I'd tend not to believe it either. I've never done yin yoga, so I started looking around on the internets, and I couldn't find anything that talked about holding a pose longer than 5 minutes in a class setting. There were a couple of teachers who talked about staying in some poses longer, in their home practice, but that was it. Outside of yin practice, I've never heard of holding a posture anywhere near that long. Seriously, in a 90-minute class, that would mean eight asana plus a little warmup and shavasana. I don't think so.

Different teachers include different amounts of standalone meditation. AFAIK a practice should always finish in corpse pose (shavasana), which is a meditation.

In other news ... this ties in here and also with shootingstar's thread - I think I'll crosslink ...

I've been making great progress with my headstands in the past week, not least because I've been doing them when the class is doing another pose that my wrist isn't ready for.

It's really become clear to me that neutral spine is key to inversions. When we're right ways up, we can use all the muscles that we've developed over time to hold us cattywampus. Not so much when we're upside down - especially for a newbie who probably doesn't have too many upside-down-holding muscles. I have to rely quite a bit on balance, and if the column of my body isn't vertical, I'll go right over.

Nothing has made it more clear to me how flattened my lumbar curve was, than headstands (and handstands at the wall, when I was doing them, and it won't be long before I can do them again). To keep in balance, I've got to do what at first felt to me like really arching my back. But the way my spinal column supports my whole body, and my pelvis supports my legs, makes it very clear that that is neutral. I'm getting some better flexibility, starting to feel more natural, learning to keep it in my body when I'm right ways up.

This is really huge for me, and it's making me very happy right now.