Week 12 was a two day Yin Yoga focused class. In Yin Yoga you hold poses longer and allow gravity and not active muscles to stretch in the pose. It gets deep into the fascia and ligaments in addition to your muscles. All poses are generally either seated or lying down and while many poses are shared with more active Yoga types, there are differences in how they are held and how some cues are given. There are also some poses that are pretty much Yin only. In my own practice, I hold most poses for three minutes but some for five minutes and a few for only one minute.
I have been practicing Yin for a long time, so the poses that we were taught in the class were mostly known to me though we did some poses that I was not familiar with (mostly subtle ones) . Our instructor provided a booklet with a number of poses that will be helpful along with my Yin book that I bought years ago. I love Yin and posted a sequence a few years ago here. Link to Older Post
We spent a very long time working on the concept of compression verses tension in the body. This concept was one of the greatest things I got out of my training. Basically, we are limited by poses either by tension (tightness in muscles) or compression (bone pressing on bone). If a person feels stretching in a pose (tension) , then they have room to progress in a pose. If a person feels compression in a pose (meaning bone is hitting bone), chances are they can never progress in that pose. While this may not a complete axiom (Did he just use Axiom in a sentence?) , it is good information to know when you are teaching a student. You can ask a student what they are feeling and if there is compression (for example in a forward fold they can feel their hips compressing and not tightness in their hamstrings), then they should not go so deep in that pose.
We also discussed what makes one person able to do a pose, while another cannot. For example, look at the photo below.
These are Femur bones. The ball on the top left of each bone go into the Pelvis (the hip socket known as the Acetabulum). You can see that the person on the left has less of an angle along the head of the bone and that the spur along the top right (known as the Greater Trochanter) is more pronounced. This photo shows that despite us being human, there is a range of difference in how we are structured. The person on the left will have a lesser range of motion when widening their legs than the person on the right and thus will be limited by their Femur construction in what is called abduction poses. The person on the right will be more able to do a split than the person on the left due to this difference. This is due to the fact that the person on the left may hit their pelvis with their legs abducted before they hit the limit of their muscle flexibility.
Another good take away from this class was how to approach a student in regards to how a pose should be done. Because Yin is a deep practice, a class could be varied in how deep each person can go into a pose. Because of age, injury, muscle flexibility, bone structure etc., we are all different and this effects how a person can do a pose. We need to ask a student where they are feeling something to determine how to adjust them. Are they feeling compression or tightness or pain? We need to be able (and learn how) to provide props and other adjustments to allow them to experience a pose. This is something that we have been learning all along but in the example photo below, you can see two modifications (on the left) and the part of a person (on the right) who has gone deep into a pose. The person on the right was so deep into the pose, that he actually had to be adjusted to go deeper into it.
What was interesting for me is that I have a limited external rotation of my legs (meaning how far can I rotate my feet out with my heels together before I hit compression) but I am able to do a full lotus (legs crossed over each other) and I can do a lying lotus (legs on the floor, crossed with my back flat on the floor). The human body is pretty amazing.
Overall, a great learning weekend. Probably the best one so far. I have to give credit to the teaching capabilities of the instructor. He did a great job explaining the points he wanted to get across.
Namaste.
