The class opens with the soles of the feet pressed together, knees dropping out to either side, arms falling wide on the mat. There is no instruction to stretch harder and no count to hold. There is a blanket, a block, a meditation cushion, and a soft piano and cello track running underneath the teacher's voice, which mostly stays quiet. This is Janice Allermann's 75-minute yin yoga class for stress release, published on her YouTube channel in April 2021, and it is built on a premise that runs against much of what people expect from a workout on a mat: the work happens when you stop working. In yin, the postures are held for long stretches, usually three to five minutes, and the goal is to let the body settle into them rather than push. Used this way, the shapes become a practice of surrender, and the practice of surrender is, for this class, the route to letting stress go.
Most of the 75 minutes are spent in reclined and seated shapes. The class moves through butterfly, a gentle heart opener with the chest lifting and the inner thighs softening, then into forward folds, swan variations that open the hips, a lying twist, a shape that compresses the lower back, and a happy baby near the end. Many of these will look familiar to anyone who has taken a vinyasa or hatha class. What changes is the duration and the intention. Janice's own summary of the approach, given at the start of the video description, is that yin postures "are similar to some 'yang' asanas but held in a passive way over an extended period of time." The active muscles are meant to stay relaxed. The work is supposed to reach the tissues underneath.
That distinction matters, and it is the reason the class is not framed as a stretch session. The description is explicit that the practice targets "the connective tissue of the body (deeper fascial network, tendons, ligaments, bones, joints)" rather than the muscles. A muscle that is actively working resists a stretch. A muscle that has stopped gripping lets the slower tissues respond to sustained, gentle load. In a yin class, the sensation you are looking for is less a burn and more a change, which the description describes as the moment you "first feel a change in the tissue when coming into a posture." That is the edge. The instruction is to find it, stay there in stillness, and let it soften over time.
The most counterintuitive instruction in the description is also the most useful one. Yin yoga generally does not need many props, the description notes, but "for today's practice, since we are aiming for stress release, use props when needed." The reasoning is that a body braced against a posture cannot release into it. A folded blanket under the hips, a block under the forehead, or a cushion under the torso changes what the body has to do. Instead of holding itself up, it can rest on something.
Early in the class, the teacher returns to this more than once. Props are described as a way "to support yourself, to allow the body to relax deeper into a posture." In the reclined butterfly that opens the practice, she asks viewers to "support your torso" and "support your head," and she says this is "so that you can find a gentle heart opener." During a later forward fold, she tells the class that "you don't have to make this a super intense yin practice" and that props can help "so that you can really let go in all areas of the body." For a practice meant to address stress, that is a clear philosophical choice. Effort is the thing most people bring to the mat, and effort is what this class asks them to set down.
"Make the asanas work for you, use props if needed, make adjustments or come out of the posture if your body is telling you to do so."
Janice Allermann, in the description of her 2021 yin class for stress release
The teaching around edges and pain is careful, and it is worth reading closely. The description says the class is suitable for all levels, that you should listen to your body to decide how deep to go, and that there should be "never any pain (sharp shooting pain)." Discomfort is what the practice is after, but it is a particular kind of discomfort: a stretching sensation you can breathe into. The class repeatedly names the difference. In a hip-opening shape, the teacher says "you do want to feel the stretching sensations in and around the hips but be soft be gentle." Then comes the instruction that carries the most weight in the whole class: "check that the muscles in your legs in your hips are relaxed and soft that you're not resisting the posture."
In practice, the sequence is a loop of noticing and softening. You arrive in the shape, you feel where the stretch lives, you check whether you are bracing against it, and then you relax a little more on each exhale. The teacher gives this a simple formula near the middle of the hip-opening section: make a conscious effort to relax into the discomfort, "let go a little bit more with every exhale." Later, when a viewer might be tempted to push, the instruction is brief: "don't force anything let it happen." The line appears around the twenty-minute mark, and it reads like the thesis of the class.
