One of my favorite things about my yoga studio is that they have a really great offering of Yin/Restorative yoga throughout the week at all of their locations. The idea of Yin/Yang is very popular. We want to have balance in our lives. But the Yin part is often neglected or looked at as a luxury.
Many of the yoga places I've gone to in the past have had Yin yoga or Yoga Nidra as a special workshop maybe once a week or even once a month or once every 3 months. It was nice, but it wasn't a regular part of my routine. It was like massage or other things we do every once in a while to treat ourselves.
It reminds me of the movie City Slickers when Curly told them that people spend 50 weeks a year getting knots in their rope, and then they think 2 weeks there will untie them. Yin Yoga is wonderful to incorporate into my week several times a week.
It seems like nothing when you do it, but it has so many benefits. It really is doing so much. It's relaxing and it's great for your mind and spirit as a meditation, but it also helps you physically in ways your yang training and yoga practices don't. It's not stretching in the same way.
I remember when I first learned of Yin yoga a long time ago with Paul Grilley books and DVD, he compared stretching muscles and stretching connective tissue to stretching a rubber band vs. stretching taffy. A rubber band is stretchy already and can be worked like we work muscles.
Our connective tissue is like taffy. If we try to stretch it the way we stretch muscles, it will break. We will hurt ourselves. We need to let gravity and time help us to allow those tissues to give us permission to stretch them.
When we look at the yin/yang symbol both sides are equal. We can't achieve balance if we only give a tiny bit of focus to the yin part. If we expect a few naps or baths to untie a year's worth of knots. If we look at Yin as an afterthought and not a significant piece of the puzzle.
So whenever you can, say yes to the yin things in your life. Don't think of them as luxuries. They are necessities for balance.
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