Always begin from where you are!

In his Yoga sutras Patanjali describes as asana as having two important qualities, which are “sthira” and “sukha”. Sthira means steadiness and alertness; Sukha means ease and comfort. Both of these should be used in yoga asanas. Always begin from where you are. If you have a stiff back, you have to acknowledge this is your starting point and work with the postures from here. Progress with steadiness, alertness, ease and you will remain in comfort. Your breath is the key link between your inner and outer body. Allow every movement to be led by the breath. Allow the body to surrender it’s tension using the breath and move further into poses during the out breath. 

www.pwoc.co.uk

Yin and Yang

This Symbol (Yin-Yang) represents the ancient Chinese understanding of how things work. The outer circle represents "everything", while the black and white shapes within the circle represent the interaction of two energies, called "yin" (black) and "yang" (white), which cause everything to happen. They are not completely black or white, just as things in life are not completely black or white, and they cannot exist without each other.

While "yin" would be dark, passive, downward, cold, contracting, and weak, "yang" would be bright, active, upward, hot, expanding, and strong. The shape of the yin and yang sections of the symbol, actually gives you a sense of the continual movement of these two energies, yin to yang and yang to yin, causing everything to happen: just as things expand and contract, and temperature changes from hot to cold.

Begin Yoga From Where You Are

A yogi is an accomplished male student of yoga; a female is called a yogini. Swami is a title for a spiritual master. Guru literally means “one who takes you from the darkness to the light” and is often casually used to denote a teacher or master. A yogi disciple in India is called a Chela. Mantra means mind projection and is a yoga technique of focusing on an external or internal sound to create a personal transformation. Production of the vibration can become in tune with the universal vibration of energy. When your evaluation of self’ changes, when you feel differently about yourself, everything about you changes: your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and every aspect of your behaviour. As we move deeper we change and learn, often in unexpected ways.

Opportunity at the Edge:

The edge is the point in every pose when you are still within your capabilities but are challenging yourself to go just a little bit deeper. An edge is where we come right up against ourselves and what we can do and be, a place of comfortable discomfort - opportunities of transformation. Playing the edge can be a subtle shift – maybe holding a pose for a breath longer, stretching a few degrees more, or even trying a modified version of a pose. Sometimes your edge is learning to do less, to be more patient. Ultimately your intuition knows what you need. We need to listen to our intuition and ignore our ego. When you push the edge of your comfort zone you emerge from the experience with a new level of awareness and confidence. As soon as we breakthrough one edge a new one is created. The bar is ever raised. Here we see that yoga allows for a continuous natural lifelong process of constant growth.

Growth is the most important thing there is!

In order to heal you need to feel!

Don’t try hard try easy! 

May the (life) force be with you!

The ancient yogis were very aware of the universal life energy that all things are made of. They were experts of the use of vital energy that enters on the inhalation and called it prana. The exhalation produced energy which is named as apana. It’s the interplay between the prana and apana that keeps us alive by circulating the vital life force and eliminating the used up energy. What the Indians called Prana the Chinese call Chi! 

Yoga can teach you about the hidden energy centres within the body which according to Eastern Medicine are called Chakras. Chakras are vital to your health and Eastern Medicine recognises seven major chakras (as well as many minor ones) that interact within the body and an eighth chakra that connects all of them. When practicing yoga you recharge and balance your chakras by bringing circulation and prana (chi) to the nerve plexus at each of the chakras. So with yoga you not only improve flexibility and strength but also your energy   and the release of stagnant energy within the body. Yin yoga works with the modern meridian theory developed by Paul Grilley - stretching the fascia works also on the meridians.

www.pwoc.co.uk

Yoga to grow...

A good Yoga instructor makes you feel good, it’s relaxing, it’s energising, it’s strengthening – you feel better at the end of a session than at the start. The transition will be smooth and easy much of the time (even unnoticed) because it’s so natural, but some of the time it may not be so comfortable – it may be hard and painful – but this is only because growth can hurt when you resist change and most of us prefer to resist change in an attempt to remain comfortable by maintaining the status quo. Yoga is a method by which to obtain control of one’s latent powers. Yoga allows us to turn our thoughts inward, away from the objective world. The real benefits of yoga are from following and learning its fruits to get more out of life in every respect..  

Part of getting older is the change that the body goes through – it tends to stiffen and tighten – we lose suppleness, strength and vitality. But with a yoga instructor you can dramatically reduce the effects of age. You can improve your balance, strength, flexibility and vitality. Yoga can take years off your face and years from your body, and add years to your life. Yoga helps the body’s machine function smoothly, efficiently, at peak performance. It encourages your body to derive every last possible atom of nutritive valve from the food you ingest, to get every second of refreshment and rest from your sleep, to attain regularity, relief from minor aches and pains, the ability to sleep deep and wake feeling alive, the difference from feeling good to feeling terrific.

Yin Yoga in Petts Wood

Stillness in yoga

Yoga is a way of moving into stillness in order to experience the truth of who you are. Moving into stillness in order to evidence your true nature is a primary theme of yoga simply because everything about you – every thought, feeling, and emotion, as well as every aspect of your behaviour – is predicted on the way you feel about yourself. The way you feel about yourself determines how you think, what you do, and how you interact with the world. Stillness is a higher energy state than what we are used to. But once we give undivided attention with pratice we can come into stillness and hence a higher energy state. 

