Yin Yoga
The amount of Yin yoga classes in the West is rapidly increasing, but to practise this type of yoga it is nice to understand the basic principles. Yin and Yang are the two opposites balancing, and the ancient Chinese called the middle the Dao. Everyone knows the Yin and Yang symbol with the black being the Yin and the white being the Yang.
The yang tissues within our bodies can be seen as our muscles, blood, and skin compared to the yin tissues of ligaments, bones and joints. Our yang tissues appreciate a dynamic and repetitive form of exercise. Our yin tissues, being dryer and more stiff, could be damaged if they were stressed in dynamic manner. They require a more gentle practise staying in poses for longer amounts of time using compression and tension, stimulating them to grow stronger. Why should we put pressure on a joint to grow stronger? Stress on a joint causes the secretion of hyaluronic acid which builds synovial fluid and collagen strengthens cartilage.
But then why is there a white dot in the black and vice versa if they are opposites? Looking at the muscle tissue we can find yin within yang: even 30 percent of what we call our muscle is actually fascia. The fascia within our muscles govern the muscles’ range of movement while it is the muscle cells that govern their strength. Thus, in order to create length in our muscles we would have to do a yin practice. And we would have to do a yang practise to gain strength.
Too much of anything is not healthy. Too much or too little exercise can lead to atrophy or degeneration. In order to keep our body healthy and happy we need to stress the tissues we have and then we must let them rest. As stated above the Yang tissues must be stressed in a Yang way and the Yin tissues must be stressed in a Yin way. Applying a yin exercise to yang tissues and vice versa can be damaging. We tighten our muscles to protect our joints and we relax them to stress our joints.
Why do we use so many props?
Just in case you don’t know what props are; props are objects we use in poses such as pillows, blankets, belts, bolsters, yoga blocks.
So we can adjust the pose to our body. It is important to know that all bodies are different. There is no one size fits all as there isn’t one pose that works in the same way for everyone. If you look at the image you will notice that not all hip joints look the same. This means that not everyone has the same external or internal rotation in their hips. Everyone comes into the same pose in their unique way. To help this anatomical variation we use props to support us.
To relax our muscles and work into the yin tissues, which are our ligaments, tendons, joints and fascia we want to get comfortable. And props can provide us with the support we need to relax completely and let gravity do the rest of the work.
Yin Yoga came from Paul Grilley who took the yin part of a Daoist Yoga practice taught by Paulie Zink and combined it with his knowledge on anatomy and the meridians from Traditional Chinese Medicine. Chinese Medicine pays most attention to the flow of energy, or chi, through pathways in the body called meridians. This is not a concept also found in yoga; we call these channels of energy Nadis. At the moment we are starting to refer to the channels as myofascial meridians which is based on evidence based study so it remains a bit of a grey area.
The Chinese meridians come in pairs; one Yin and one Yang. The theory is that all of the meridians have their own different physical, emotional and spiritual responses when they are activated. If there is an imbalance in any of the meridians emotionally this could influence you physically and the other way around as well. In a meridian based yin practice we look at how we can move stagnant energy in order to aide wellbeing. Based on where the meridians run through the body we can design a yin practice that targets these specific areas.
If you’re really interested in Yin Yoga I would recommend reading The Complete Guide to Yin Yoga written by Bernie Clarke.
Sources: Bernie Clark. 2012. The Complete Guide to Yin Yoga. Wild Strawberry Productions, https://paulgrilley.com/bones.
