Yin Yoga

Saturday I walked over to Monroe St to return library books, 45 minutes. Then sat in the coffee shop for an hour or so to read. Then walked home again, through Vilas Park, 52 minutes. Lovely day, no pain meds, I was feeling pretty good.

One of the library books I was returning, which was terribly overdue, was Yin Yoga: Outline of a Quiet Practice. It had a lot of interesting material in it: the main idea being that just as muscle tissue can be trained by active (yang) exercise, connective tissue can be made more elastic by the slow stretching characteristic of many yoga practices. I had thought I might note some of the routines out of this book. But as usual, the positions were illustrated by an extremely flexible young person, and the sequences not particularly useful for working up to that condition. Some of them were, which I read with interest, but I am going to depend on Susi for more appropriate guidance. Still, it was cool to know some more of the names for positions we have already tried in class -- "Sleeping Swan" for that piriformus stretch that starts from hands & knees, for instance. The general practice outlines a great many positions that are held, with the muscles relaxed, for three to five minutes.

It is not really news to me that women in my post-industrial culture tend to lack upper-body strength, and lose bone mass there particularly if we don't take up weight-bearing exercise. The Chinese yin/yang analysis of this was an interesting take on it. The lower body tends to be heavier, closer to the ground, yin characteristics; so my walking program balances this tendency with (yang) movement. The upper body is lighter, more mobile, active, busy: yang characteristics. This can be balanced by strength training as well as flexibility, and yoga actually offers a lot of weight-bearing positions for the arms -- although in my class we are not anywhere near to balancing the entire body weight on the arms. Downward Dog is my best effort right now. The Plank (push-up) I can handle briefly, and Crocodile (with arms bent) is something I can look forward to. I might also look for more details on getting to a Tripod (legs extended to the side, weight on feet, with one arm also supporting the body weight).