The yang is more active. It's associated with light, with sun, with the day, with heat. The flow of the energy is more noticeable. The yin is the opposite. There’s no such a thing as yin and yang classes. We started calling our classes yin and yang, because of the approach I give to the poses while I am going from one pose to another one. So the yin poses are poses where the muscles are soft, they are relaxed, and you allow gravity to take over. So that opens the joints, and you get deep into the joints and the tendons. At the same time that your external motion stops — or is reduced to almost nothing, because you go into a completely different pace — the internal motion increases incredibly.
So I wouldn’t say that in yang you pay attention. It’s easier to pay more attention when you are active. But more attention to what? When you are passive, and you are going inwards, and your external motion is very slow but your internal motion is very noticeable, you can be attentive to that kind of movement even though it's a soft one, even though it's a quiet one, even though it has a low voice. You can pay attention to that kind of movement.
So I think you have as much action in yin as you have in yang, but they are different kinds of action. The action that you find in yin is internal. The action that you see in yang is external. So whenever you do a posture that is more yang, and requires more energy, more muscle action, and maybe less connection with the floor, you have to somehow keep the softness inside, so you don't disconnect from your body feelings, and you don't disconnect from your respiration, and you don't lose the point of focus because of the action.
