When I practice Yin Yoga, I become myself completely and experience a deep feeling of peace within myself— I am fully myself and do not have to please anyone else—either proverbially or in reality. While some types of yoga specify precisely how certain positions should look, and many practitioners do their best to emulate this ideal image, Yin Yoga is oriented towards the person practicing it—you can’t go wrong. Our inner teacher is the most important yoga teacher and only considers this one individual body. I believe there is great healing potential within this as only we ourselves sense what is best for us.
I do not consider it wise to seek out a doctor just to have a medicine prescribed for current complaints—and to hope that everything will be fine again—without any further questioning. Unfortunately, essential conventional medicine increasingly focuses on combating symptoms and less on looking for the cause. Also, very few doctors have enough time to concentrate intensively on the history of the individual patient. Alternative medical practitioners, on the other hand, tend to look for the origin of the complaints, and they view people more on a holistic level, taking more things into consideration which might have caused the issue in the first place.
In order to better understand our particular ailments and issues, we need rest periods, and some kind of regular practice, for example something like a regular Yin Yoga practice, which directs the senses inwards and can bring us into deep contact with ourselves. The mind speaks very softly, and these periods of withdrawal are absolutely vital to understand it and to find out what the body can express with symptoms. It is said that when the mind is not being listened to, the body sounds the alarm through illness, thereby making the person slow down.
Ideally our energies are in balance when we both integrate Yin and Yang energies into our life. Yin corresponds to a female, more receptive, and yang to a male, more outgoing energy. In our current age we oftentimes have a surplus of Yang in our environment, which can trouble us at a physical level. Never before have there been so many hyperactive children as there are today—I tend to find the term “hyperactive” unsuitable, and I am only using it here for the ease of understanding—and “burnout” is just named as a fashionable complaint, without due respect for its incredibly harmful effect on our lives. In my experience, I find an important cause is anxiety, which can be worsened due to an excess of intense Yang-energies.
Think for a moment how everything has changed over the years: Barely anybody takes time out to rest in the early afternoon nowadays; due to mobile accessibility we receive calls or text messages late in the evening when we should actually be resting; the TV is on all day in some households, even when nobody is consciously following it; there are fewer family meals; the performance mentality at school and at work is ever-present; attentive conversations without glancing at your mobile phone have also become rare. All these things exhaust our Yin. Yin and Yang are then no longer in balance, which has adverse consequences. If these energies fall out of their dynamic balance, energy can no longer flow harmoniously and this creates the circumstances for illnesses to occur.
Yin Yoga practice gives us the peace that we so urgently need in this noisy world. We can use it to get in touch with our inner selves once again, as well as find release in our stuck places. Our body awareness is trained and intensified through long and deep stretches, but these also provide us with calm so that memories or emotions can emerge again. If we become our own quiet observer and look and listen carefully to what it is showing us, it is quite possible that we will even be able to trace the causes of certain complaints in time.
Our body communicates with us constantly, but many of us have forgotten how to listen to it and interpret its signs. For example, if we experienced emotional damage in childhood, we often carry this into our adult lives. Symptoms often appear—such as nervousness, anxiety, depressive malaise, or sleep disturbances—which can be treated quickly with medicines, but the actual causes of the complaints remain unrecognized and untreated. It is therefore important to become aware of what is going on inside us, no matter whether it is pleasant or painful. If we identify what is causing us stress, then we can accept it, process it, and ultimately let it go. This progression can be very liberating and is a complete contrast to the repression of unpleasant experiences or memories. A repression mechanism never works in the long term. Whatever is behind it will keep occurring until it is accepted, understood, and released.
Yin Yoga practice, with its passive stretches that last for 3-5 minutes, we can learn, in a wonderful way about the process of letting go. If we have learned to let go physically, we can then also let go better emotionally and mentally. The peaceful and introverted Yin Yoga practice gives us sufficient space to question pain or illnesses and find out what the body is trying to tell us.
We know today that our self-healing capacities are most powerful in the parasympathetic state which you can reach during a yin yoga practice. But always remember that YOUR path might be very different from that of your partner, your friends, or your family. Please be mindful with yourself, so you can experience the power of self-healing in early states if your body is out of balance and trying to tell you something. Then you have a good chance of getting back on track again soon.
Here is a yin yoga sequence which focuses on stretching all meridians and ends with a tapping massage so that you can start refreshed into the day!
Enjoy your practice!
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Adapted from Be Healthy with Yin Yoga: The Gentle Way to Free Your Body of Everyday Ailments and Emotional Stresses by Stefanie Arend (She Writes Press, August 2019).
Photo credit: Forster & Martin Fotografie, Munich
