WHAT IS YIN AND YANG?
I’ve heard from my meditation and sangha leaders a similar message through the years. “Why don’t you bring your practice into your life?” This question was challenging for me because I didn’t see what they were seeing that brought forth this message. I didn’t see my yang or what I thought of as “male” energy as dominating my daily life in the way that they saw it, but only as a way I have learned to be productive and useful in the world. I’m a doer.
However, as I have moved into my Elder hood, I’ve gotten much stronger messages from my body of how my yang energy unbalances me and brings exhaustion. I see how valuable my “feminine” traits are and how I don’t let them guide me as much as my “male” traits. My intense personality has been who I am! I learned that by being creative and strong and insightful and taking action for what I believe is good. Helping others fits into that energetic outreach as well as learning to actualize all of my athletic and creative gifts in some way. Whoosh! But all these ways of being in the world have taken a lot of energy to balance. Slowly, I’ve learned more about my receptivity, my introspection, my sensitivity and my solitude as refuges I value greatly. Especially as I chose the work of a psychotherapist.
Over the years, I’ve realized I needed more quiet time or down time in order to maintain this conditioned level of activity in my life. My mindfulness and yoga practices began to show me this through observing my body’s need for relaxation, rest and recovery. As I went through my divorces and the death of my sister, I was learning how to be with difficult feelings and the darker aspects of life, but I wasn’t always listening to my body as my heart was hurting. I now see I was in the habit of pushing myself harder to get through these difficult emotions. How I mistreat my body was particularly evident in the past two years when I came back from extended adventure travel in Europe and South America to exhaustion and sickness. I had pushed my body too far!
In the yoga world, there’s been development of a new form of yoga over the past 15 years called Yin Yoga. Having just completed a 90 hour training in this form, I can give you a few definitions. Most of the yoga that has been brought to us through many teachers from India is a form of Yang yoga, or yoga that activates the muscles and skin to generate chi (life energy) flow throughout the body which activates and revitalizes the body and the spirit. This type of yoga is what we all have done to build strength and flexibility in our bodies and enhance the cardiovascular system. Examples: Ashtanga Yoga, Bikram’s Hot Yoga, Power Yoga, Kundalini Yoga —all forms of Hatha Yoga and Vinyasa or flow yoga styles. My Yin Yoga teacher’s definition is: “Yin yoga encompasses practices that cultivate stillness, receptivity, tenderness, nourishment and awareness of the subtle. Yin yoga offers a sweet life-giving nectar that is an essential balance to invigorating yang practices.” (Caitlin Rose Kennedy) In Yin yoga, we activate the deeper yin tissues defined as connective tissues more hidden such as joints, bones, ligaments, tendons, cartilage and facia tissue that holds everything together. The benefits of Yin yoga physically is to slowly unwind long-held patterns that have accumulated in your body that release more range of movement, to align and heal your bones, and to strengthen these yin tissues. It re- ignites the electrical current throughout your yin tissues. It is different than Restorative Yoga, which is teaching total relaxation of the whole body, though Yin Yoga is very restorative to your body.
FINDING BALANCE WITH YIN AND YANG — PLUS MORE!
But there’s so much more that can be awakened through Yin Yoga and other Yin practices and that’s more of what I want to share with you and it’s about balancing PLUS—a concept I have been working towards all my life.
Sarah Powers, one of the founders of Yin Yoga says, “Yin/Yang is not a concept of two opposing opposites clashing, but the unity of two aspects of Chi whose continual movement revolves in a constant interplay of balance which moves in cycles.” Caitlin continues, “Nature is a dance of balancing yin and yang. To learn more about this balance, we need to look at how nature follows the cycles: rotations of day and night, energy building for birth and declining for death, seasons moving in cycles, high pressure moving to low pressure and seas becoming deserts.”
Deborah Eden Tull, my most favorite Zen teacher, shares the invitation of allowing darkness or Yin aspects into our lives in her most powerful book, Luminous Darkness : “In the darkness, which does not discriminate, we are relieved of the confines of ego to remember something much greater to which we all belong. Darkness is the field of freedom beyond duality. We experience the restorative aspect of nature that is necessary to sustain and regenerate all of life. We let go of our familiar script to meet the moment as an empty canvas or vessel, open to possibility and connection.” ( p. 19)
So, the distinction of yin versus yang is not the point; but instead the opportunity of deepening into the wholeness or who we are in each moment and moving beyond the conditioning of thinking that being “productive” to be fully alive. This is freedom beyond duality! Yoga is about integrating the many levels of our being; physical, emotional, mental and spiritual and Yin yoga is about meeting and greeting with curiosity that continuous flow of yin and yang as it shows up day after day. The conditioned duality of our world separates us from what is really here and alive in each moment.
Yin yoga as a class is not easy to commit to especially in Boulder, CO. Our culture promotes activity and doing and downplays rest and relaxation — this is not healthy for our wellbeing and happiness no matter what age you are. But, it has taken getting curious about and caring for my older body to see the benefits of integrating Yin yoga into my weekly routine. It aligns perfectly with my meditation practice; I am bringing my body along with me in a more embodied way of loving it and nurturing it alongside my heart. I see that being with my yin moods and allowing my body to be there too, gives me the balance I am needing to integrate all parts of myself into my life at this moment in deep time.
I am so very grateful for this discovery. Check out a Yin Yoga class or a Vinyasa with Yin elements and see how you work with all of this!!
