YOUR YOGA

WHAT IS YIN YOGA?

Yin yoga is:

Gentle – Powerful

New  – Ancient

Opening – Internalising

Simple – Complex

Relaxing – Frustrating

Instinctual – Scientific

Physical – Emotional

Accessible  –Many faceted

In some ways I can’t answer that question. But I will speak about what it is to me as teacher and practitioner, and what I dearly hope to affect through Yin Yoga, and a Yin approach to Yoga, meditation, exercise, relationship with the self, with others and with life.

As a teacher, it is in a Yin class that I feel I have time and space to reach my students (or explorers) with my intention to help them find ways to be led by their own innate body-intelligence, their own non-judgemental, non-striving awareness of what is going on, body and soul, at any moment. There are long moments, undistracted by endeavouring to complete a shape, when they can take in, on an experiential level, the fact that awareness, and response to the messages received, is essential for the safe and compassionate care of our physical and emotional health.

In Yoga we seek to help ourselves find ways to move more smoothly through life. Through asana we aim to open the body in as many as possible of the sites that are stuck, sluggish, damaged, or out of use, to allow physical and energetic flow. This is hopefully the case in all Yoga practices. Unfortunately, we humans tend to push and strive, and to ignore our warning signs. Yoga asana are attractive to us, and tempt us to ambitious pushing. We are in a global culture that holds up ideals, not variation, that values linear “improvement”, not ebb and flow. So, in many asana classes the world over we are goal oriented. The differences in Yin Yoga are that we target connective tissue and joint sites, which is facilitated by allowing the muscles to relax, so ligaments, tendons, fascia and joints can experience what muscular contraction shields them from, and we search for ways to honour our current state, moment by moment, to honour softness over effort, Sukha over Sthira. We also acknowledge our immovable structure, our genetic and life stress influenced biology, bone shape and growth patterns, joint structure, and tissue elasticity.

In teaching Yoga, and Yin in particular, I hope to help my “explorers” to first investigate any given asana shape, to then find their version of it, to accept that today’s version may be different from tomorrow’s or yesterday’s, then to spend time climbing inward until they can respond to the tiniest sensation in their body that calls to them. (The Yin postures are ideal for this, as they are more “achievable”, and one can go inward in a way that a newer practitioner may not manage in a posture like Natarajasan, for example.) Then when their body feels safe and respected, I hope that they meet without fear, the rainbow of human feeling, physical, mental and emotional, and are less afraid of it all.

Why would someone want to do this? Only each individual can answer that. I answer by asking, to whom do I love to offer this practice? I offer this to all, but in particular I hope to encourage those who undervalue softness and who think their time is only valuable if they have; burnt calories; gone further; gone faster; finished something; exploded in joy; exploded in torment; gone wild with excitement; or levitated in bliss! I would then offer this question: Is it possible that enough could be enough? Fireworks will light up and fade, strong experiences will come and go unbidden. Through Yin we can soften inward and enjoy the undramatic, value our tiny sensations, and consider ourselves worth an extra blanket (literal or metaphorical) to try take the sting out of a sensation we know is not nourishing, so that we can calmly sit with the stuff we can’t change.

To me this is inextricable from the theories around Yin; Meridian theory, skeletal variation, mindfulness. Yin seeks to access the meridian system through gentle stress on the body in areas through which the meridians travel, stimulating them when they are sluggish, easing them when they are overcharged. This is inextricably linked with the emotions, as each meridian is linked to the functioning of an organ, in turn linked to chronic or acute emotional imbalance when they are out of their best functionality.

Easing the energy channels is inextricably linked to the body’s structure, for no smooth flow is possibly available if the body is caught. So, if your natural, individual structure, your level of elasticity, or your skeleton are being asked to do something they are not built to do, resistance comes in physically, mentally and emotionally. If ligaments (more or less lax from person to person), or joints and bones (very different in range of motion because they are physically and immutably different individually) are in extremis, our muscles will come into tight, protective mode (anything from ache, to over contraction, to inflammation, to tearing). Then our innate and sensible brain will send us signals to avoid what we’re doing next time, and our hearts (and kidneys) will know we are not safe, and fear may stop us from ever enjoying that sweet surrender of total release.

Further, meridian theory and skeletal variations are inextricable from mindfulness, because mindfulness is the moment by moment awareness of, and surrender to how we are, what we need to thrive, and to open up to non-violence, compassion, and loving kindness. Ahimsa, Metta and Karuna are impossible to disseminate from an overloaded, imbalanced, or held body, heart or mind.

Through Yin I hope to share that we can learn “right reaction”. We can learn that when we are triggered physically, mentally or emotionally, we do not always need the first reaction. In this slow, inward investigation we can soften our habitual reactions to life’s challenges, and give ourselves the space to assess reasonable response to stimulus. It may be anger of the most fiery order, or fear, or grief, or joy, or disinterest (sometimes those are the right reactions, and they have their place). Sometimes though, our responses come from unconscious places of past hurt or trauma. Sometimes our body is so bound in habit, or so depleted, that we cannot find that space. I experience, and I teach, that Yin gives us softness and space to really connect with our self in our most flowing, changing, and real manifestation. It is my dearest wish for us all to be able to take it into our asana/exercising/working/relating practices!

 

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