Sun Salutation

I have been happily working my way through Sarah Powers' Insight Yoga book.  While I have done her Liver and Kidney sequences from her DVD of the same name, released years before the book, this has fun things like this afternoons yin yoga sequence - Stomach and Spleen!

I am really  feeling more lucid in my thought processes and more flexible in my joints, so that's something!  

Yin yoga is a lot like marriage - it requires patience and perseverance, often seems pointless in the moment, stretches you beyond what you thought you were capable of if you just give it a minute, and in the end, makes you a better person for having stuck with it.

If you practice yoga, you are probably familiar with some of the various styles – Hatha, Ashtanga, Bikram, Vinyasa. These are all considered yang practices, working the superficial or muscular tissues of your body. To balance your efforts in these asanas and to prepare your body for long-held meditative poses, you might want to consider adding Yin Yoga to your repertoire.

Yin Yoga strengthens connective tissues and joints in the body, opening the hips and allowing the spine to become more supple and supportive. While other forms of yoga help the practitioner achieve greater flexibility and strength, Yin Yoga works deep into the body, accessing areas not normally addressed in more active practices.

In the beginning, Yin Yoga can seem ineffective and even boring as you hold the positions for anywhere from five to twenty minutes, but there lies the challenge. The practice itself is not static; you do not remain motionless in Sphinx or stationary in Dragonfly. As the minutes slide by, you find yourself able to go deeper into the pose as the surface muscles release and those underlying tissues gently give way. You may need to bring your head up from Butterfly to rest your neck before drifting back down. These simple adjustments are not fidgeting, not incorrect, but rather modifications to suit your personal needs and abilities. As you become comfortable with a Yin practice, you will recognize a quietness of self both during and after your time on the mat.

To further investigate Yin Yoga, I recommend Paul Grilley’s YinYoga dvd. His style is more anatomically-oriented and he discusses variations on poses for different body types. Once you have a handle on Yin Yoga itself, Sarah Powers speaks eloquently on the spiritual aspect of Yin Yoga and movement of energy, chi, throughout the body in her Insight Yoga dvd.

I am including a video excerpt from Grilley’s Yin Yoga to illustrate his style.

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