"What you seek is seeking you."
— Rumi
As anyone who has done a yin class can tell you: stillness isn't always peaceful. For a lot of us — it can feel like quite the opposite.
When we finally stop moving, stop doing, stop filling every moment with noise and busyness, something unexpected happens. The inner world gets louder. Anxiety can bubble up. Boredom sets in. Old grief surfaces. Restlessness moves under the skin. The mind, no longer distracted with to-do lists and devices, turns up the volume on everything we've been quietly outrunning.
This is what I call the inner storm. And it's not a sign that you're doing it wrong or that 'yin yoga isn't for you'… It's a sign that you're human. This is just how our mind works — how our system is wired.
This is the Work
Yin Yoga asks us to hold a pose for three, four, five minutes — and in that time, to simply be with whatever arises. Not to fix it, not to flee it, not to narrate it into something more manageable. Just to feel it and stay. In Buddhism, it's often referred to as 'Radical Inclusiveness' — to be with whatever arises.
That sounds simple, right? It is not always easy.
What we're actually doing — beneath the long holds and the quiet and the props — is slowly, gently widening what psychologists call the Window of Tolerance. This is the zone in which we can experience difficult sensations, emotions, and thoughts without being overwhelmed by them or shutting down. Within this window, we can feel without being consumed. We can stay present with discomfort without collapsing or bracing.
Yin widens it — not by making things easier, but by teaching us, slowly and repeatedly, that we can be with hard moments. That the storm passes. That we are the sky.
Why This Matters
This understanding changes everything about how we can hold space for ourselves and for others — be that as a teacher, a parent, a friend.
Perhaps you've felt it — that pull toward something quieter, something more real. Rumi knew it too: what you seek is seeking you. The stillness you're drawn to isn't just rest. It's a doorway.
Maybe the day has come when the risk to remain tight in a bud is more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
If we learn to sit within our own inner storm — to stay rather than flee — this creates a quality of safety for those we love around us to feel seen and held.
This is the embodied, uncomfortable, ultimately liberating work: learning to be present — with yourself first, and then with others. And it begins right here, in the long holds, in the quiet, in the storm.
