by Tom Schroeder.
Yoga studios everywhere these days are offering many opportunities to attend yoga classes: hot yoga, vinyasa, hatha, gentle hatha, yin yoga, to name a few. How do we choose the kinds of classes that best suit our individual needs, along with our own personal limitations? Yoga is often marketed in such a way as to imply that one needs to be flexible and strong in order to be able to do the poses that are often illustrated in photos and videos. I’m even reminded of a video I recently saw of a large woman who is extremely flexible. I was impressed with her ability and the message was that yoga can be practiced by all levels of flexibility and body types. But the subtext is always there: the marketing images of yoga are of individuals who have attained a high level of competence. If find that I am both envious and intimidated. I’m always left thinking: Where does this leave me? I don’t want to practice a yoga that is only for a few; rather I want to practice yoga that is for the “rest of us” — those of us with tight bodies from too much sitting and inactivity, those with limitations due to injury, those with limited experience with physical activity.
Yin yoga is relatively new on the scene, and is practiced by holding poses for longer that other types of yoga, three to five minutes on average. The goal of yin yoga is not only to stretch, that is, lengthen our muscles in a pose, but to hold the pose long enough so as to stress the joint associated with the muscle(s) being challenged in the pose, including stressing the connective tissues surrounding our joints. The stressing of the joint, leads to increased flexibility, improved joint health, increased sense of well-being, etc.
Reasons I like yin:
- The poses are held long enough to allow me to go inward, allowing enough time to experience the sensations the pose stimulates. I move into a pose to find my first “edge” — that sense of resistance felt in the body. Often this is experienced as tightness, tugging, tingling, throbbing, and sometimes felt as emotions: agitation, fear, anxiety. As we hold the pose we find that the body opens and the sensations evolve. We then move deeper into the pose and continue. We hold the pose long enough for the muscles to reach maximum length and then to stress the joint. In this place I find stillness, which rejuvenates me.
- I am in my early 60s, and my body just doesn’t move like it used to. However, by regularly practicing yoga, and yin yoga in particular, I continue to increase flexibility when the experts tell me I should be losing flexibility.
- Holding discomfort: all sensations change over time. Even when stressing the tightest places in our bodies, the initial sensations evolve. What sometimes begins as almost unbearable discomfort transforms into a sense of opening, ease, warmth, tingling. I continue to remind myself of this lesson in my emotional life. Feelings of anxiety, fear, depression, anger visit me at times, and I’m learning that if I allow these sensations in my body to just “be” without a need to change they will evolve and pass on to something else.
A regular, rigorous, self-reflective yoga practice enhances body, mind and spirit. Please join me in a class sometime.