There are two levels of stillness:

1) Learning to relax, become centred and mind focused.

2) Living your daily life with the same new and growing inner     certainty of who you really are.

http://www.pwoc.co.uk

Two sides of the same coin - Yin/Yang

In order to exercise in a yin way we need long periods of gentle stress to the harder tissues to allow them to adapt and function appropriately. In the same way to exercise the muscles we need repetition of contraction and stretch to allow adaptation and growth. Hence yin yoga holds the poses for longer periods of time focusing on the joints rather than the muscles.

Now remember the tiny black dot within the white of the yin and yang symbol. Within yang there is yin and the same is true of our muscles. Each muscle has a proportion of fascia within it (up to 30%). Also our yin tissues also contain yang elements – elastic fibres called elastin is buried deep within the ligaments and fascia too. When we are born we are so much more flexible and pliable – we are full of elastin in our yin tissues we are yang like creatures. But as we grow and age we lose more and more elastin and within our yang tissue lay down more and more scar tissue in the form of collagen causing us to become stiffer and stiffer and much more yin like creatures. So in our youth we can exercise very easily in a yang style whilst as we age we should naturally exercise in a yin style. And as we have already said we need the yin to compliment the yang and vice versa so at all times striving towards balance and harmony – the yin with yang - the two sides of the same body! 

For a really good website telling you all you need to know about Yin Yoga follow the link:

http://www.yinyoga.com

This is a website by Bernie Clark, who has written two excellent books about Yin Yoga, Yin Sights and The Complete Guide To Yin Yoga. He was encouraged to write these books by both Paul Grilley and Sarah Powers two of the pioneers of modern Yin Yoga.

Yin and Yang

Everything in life is defined by patterns. All around you you’ll see patterns surrounding you – look at the dark colours and look at the light colours, feel the softness of your skin and the hardness of a nail. We always make contrasts about things – light and dark, soft and hard – these are comparisons of something within a context. Within life we strive towards balance – what the Daoist call ‘the Dao’. However, nothing is static everything is ever changing moving towards or away from the centre. But to return to the centre is the ideal. Yin and Yang are relative terms, almost the opposite sides of the same coin – one cannot exist without the other – and how often have you found it hard to balance a coin on its’ edge?

The ancient Chinese observed that everything has a yin and yang attributes. The yin character refers to the shaded side of a hill or stream; yang refers to the sunny side. Yet you can’t have shade without light, and light can’t exist without knowing what darkness is. It is here we can say that there is no absolute yin or yang characteristics – white is considered yang while black is considered yin in the context of colour. Then what about grey on the spectrum – grey is both yin and yang! Compared to white grey is darker so is yin, but compared to black it is lighter so would be yang. This is why the Western world has struggled for so long to understand the ancient Chinese philosophy of Yin and yang. 

Look at the yin/yang symbol and you see the white dot within the black and the black dot within the white – even within darkness there is light and vice versa. So even in the dynamic yoga sessions of Hot Yoga (yang) there is a yin aspect (relaxation).

www.pwoc.co.uk

As stated earlier we need balance – come back to our centres – so after a long vigorous muscular session of yoga taking us into a yang characteristic we need to come back to our balanced centre with a yin recovery of corpse pose. If we stay too long in an unbalanced situation we become stressed, ill, out of function; so we need the universe to restore balance by throwing us to the other side – we may become ill to make us rest.

 Taking another example for explanation of Yin and Yang we have the heart, a soft, hollow, muscular, organ contained deep within the chest. Then we have the sternum (breastbone) a hard, solid, bone resting on the surface of the chest. So if we were to ask which is yin – heart or sternum – we need to ask more; with a context it makes it easier. In terms of the yin/yang quality of hardness the heart is hollow and soft compared to the sternum which is hard and almost solid. So the heart is yang and the sternum is yin. But when comparing the location, the heart is deep and the sternum is superficial. Now the heart is yin and the sternum is yang.

On a basic level we describe muscles as yang tissues because they are soft, elastic, superficial, hot, and like rhythm. Whilst we describe bones as yin because they are hard, non-elastic, deep, ‘cold’ and stay the same lacking the rhythm of a contracting muscle shortening and lengthening. Staying in this basic classification of tissues we group muscles and tendons into one group (yang tissues) and bone, ligaments and fascia into the other (yin tissues). So we can say that yang tissues are elastic, employing rhythmical and repetitive movements to stress them to grow and function; whilst yin tissues are much less elastic preferring long periods of small stress to cause adaptation and growth and function. Think of wearing orthodontic braces to realign the teeth – this requires a few years not just a few repetitive quick movements of the jaw bones. 

In order to exercise in a yin way we need long periods of gentle stress to the harder tissues to allow them to adapt and function appropriately. In the same way to exercise the muscles we need repetition of contraction and stretch to allow adaptation and growth. Hence yin yoga holds the poses for longer periods of time focusing on the joints rather than the muscles.