For long stretches, the class is nearly silent except for the soundtrack. The description identifies it as "gentle meditation music featuring piano and cello," and the track credited is "Our Tribe is Free," composed by Music Of Wisdom and licensed from Meditation Music Library. The teacher's verbal cues are sparse on purpose. The description says she is "only giving minimal verbal instructions, giving space for the music to aid you in relaxing and letting go."
That design choice turns the music into a second instructor. A long hold in a deep forward fold, with a slow cello line filling the room, asks you to attend to something other than your to-do list. The class also builds a rhythm of cue and silence: a short sentence like "take three more breaths here," then a long run of soft piano and no words at all. Many viewers will recognize the experience of a sound bath or a guided meditation, but here the sound sits underneath a physical practice rather than replacing it. The body is doing the work; the music gives the attention somewhere gentle to rest.
The auto-generated captions on the video render some of the teacher's terms oddly, and the transcript is full of "[Music]" markers during the holds, so the words that do survive carry a lot of weight. That is part of the point. The instructions that do come through are the ones meant to recur: breathe without controlling the breath, stay still in body, breath, and mind, and let the shape work.
The sequence has a clear architecture. It begins supine-leaning in butterfly, moves the body upright through a slow transition onto the forearms, and then returns to forward folding. From the seated shapes, the practice shifts into swan variations with one leg forward and the other back, first upright and then over a prop, then onto the belly and into a lying shape that the teacher invites you to feel "the difference between left and right" in. The class repeats this pattern on both sides, which is a yin habit worth noticing: the body is asked to compare sides, not to chase a single ideal.
Transitions are part of the practice, not interruptions to it. Before any new shape, the teacher asks viewers to come up slowly, to "let your nervous system adjust," and to "press yourself all the way up" with the hands before sliding into the next posture. Moving slowly is the same principle as holding still: it keeps the effort low and the awareness high. Later, the class moves into a posture that compresses the lumbar spine. Here the teacher is precise: "you do want to feel a gentle compression in the lumbar spine that's what we're after." The phrase "there should be no pain" appears in the same breath, a reminder that compression and pain are different experiences.
The practice closes with a return to the body as a whole. The teacher asks viewers to "be fully present in your body," then to bend the legs, step the feet in, and rest. The final minutes are quiet. The class ends not with a peak but with an observation of what has changed, which fits a practice built on surrender.
The phrase that sums up the class arrives toward the end of the lying section, when the teacher describes the feeling she wants viewers to create: "surrendering, of letting the body become heavy, of releasing the weight of the body into the ground." She adds a line that is close to a mission statement for the whole video: "yin yoga teaches us acceptance surrendering and letting go." For someone carrying stress, the appeal of this practice is that it does not demand a breakthrough. It offers a set of permissions: use the blanket, rest on the block, come out if the body asks, breathe without managing the breath, and let the sound fill the room.
Stress is often held in ways people cannot easily see, and this class treats the body as a place where that holding can soften over time rather than be fought. The teaching is simple, which is part of why it works on the mat. Find the edge. Support yourself. Relax the muscles. Stay with the sensation. Let go a little more on each breath. The 15,800 views the recording has drawn since 2021 suggest that many people have found a reason to return to it.
If you want to try this practice, gather a blanket, a block, and a cushion, and give yourself the full 75 minutes or a shorter section of it. Start with the reclined butterfly, use more props than you think you need, and treat every hold as a chance to notice rather than to achieve. If a shape produces sharp or shooting pain, the class is clear that you should come out of it. Discomfort is the territory; pain is the signal to stop. Watch the full video on Janice Allermann's YouTube channel, and read the description, which includes a short introduction to yin, a note on props, and the list of her other platforms.
For readers who want to go further, the same principles apply to any slow, passive practice: find your edge, relax the muscles that do not need to work, support the body with what you have, and let the breath and the attention do the rest. Yin, in this class, is less a set of shapes than a way of letting the body stop holding on.
