To Yin Or Not To Yin, That Is The Question

Photo: ©Fotolia

Also: Should we practice what we’re drawn to practice?

BY MAGAZINE EDITOR SUSAN MAIER-MOUL

Q Hi Susan – Just finished my teacher training in Yin.  This practice still really speaks to me, and makes me want to share it with others. Are you still teaching a lot of yin?

What are your thoughts on practice? Do you think we are drawn to what we are, and avoid what we should embrace to grow? 

I am more introspective, don’t mind being alone with my thoughts, am pretty organized and regimented – so, I find myself drawn to practices that support this, Yoga Technique, Aligned Flow, Yin, and, I wonder, should I be attending a Vinyasa class, Bikram, Ashtanga to explore and get out of the familiar? – Cathy

A Dear Cathy, I have had your questions on my mind almost daily since you sent them. They are such good questions, but that is no surprise coming from you!

Restorative or yin?

My take on yin is that it really is an invaluable practice for many people. I do believe it ought to be practiced in concert with yang style. When I was practicing and teaching 5 – 7 hours a day, I never skipped my yin, and it was a life saver for me. Now that I’m not teaching, I’ve really dialed back, and in case it will help anyone else, I wish I had changed up on the yin sooner.

I’ve found that as yin has become popular, it has sometimes been substituted for quiet restorative practices like Svaroopa or the gentle form of Kripalu yoga.

It’s not hard to see why – tightness and stiffness seem to melt with a considerate application of yin. I’ve taught many classes where people cried tears of relief and happiness after practice. (A war veteran told me it was the first time he had not been in pain in decades – and then we both cried!)

Many of us, though, as we become exhausted with responsibility or getting older might be tempted to practice more yin than might be good for our bodies if we are not also keeping a balance of strong activity.

I just want to thumbs up a quiet practice. If we need restorative, we should do restorative not yin. 

But if yin feels so great, what’s the problem?

I find the two practices yin and restorative have quite different effects.

It’s only my opinion, but when we do a regular practice of yin style connective tissue work without maintaining an equally challenging yang style practice, I think we get into joint issues because our joints experience a laxity that our muscles do not have the opportunity to develop strength to coordinate. 

This is especially true for people who have not practiced strength building activities recently due to pain or a busy schedule. (Or, you know, good old aversion!)

In my own case, the yin was wonderful for the tightness in my body after I broke my wrist, but I ought to have modified my practice sooner, because I was doing far less yang style yoga at that point, and no vinyasa at all.

Yang style practice refines the coordination of muscles working together, and the firing of muscles both in terms of timing and location of the contraction – providing stability in those areas surrounding the joint that have a new range of motion after yin as a result of being less constrained by shortened connective tissue.

Exploring new vistas or bullied by ego?

Obviously it can be interesting to try out new things. We’ve all had that experience of being surprised by how relevant or useful something is after we’ve gotten out of having already decided it’s going to suck.

On the other hand, we’d never get any deeper or more skilled in what we are inspired by if we had to divert ourselves from it all the time. And frankly, some techniques and practices work at cross purposes to each other or our health.

As for whether we ought to subject ourselves to what we are not drawn to, after a certain point in life, I think, not so much.

Our bodies are not inexperienced, they have needs and skills. We are, after all, always becoming specialized in the materials we work with, i.e. our lives, and if those materials suggest applications, there’s an organic, and I would personally say even an inspired, reason.

This isn’t to say we should cease to investigate and to work with aversion (as mentioned above), but that the yoga we bring to bear on it should evolve a simplicity equal to the subtlety of our understanding. This is a finer and more nuanced wisdom than gross subjection to everything in order to satisfy our ego’s need to think of ourselves as objective.

Every body is different, and that is a good thing. It also means no one answer is right for all of us, and also that our own development changes our needs and capacities – so we definitely need to stay awake about our choices!

Tibetan teacher Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche says, “The highest practice is the one that works for you.”

Is it working? The discipline of self-observation is invaluable when it comes to creating healthy practices.

© 2011, The Magazine of Yoga, LLC.