Yin and Yang
Many of us live fast-paced, Yang-orientated lives with lots of external stimulation. Always busy, making plans, and running to our next appointment, long working hours and leading active social lives. Often we manage this just fine and get a lot of things done this way.
However, we all reach that point we need to recharge our battery and feel the urge to balance out the “Yang” with some “Yin” – taking time to slow down again. It all comes down to balance and learning how to bend so you don’t break.
Yin yoga is a very passive, nourishing form of yoga in which we stimulate the deeper layers of the body. In yin yoga we stay in a pose for a longer amount of time so we can stimulate the deeper layers of the body: our connective tissues, ligaments, tendons, organs, bones, energy meridians, and our fascia. It is fascia that holds our body together. It envelops our organs, our muscles, our bones and it is vital to our overall health, ability to move and proper functioning of our internal communication systems.
In Yin yoga we don’t use the body to get into a pose, we use the pose to get into our body. Yin invites you to feel. To be. Learn how to listen to your body, to trust your instincts and to know your true self.
As the ancient Taoist philosophy describes:
‘Yin cannot exist without Yang, nor Yang without Yin. Just as shade cannot exist without light, and light can only be light when contrasted to darkness.’