Yin is a concept known from the philosophical, spiritual, religious practice called Taoism (also known as Daoism) which emerged during the 4 century BC in China. Tao means the path  or the way. We all have at least once in a lifetime seen the yin-yang symbol – a circle where the left side is white and the right side is black and there are two dots in the middle *.

Yin and yang are two opposites which emphasize the duality. Yin being the shady, the feminine, the Moon, the passive. Yang being the light, the Sun, the masculine, the active. According to Taoism these opposites are not in a contradiction and absolute, but they have a relative relationship. They balance and complement each other. By embracing the Tao or “your way” you embrace the balance between yin and yang. This thinking somewhat clashes with the Western “all or nothing” understanding.  Already the Bible (or the people who wrote the Bible) separated the good and the evil and imposed the understanding that we are “either or”, never “and”. You either go to hell or to heaven. And this is not the way how Taoism works.

Yin yoga as it is taught and interpreted today in Europe and Americas and possibly also other parts of the world is quite new and contradicts to the Taoist principle of harmony. Before the 80s both active and passive poses were used during the same class to complement each other. But like many other novelties, we have the US to thank for keeping yoga students holding their poses for 3-4 minutes throughout the whole class.  A man called Paul Griley and a woman called Sarah Powers developed the yin yoga we know today because they got inspired by a Kung Fu master Paulie Zink. Paulie taught yin elements in this Taoist Yoga classes. Paulie did not however only use passive long holds but a mix of active and passive asanas during his classes. This mix is usually called hatha (the sun – ha and the moon – tha) yoga. Paul and Sarah in their turn took the passive elements and put them together into about 100 or more yin poses and called it yin yoga.

If you have never participated in a Yin Yoga class, here is a quick summary:

Yin yoga is a slower, more meditative yoga where the primary object of attention is the connective tissue in the body called fascia surrounding muscles, connecting joints and tissues, separating inner organs:

• Poses will be hold 3-4 minutes, slight discomfort is OK, enduring pain not OK
• Holding poses for a long time targets the connective tissue and makes it more elastic
• Yin yoga, if practiced with caution and care, will release tensions in muscles which in its turn will lead to releasing emotional tensions and thought patterns
• Yin is practiced in aerobic mode of breathing – the breath should be flowing unobstructed and preferably inhale and exhale equal length
• Coming in and out of poses should be done slowly and carefully

Enduring pain is counterproductive because muscles lose their elasticity as soon as they understand that their owner is stretching them over the point they can handle (this notifies the brain that the body is in a physical stress which in its turn triggers mental stress).

I am a great supporter of Taoist thinking which embraces both yin and yang elements during one class.  But I understand why the yin known and practiced today is so popular. At times when we are supposed to consume information in milliseconds and children’s cartoons have an ever-shortening duration of episodes to increase action, movement and thrill per minute, stillness is a deficit. This makes yin yoga attractive –  it is a legitimate way to be still.

The crux is that yin yoga poses precondition a healthy body and a very good knowledge of one’s physical condition. Some anatomical knowledge wouldn’t hurt either. Take a stressed office worker with higher adrenaline and cortisol levels, put her/him on the yin yoga mat and the outcome will not be that good. During stress, the stop-signals coming from the muscles are dampened with the two hormones which act like painkillers. This person is bound to go too deep in slow yin poses and hurt his/her ligaments which, unlike other connective tissue and muscle tissue, do not need a deep stretch. Ligaments are there to connect bone to bone, to protect the joints from overextention and to stabilize them. If you ever have sprained your ankle, you know that this can happen easier next time because after the injury the ligaments of the ankle will not shrink back to their original size. Whichever joint ligaments connect, if overstretched, they do not protect the joints efficiently anymore, sometimes inflammations develop as the result.

There are quite many undiscussed issues with yin yoga, especially because yin poses mainly target the most important joint in the body for stability – the hip joint area. Yin requires careful consideration, among other things:

• A warm place to practice, preferably no less than 24 degrees. A cold room is like a stressed person – muscles will not turn elastic enough for yin unless have proper blood circulation
• Warming up of the body with some more active asanas is required in the beginning of the class regardless of the room temperature. Muscles need to create heat (contract-release) before they are forced into still poses. The nerves that fire signals of contract/release need some time to become fully operational in their firing work. This in its turn means that the muscle fiber becomes toned and elastic to do stretching over a time, not immediately in the beginning of the yin class
• Each yin pose requires a counter-pose. Otherwise yin yoga turns into a caricature of office work, like sitting behind the computer. Similar compensations patterns emerge on the yoga mat. Think of a 5-minute-long seated forward bend for example. You need to stretch your anterior longitudinal ligament after you have stretched your posterior longitudinal ligament. Both need equal attention. Unfortunately the principle with counterposes is ever though often not respected by yin yoga teachers.
• With any discomfort in the lower back or sacroiliac joint area it would be wiser to do reclined alternatives of yin poses where instead of putting the body weight on top of the hip joint, you can lie with your sacrum and back against the mat. Legs weigh less and hip openings cause less tear and wear on the ligaments and joints this way.
• Yin yoga injuries are sly. Discomfort or overdoing in yin can manifest itself several days after the class. This makes it sometimes hard to connect the oversensitivity with yin practice and blame something else – bad chair in the office, bad posture, intensive work-out, etc. When one experiences any pain after yin practice on the same day, it means that this was doing yin yoga with a yang mind. This is actually very common – to enter yin classes with yang mind and keep it there until the end.
• All women who have given birth and breastfed their baby the first year should avoid yin yoga up to 2 years after giving birth. Otherwise they can overstretch their ligaments which are more elastic due to a hormone called relaxin during this period. Lax ligaments do not need more relaxing but rather stabilizing. By the way, ovulating women should be careful during and around their period with yin practice because this is the time when the levels of relaxin are also higher and ligaments softer.

Hope this information helps you next time you practice yin yoga.

Kairi

Useful links:

http://yogatrainingguide.com/yin-yoga/

http://www.yinyoga.com/ys1_1.0_history.php

https://www.reference.com/science/function-relaxin-hormone-7dffbe36e1ef6785

* You may come across other orientations of color as well but the one above symbolizes not only yin and yang but also the Tao philosophy – how the light becomes dark and heavy and the summer turns into autumn and winter clockwise.