Victor Chng is one of the most experienced Yin Yoga teachers in Asia, having undergone years of intensive study on Yin Yoga directly with Paul Grilley and Sarah Powers. He leads trainings, workshops and retreats on Yin Yoga throughout Asia and also owns Yoga in Asia, the largest online yoga portal in Asia (www.yogainasia.com).

LUCAS: I understand that Yin Yoga helped you overcome a hamstring injury. Can you tell us about that process?

VICTOR: I suffered a hamstring injury on my right leg while being adjusted from behind in Janushasana. Back in those days, teaching standards were not as high and teachers were not so sensitive on adjustment. Anyhow, that taught me an important lesson about adjusting someone from the back without warning. When I first met Paul after more than a year with this injury, it was still hurting. I told Paul about it and he advised me to work in a yin way – to engage the muscle softly and not go the full extent of what I would usually do. This sounds easy but in fact was one of the most difficult things to do. I didn’t feel that I had gone all the way in practicing yoga. However, I learned to be patient with myself and let go of my practicing style. I was completely healed after a year practicing yin consistently.

LUCAS: The Yin Yoga approach is so different from all other popular styles of yoga today. Postures are held for 2, 3 or even 5 minutes with no muscular contraction and it’s a very quiet practice. Can you tell us how this practice came about and what the goal is?

VICTOR: Paul had many different forms of martial arts training. I believe this method of practice comes more in an accidental way. Part of martial arts practice is to put the body in traction, especially the legs. For example, many of these practitioners had to do splits and they put their legs up on poles for a long time. It becomes natural to Paul to work his body in this way. However, holding a pose for a long time is not possible while muscles are contracting actively. Therefore, finding relaxation in a pose in order to hold it for a long time becomes the natural way to work on each pose.

Many people want to get more flexible in their yoga practice. However, what will truly enable someone to achieve greater flexibility is to activate the connective tissues, such as the deep fascia surrounding the joints and muscular layers in-between. In order to stimulate the fascia, we need to relax the body, let go of the external layers to allow inner layers to build. Yoga that works purely at the muscles in most instances do not achieve good results over time, because they are too elastic. You can easily lose your flexibility after one cold shower. Therefore, yin allows one to gain flexibility from deep layers inside the body.

Yin also has a very therapeutic effect on the body. The practice is passive and quieting. It encourages the parasympathetic nervous system to take over and back off from our "fight-or-flight" nature. Therefore, many people experience greater calm and improvement in sleep quality. In addition, it also stimulates deep meridians in the fascia, like acupuncture. In yin yoga, we use asana to put pressure on the meridians and provide stimulation. It is comparable to placing needles along the meridians to achieve therapeutic effects. That is why some teachers like Sarah Powers sometimes goes 10 minutes in a certain pose to achieve the intended result.

LUCAS: In the past 10-15 years, the mainstream yoga movement has been a largely “yang-style” movement with an emphasis on Bikram, Ashtanga, and Vinyasa Yoga. Classes tend to be fast-paced, dynamic, hot & sweaty. Yin breaks from this trend completely. So are yang-style practices bad?

VICTOR: Paul has never wanted to make any style look “bad” or obsolete. He sees Yin as a complementary practice to whatever style of yoga that one is practicing today. However, most of the styles today are dynamic in nature. A Yang practice will be good for strengthening and stamina building. This has great benefits to health. However, when staying only with this practice, one cannot balance physically or mentally. Yin becomes the quieting practice.

Yang practice will cause more tightening to the body overtime as they are all active stretches. The muscles are constantly contracting and relaxing which results in strengthening over time. Yin lets go of active stretches to allow more space between the layers and joints, bringing more balance to a physical practice. That is why many people who are practicing Ashtanga, Power, Vinyasa, Bikram are doing Yin Yoga.

LUCAS: Many students get very frustrated with blocked hips, tight hamstrings, and stiff backs. How much can we change our bodies, and how much is genetics playing a role in our ability/inability to do a posture?

VICTOR: There are many things we do not understand about this miraculous body. That is why the medical world is still doing research to understand the human body. I do not claim to know it all. However, I tend to think that doshas do affect the level of flexibility. For example, Kapha tend to have thick, short bones and are more bulky. Therefore, they may experience more tightening in the body, especially on the lower back and hips. Vata tend to have more space within the body, but the body usually feels very tight after intense stretching. Pitta are more proportionate and flexible, but not in the mind. Therefore, I think doshas on the one hand helps to explain flexibility, but all doshas will need Yin Yoga to gain more balance in their body.

LUCAS: You teach workshops and teacher training courses in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, China, Thailand, Nepal and even Bhutan. Do you find that Yin Yoga is appreciated by people from all backgrounds? Is this particular practice something that anyone can benefit from?

VICTOR: I tend to think that all levels of practitioners will need Yin Yoga in their practice. This is especially so for people who have never done yoga. It is a very claming and slow practice that everyone can follow. I remember being fearful as a man to join a yoga class when I first began. There were so many women in the class and I look clumsy as a man following a sun salutation. My experience tells me that people are starting to appreciate quieting practice. 9 out of 10 people who come to yoga want more relaxation. I don’t see the resistance to wanting more relaxation. Also, people who have experienced deep relaxation would want to come back to repeat the experience. It is very challenging for Yin Yoga teachers to penetrate in the beginning, with the current dynamic yoga culture. However, I have been highly successful in convincing many people in Asia to take on this practice. I believe Yin Yoga needs a bigger voice in the yoga world and we do need more Yin Yoga teachers to share the benefits of this practice.

LUCAS: You’ve studied directly with Paul Grilley. Paul has had a huge influence on yoga in the past 5 years in particular. Can you tell us about your experience with him as a teacher?

VICTOR: Paul is a highly scholastic in his teaching style and presentation. I am very attracted by his knowledge on individual structural differences. This knowledge greatly influenced my teaching. He is also a highly spiritual being. He encourages meditation and helps his students understand that this is what all yogis want to be able to do eventually. He does not provide students with dogmatic views – he appeals to one’s logic and intellect and allows his students to form their own conclusions. I find his teaching highly liberating. He allows me to explore another dimension of the practice. For example, I have yoga nidra as part of my Yin Yoga teaching. This is something I find very natural to do after a yin practice and it has great effect on allowing deep relaxation.

LUCAS: If you had a room full of people and just 30 minutes to teach them the most powerful yoga practices you know, what would you teach?

VICTOR: Any amount of time doing yin can be highly beneficial. It is not always about the duration of the practice but bringing the practice to focus. On a daily basis, I look at how I can release tension surrounding the sacral-lumbar region and the hips. Around this region is also the pathway of the bladder and kidney meridians, which are most important in restoring "chi" in the body. I will cut back on the number of asana, but hold longer amount of time in each. No matter how short the practice, I will squeeze in pranayama and brief meditation. I look at a complete yoga session incorporating energy generation, energy direction and energy absorption. I will be sharing a lot on this in my training programme.

Find out more about Victor’s Yin Yoga Teacher Training in Singapore from 3 to 13 September 2009