There's a simple truth I keep returning to in my practice, one that a teacher shared with me years ago: you can't think and feel at the same time — not really.
When I first heard this, I wasn't sure I believed it. But then I started paying attention. In yin yoga especially, I noticed how my mind would try to wander, jumping back in time to ruminate or forward in time to plan and think about what's next. The mind wants to be anywhere but here. Meanwhile, my body was simply feeling: the stretch in my hip, the coolness of the floor beneath me, the rhythm of my breath. The body only knows now.
I've learned over the years: you can either be here now, or you can be nowhere. And the bridge between those two states is sensation. When you notice you're distracted, you can simply decide to follow your breath back into your body and arrive home again, whole again.
The Mind vs. The Body: Where Are You Right Now?
Think about it: can you truly be in your head — thinking, worrying, planning — and simultaneously in your body, feeling sensation, at the exact same moment?
Try it. Just pause from reading this and see.
Notice the quality of your thoughts right now. Then shift your attention to the physical sensations in your body — the weight of your sit bones on the chair, the temperature of the air on your skin, the expansion and contraction of your breath.
You'll find that when you drop fully into sensation, thinking recedes. And when thinking takes over, you lose touch with the felt sense of your body. We oscillate between the two, but we can't truly inhabit both simultaneously.
This is why yin yoga anchors us in sensation — because the only place life actually happens is now. Here. In this body. In this breath, in this very moment.
The Nervous System Connection: From Reactivity to Regulation
When we're caught in the thinking mind — especially anxious, worried, or ruminating thoughts — we're often operating from the amygdala, the brain's alarm centre. This is the part of our nervous system responsible for threat detection, the fight-flight-freeze response. When the amygdala is running the show, our nervous system becomes upregulated: heart rate increases, breath becomes shallow, muscles tense. The world narrows. We lose perspective. We're stuck in reactivity.
But here's the beautiful part: when we shift our attention to sensation — to what's actually happening around and within us right now — we activate the neocortex, the part of the brain responsible for rational thought, perspective, and regulation. Blood flow literally shifts from the reactive amygdala to the more evolved prefrontal cortex. Our nervous system begins to settle. The world opens back up. We feel broader, wider in our awareness. More grounded. More here.
Coming Home Through the Sense Doors
So how do we make this shift? How do we move from the spinning mind to the grounded body? We use our sense doors.
Right now, wherever you are:
Listen. What sounds can you hear? Bird song, traffic, the hum of a refrigerator, your own breath?
Feel. What physical sensations are present? The texture of fabric against your skin, the temperature of the air, any areas of tension or ease in your body?
See. What's in your field of vision? Colours, shapes, light, shadow?
Taste and smell. What taste is present in your mouth? Is there any scent in the air?
When you engage your senses fully, your nervous system receives a clear message: I am here, home and whole. This isn't just philosophy — it's neurobiology. Grounding through sensation is one of the most effective ways to regulate an upregulated nervous system.
Anchor the Mind to the Breath
Think of your mind like a kite, whooshing around in the windy sky — pulled by currents, buffeted by storms, spinning in all directions. Without an anchor, it would fly away completely, lost to the elements.
But that kite is held fast by a string, connected to a hand, which is connected to the earth.
Your breath is that string. Your body is that hand. The present moment is the earth.
No matter how far your mind wanders, you can always follow the breath back. You can always feel your way home.
In yin yoga, we practise this return again and again. We hold a pose for three, four, five minutes, and the mind inevitably wanders. Thoughts arise. Stories unfold. Judgments appear. And then we notice. We feel the sensation in the hip, the length of the exhale, the contact between body and floor. We come back. We anchor.
This is the practice: not to stop thinking entirely, but to notice when we've left, and gently return. Again and again, strengthening the muscle of awareness.
Finding Wholeness in Yin
When we anchor in sensation, when we return to the breath and the body, something remarkable happens: we feel whole again. Not perfect. Not "fixed." Not free from all discomfort or challenge. But whole. Integrated. Here.
Yin yoga offers us this gift: the chance to slow down enough to actually feel. To practise being present with whatever is arising — pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral — without immediately thinking our way out of it. To discover that beneath all the thinking, beneath all the stories and strategies and distractions, there's a quiet, steady presence. A home base. A still point.
You can either be here now, or you can be nowhere. The choice, breath by breath, is always yours.
In yin yoga, we don't use the body to get into a pose. We use the pose to get into the body. And in getting into the body, we discover we've been home all along.
