Benefits of Yin Yoga: A gentle form of activism
The world feels heavy right now. Genocide in Gaza, Environmental catastrophe the ongoing rise of the far right, challenges to the hard fought rights of the LGBTQIA+SB community.
Everywhere we turn, there are stories of harm and heartbreak: communities displaced, the Earth under strain, people trying to survive systems that were never built for their flourishing. The pace of it all can leave us suspended somewhere between outrage and exhaustion.
We’re living in what many call a polycrisis, a time of overlapping emergencies that touch every part of life—political, ecological, social, and emotional. Our bodies know it before our minds catch up: the tight jaw, the restless sleep, the shallow breath. The nervous system, built to respond to threat, now lives in near-constant alert. This of course is not helped by our phones, the 24- news cycle, social media etc etc.
Yin yoga meets us here, in the space between collapse and care.
It invites us to slow down, to listen, and to gently unwind from the inside out. In Yin, we don’t strive or perform; we rest into stillness long enough for the layers of holding to reveal themselves.
This is where the vagus nerve begins to speak. The vagus nerve is a long, wandering nerve that connects the brain to the body, regulating the heart, breath, and digestion—like the deep roots and branching limbs of a tree that link sky and soil, holding the whole system in balance.Woven through the body like a thread of intelligence, the vagus nerve connects breath, heart, and gut—the deep places where emotion lives. When we rest into long-held shapes, when the breath softens and the exhale lengthens, the vagus nerve is stimulated. The body begins to remember safety, and the mind follows.
In a world that asks us to stay activated—scrolling, reacting, defending—Yin offers a different kind of response: a pause, a recalibration. It doesn’t ask us to turn away from suffering, but to meet it from a steadier place. To cultivate the capacity to feel deeply without being consumed.
This is the nervous system as activism.
Each time we return to the mat, we choose presence over paralysis. Each breath becomes a quiet act of resistance against disconnection. Through stillness, we learn to inhabit the body again, to be both tender and awake to what’s unfolding within and around us.
There’s nothing passive about this softness. It personally took me many many years to learn this lesson, in fact it is a lesson that I am still learning.
It’s the groundwork for courage, empathy, and collective care. When our systems are regulated, we can listen better. We can speak truth without burning out. We can hold grief and hope in the same breath.
So come to your mat, not to escape, but to remember. To meet as a collective and tot rest.
To breathe into the ache of being human in complex times. To let the parasympathetic currents of the body remind you that peace is not absence, but connection.
One nervous system at a time, we steady ourselves.
And from there, we keep showing up with reverence, awareness, and love.