You're probably only doing half of yoga 🦇
A lot of people try yoga exactly once, decide on the spot whether they're "a yoga person," and close the case forever. It's a little like listening to a song, deciding you don't care for it, and concluding you dislike all music — because yoga isn't one thing. The slow, candlelit, melt-into-the-floor version and the fast, sweaty, heart-pounding version are nearly opposite experiences that happen to share a name and a mat 🧘
They don't just move at different speeds, either. The two main styles work opposite sides of your nervous system, which is the part worth knowing before you write off the whole practice over one awkward hour in a warm room.
Flow fires you up, Yin winds you down
Vinyasa — the flowing, breath-with-movement style — leans on your sympathetic nervous system, the accelerator. You build heat and strength, your heart rate climbs, and you leave energized and pleasantly wrung out. Yin is the other setting entirely. You ease into a handful of mostly seated or reclined poses and hold each one for several minutes, letting the stretch reach the deeper connective tissue that quick movement never touches. Those long holds and slow breaths shift you toward your parasympathetic state — the "rest and digest" mode most of us barely visit. A flow class leaves you awake and accomplished; a Yin class leaves you so unwound you might briefly forget what day it is 😌
And Yin earns its keep, before anyone files it under nap. Holding a deep shape while staying soft and breathing through it is its own quiet kind of strength — the slow, stabilizing sort that a fast flow tends to blow right past. The two styles build different things, which is the whole argument for doing both instead of swearing allegiance to one.
The numbers nobody expects from yoga
For something that looks this gentle, yoga keeps posting results people assume you can only get from running or a prescription. A 2025 network review in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine compared thirteen treatments for insomnia across 22 trials and found yoga added roughly 110 minutes of sleep a night — close to two extra hours, the largest improvement of anything they measured, medication included. And a 2026 meta-analysis in PLOS Global Public Health pooled 30 trials and nearly 2,700 people and found regular yoga meaningfully lowered blood pressure, with smaller improvements in cholesterol and blood sugar on the side 💤
Neither study crowned a single style as the winner — both credit the breathing, stillness, and attention that run through yoga generally. The work you practice on the mat appears to follow you home, to bed, and apparently into your next doctor's visit like those hitch-hiking ghosts from the Haunted Mansion.
A thoroughly haunted week of classes
The hot movement studio is leaning all the way into spooky season, with a lineup stretching across both ends of that nervous-system spectrum.
🎃 Spooky Flow — Wednesday, Oct 28, 7–8 PM. Autumn leads a fun, active 84° vinyasa flow. Warm, sweaty, and firmly on the energizing end of things.
🧙 Witches & Warlocks Flow — Friday, Oct 30, 5:30 PM. A second seasonal flow with Autumn, (brooms optional) 😜.
Autumn told me herself that these are some of her favorite classes of the year and that she has far too much fun with them, so prepare for a little silliness and a lot of movement 👻
Yin in practice
🔥 Hot Yin Yoga — Sunday mornings, 9-10:15 AM. Terri teaches this one every week, and it's the deep, restorative counterweight to a fast-paced week — long holds, deep release, heat added so the body opens further than it will cold. If flowing is the only yoga you've done, this is the half you've been missing, and a Sunday-morning reset is a fine way to meet it.
🕯️ Candlelight Yin Yoga — Mondays, 6:30-7:30 PM. Yin Yang yoga with Sunny combines 2 yoga styles to work on energy, flexibility and strength and provide a wonderfully balanced practice.
A brand new class
☀️ 26 & 2 Hot Yoga — Tuesdays & Thursdays, 7–8:30 AM, starting Oct 27. A set sequence of 26 postures and 2 breathing exercises in a room heated to 105°. Take it consistently to feel yourself improve steadily, week after week. Brand new to the schedule and a great way to start your day.
Flow hard, rest harder, and we'll see you on the mat,
Happy Halloween from your West Coast Fitness Family 🕸️
