S. 2 | EP. 21
This week's episode was sparked by a question from a listener:
"What about when you don't feel it physically? I don't feel it's, and she has in quotations, it working. So that functional element, which Paul and you are teaching is not there. I'm able to hold these poses for five-plus minutes without fiddling, moving, or being impatient. I mean, it's bliss.
Don't get me wrong, but I'm tapping more into restorative yoga and I want Yin."
We always are. I think as Yoga people, we're always chasing stretch or chasing sensation.
And that can be problematic if you're always chasing stretch or you're always chasing the sensation of stretch, that feeling. Which can be quite addictive. And I know of, I've heard many, teachers that have taught probably another 10 years, in addition to mine, they've been teaching for, you know, somewhere between 25 and 30 years, talk about an addiction to feeling the sensations in the body, right?
That too can become an addiction. And if we're not skillful. Injuries to the body, right? There are all kinds of Yoga teachers out who are not Yin teachers, but teach more active styles of yoga, like Ashtanga, who back in the day would just push through the pain and have ended up with hip replacements or knee surgeries.
So there needs to be some wisdom to temper our practice. And an understanding that the point of a Yoga practice isn't necessarily just the physical poses. So I want to start with, that the point of a yin practice may not always be the physical poses. And I'll talk a little bit more in a moment here about, other things that the practice can be about for those when you're in a pose and you're not feeling any sensation.
So that's the first thing I want to address is that the point of Yoga isn't to be chasing sensation for the rest of our lives. If you were thinking about Hatha Yoga, the point would have been according to Patanjali to create a body that's stable and healthy and can sit in meditation so that it can eventually merge with the divine.
Right. That was the whole point. Now, even if you're not a Patanjali style of Yoga, if you tend to be a little bit more TCM or, other philosophies from India, That's fine.
But just know that these physical shapes that we make with our body are the least important part.
So that's one thing. Yes, they're helpful. Yes, they can help us maintain the physical health of our body. But there's so much more that goes into a Yoga practice. So for example, the nervous system, and if you don't know, much about the nervous system, previous to this episode coming out, there will be a couple of episodes on, there's one on the nervous system and Yin Yoga and trauma.
There are so many other aspects of a Yin Yoga Practice, other than physical sensation that are explored in this episode.
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