back bend to prepare the body. The same advice applies to forward bends or twists. Open the body with easier postures before going to the deeper openings. It is for this reason that all yoga classes begin with warming up the body before the deeper work begins.
In Yin Yoga we are not actually trying to warm up; we want the muscles to remain cool, so that they are not taking up all the stress of the postures. When the muscles are cool, the stretch can go deeper into the connective tissues. But we still want to have a period at the beginning of the practice when we ease into the body. There are a few asanas that work well at the beginning of a practice to get us started.
(Next: Beginning Asanas )