Melting stretches
I have just returned from a 4 day
introduction to Yin Yoga. Those of
you who know me well, know my questioning nature, also my drive not just to
read or be told about different movement modalities but to really understand
them and to feel them in my own body.
Yin Yoga has been bouncing around on the
edge of my understanding for several years, initially in my Yoga training, one
of my fellow students introduced us to Yin Yoga, I remember walking around the
garden of the house where we had our retreat, trying to understand TCM 5 element
theory and not much else. However the seed was sown and so when Yin Yoga
resurfaced at an International Fascia Congress in Washington, I sat up and
listened. The speaker was Paul Grilley and he took the podium with Robert
Schleip and explained about compression and tension in yoga poses. Because of
his use of the words Compression and Tension, I thought he was talking about
biotenegrity and I struggled to fit his explanation into the model of
biotensegrity I held in my head. Today I think I was adding 2 and 2 and making
5, however I am still not 100% sure of that, and somewhere just out of reach, there is
a connection but probably not the obvious one.
Yin yoga has also surfaced in the Fascial
Fitness training relating to melting stretches.
Fascial stretches are part of the Fascial
Fitness training, the principles of which are the activation of long chains and
tensegrity structures, Pendiculation and variations in direction of stretch,
and loading of the stretch using weights, resistance and bounces.
So when a Yin Yoga course based on the work
of Paul Grilley popped up on Face book I didn’t press delete, I followed the
link. The course was in London and offered the option to take the first weekend
of a 200 hour Training as an introduction.
So what is Yin Yoga? My understanding was
that it was mediation in a pose. Why is it so Fascial?
After 4 days of Yin yoga (2x 2hour classes
per day), meditation, Traditional Chinese medicine (meridian theory) and
psychology, including a good dose of energetic anatomy, classic anatomy,
functional anatomy and a sparse sprinkling of fascial anatomy; here is my understanding based upon my
own experience.
Like all yoga it’s not all about the asana
or poses, Yin seems to take more from the Chinese philosophy than the
traditional yoga practice which is based on Indian.
Yin is the opposite of Yang, however they
are co-dependant each having a little of the other in them, think of the
symbol.
Yang is all action, masculine in nature, a
yoga practice/exercise/movement practice or lifestyle, which focuses on
exercising muscles and moving blood around the body is Yang.
Yin is calm and nurturing, feminine in
nature, a yoga practice/exercise /movement practice, which focuses on the
connective tissue.
The balance between the yin and yang is
essential for wellbeing and this is what practicing Yin yoga along side yang
forms of exercise aspires to bring.
The plastic nature of connective tissue,
according to Yin Yoga, enjoys gentle pressures, applied for longer periods of
time in order to grow strong.
These are my personal observations and may
not be true for others however the classes for me where both extremely
challenging, at times painful (in a good way), and wonderfully calming and
releasing. You moved into the positions slowly, each position targeted
different areas of the body which correspond to meridian theory, you are not in
the pose until the target area to be ‘stressed’ by stretching has been found,
this involved a lot of bolsters, blocks and experimenting with different
foot/leg/body positions before the target area was found, some poses just
didn’t work because of my unique pelvic shape/ femur head angle, tight tissues,
past injury etc etc. The idea is to find a point of stress in the target area,
which is not injurious or painful in a bad way and surf that point. This is a
self practice, you have to trust your intuition your own awareness of how your
body feels, everybody looked completely different, we were not adjusted or
assisted in progressing the stretch just in finding the target area, the
bolsters were not there to support as in restorative yoga, but to allow the
practitioner to work around natural compression felt in their own body and to
allow the muscles to turn off and a melting stretch of the connective tissue to
occur. You then stay in that pose for anything between 1-5 or more minutes depending
upon your experience. The time in the position was the challenge, I noticed how
muscles I didn’t know I was contracting became obvious and so I released them
and I sank deeper and deeper into the stretch. In order to feel the melt it
helped to close your eyes and look inside your self, quiet and still. The
hardest bit was yet to come but the reward was so wonderful. Coming out of the
‘melted position’ was far harder than going in, everything was done slowly and no-one
was rushed. I often had to use my hands to move my legs out of the pose, there
was a lot of groaning and grimacing. You then take a ‘rebound’ position, prone,
supine or pose of a child where the most popular, sometimes taking a counter
pose first, in the rebound time of around 2 minutes you could feel the
connective tissues rebounding, slowly returning to their usual length, your
body felt open and released, a cooling flow and such a peace and tranquility.
The Yin yoga says that this is a restoring of the flow a Chi. My Fascial
Fitness inner teacher probably would say it was also a rehydration of the
tissue. What ever it was it was worth the wait.
After the class we went into mediation so
easily.
Will I go back and continue the course?
This morning when I woke up I actually
missed the early morning yin class. I also seemed very alert and ready to get
going (unusual for me as I am not a morning person). I do ache in parts of my
body, which I probably pushed to hard because I thought I could, after all I couldn’t
let the youngsters in the room see that I was struggling could I! a lesson
learned, it is my practice and no-one else was looking anyway.
The melting stretch was delicious and
pleasurable, everything a fascial movement should be, I’m not sure I would be
happy for a hyper mobile client to take a class and the usual contra-indicated
population, pregnancy, joint replacements etc would need extra care but it is
an experience I would recommend to my over stressed, anxious over exercised clients
who need the repeated buzz of the Yang.
So now I know what a melting stretch really
is, and I will do it again. Sadly I can only get to a couple more days of this
course because of studio commitments.
The course was run by The Yoga People and well
taught, bringing in experts in the various disciplines. The classes were
amazing.
My fellow participants were lovely and very
generous towards me. Thank you.
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