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).

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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.