Posts Tagged ‘yin yoga’

East meets West

Leslie on 5:11 pm July 6th, 2010 / Be the first to comment! »

In reading a book on yin yoga for our next TT session, I was struck by the descriptions of yin and yang as they apply to exercise, yoga and the body, not to mention Chinese medicine. The two aspects work as complementary and symbiotic opposites, but they also imply paradoxes. It’s interesting, for example, that the front body is considered yin, the “stable unmoving, hidden aspect of things,” and the back body is yang, the “moving, changing, revealing” aspect. In yoga, the front body is also the eastern side; the back body, the western side. To the degree that you accept duality and a black-and-white world, fine.

So this made me think of the sunrise and sunset. (It also made me think of a Shakespeare passage I had to memorize in high school: “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief that thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.” Oh! And the “Fiddler on the Roof” dirge. “Sunrise, sunset // Sunrise, sunset // Swiftly flow the days // Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers // Blossoming even as we gaze.” Then there’s “Annie,” but I’m not going there.)

Anyhoo, back to paradox. The sun “rises” in the east and “sets” in the west. Yet we greet the day, and the world, with our seemingly exposed front body. How can it then be considered hidden? Because we naturally seek to protect it — well, really, what we’re talking about is the heart here — at the same time? It is the side of the body we present, the side that we ourselves can most easily see. The sun “sets” in the west, when day is done, and yet the back body is largely invisible to us, even repressed or ignored, in daily life. We don’t walk backward, after all. I’m not sure what to make of this duality. In asanas, paschimottanasana (seated forward fold) in Sanskrit means a stretch of the western (paschima) or back body. So as we fold into our front, hidden(?) selves, we stretch the largely unseen and yet, according to yang descriptions, exposed side. Maybe exposed here could also mean vulnerable. I guess this explains why backbends, which call upon our yang/western bodies and stretch our yin/eastern bodies, are exposed, look-at-me, heart-opening poses. Then there’s the horrible (for me) purvottanasana (upward facing plank), a stretch of the eastern (purva) body. Stretching the hidden side. Hmm.

I guess what it comes down to is that I still wonder what it means if one is naturally drawn to forward folds vs. backbends. Are you a sunrise or a sunset kind of person? A morning person, or a night owl? I think one goal of yoga, or at least one major point to it, is to unite and eradicate dualities and create a third, pure channel (the spine, hello?). Absolute balance and alignment. Fleeting though it may be.

I hope this makes sense. Still trying to work it out.