Yin Yoga -- Fix It If It's Broken

This post is about supplementing your Yin Style (or any martial arts) practice with a form of yoga called Yin Yoga. Yeah, yeah, I know... supplemental practices! Yeah, yeah, I know... I've mentioned this before! The thing is that this particular branch of yoga is really helpful for putting you back together after hard training, particularly when your joints are aching and sore or if you have any kind of chronic pain. The practices are primarily suited for the lower body, probably from the ribs down -- particularly in the hips and lower back, and they're really, really helpful (though difficult to do because they're so easy and somewhat uncomfortable) for helping fix tension in those areas. I'm a big fan of the practice... I just wish I could find/make time (will?) to do more of it.

Here's the basic rundown of Yin Yoga if you've never heard of it. First of all, this "Yin" is Yin like Yin and Yang, not like Yin Fu. The basic idea is that a few carefully chosen poses are selected, primarily for their ability to affect connective tissue in the "yin areas" of the body, practiced according to three basic rules (that need attention to prevent injury), and are held for what seem to be ridiculously dangerous amounts of time. The theory is that this gives the body time to stop resisting the stretches and allows the connective tissue (tendons, ligaments, fascia, dura, etc) to be directly affected. Furthermore, the theory is that the qi meridian systems of the body are also directly affected (removing blockages and stimulating flow, for instances).

The rules are simple enough:

1. Find your appropriate position, which means making sure that you've chosen yin-suitable postures, that you've entered into them correctly, and that you've appropriately found "your edge," discussed briefly below, and not exceeded that;
2. Breathe deeply and relax, focusing the attention inward to the tissues being affected;
3. Wait.

"Your edge" in Yin Yoga means finding the place in the posture for which your body starts to feel some affect but is not being taxed. There are particular cues that you can read up on or become educated on (if you take a class in it... good idea if you've never done it or don't have a helper) that will tell you if you've gone too far in most poses. The best rule of thumb, though, is to remember that it's "YIN" Yoga, and therefore the proper position is usually where your body will go without having to put in any extra effort. That means you don't pull yourself into poses, you let yourself fall into them (Yin... check). Gravity (Yin) is the main operator once you're in position. You should be mostly "comfortable" in these poses (though I wouldn't describe it that way), apparently.

"Wait" in Yin Yoga means that you hold the pose until the natural resistances of the body and mind stop. That means that you're going to be there for a while, maybe two or three minutes, maybe twenty in a more advanced practice (I've never exceeded about six, actually, but I'm not serious). It also means that in a class or a single practice session, you can't expect to do too much and should probably plan out what you intend to do with specific goals in mind ahead of time. The natural resistances of the body are some forms of tension or discomfort that the body will relax through. Those of the mind are boredom, thinking it's futile or stupid, a wandering mind (off the given task and affected tissue), and that sort of thing. Pushing through these boundaries has to be done with some caution, though! Specifically, you want to learn to distinguish between a tension that you can let go of and a signal (or cry!) from your body to let go and back off. Your body's signals have to be respected here or injuries will result, but at the same time the resisting tension in the body has to be perservered through, so some listening skill (to your own body now) has to be present to do this practice safely and well.

How can it enhance Yin Style practice (or any other martial art, for that matter)? It first of all helps cure chronic stiffness and pain and seems to naturally stimulate the flow of blood and qi in the body, removing blockages and the like. It should also increase flexibility, mental focus, internal awareness, and meditative capacity while serving as a form of meditation in and of itself. It can help you learn about your body and get to know it. It can put you back together when training makes you sore or gives you lasting muscular or connective-tissue-based injuries. As long as it's done safely, the only danger I see in this practice compromising progress in a martial art is the amount of time it takes, though it's very easy to train this right before bed and greatly enhance the quality of sleep that you get.

For those of you that follow what I say about trigger points or know about them on your own merits, I'm starting to suspect after taking a Yin Yoga class today with my wife that practicing the stretches in this style of yoga might work to deactivate trigger points in perhaps a heretofore uninvestigated way. Stretching, it's well known, can cause trigger points to get worse, not better, and frequently does just that. Spray and stretch, however, is a technique to treat trigger points that uses stretching (after an administering of cold to the area) that has a good deal of efficacy. I strongly suspect that yin yoga, given the time frames in which the poses are held can have a similar effect on trigger points and the muscles that contain them (if done safely in a responsible, intelligent manner that honors and respects the body doing them!). I don't know, but if I ever go into that line of work, I will probably make it one of my research tasks to find out. Maybe I'll even get a second Ph.D.... (yeah right... those SUCK to get).

You might consider it, anyway. The website linked to above, I'm told, is one of the best, containing much of the information of the book Yinsights, which is probably the best book on the subject. I'm going to keep at it; that's for sure.

Admitting

As I've posted several times in the past, my lower back has been something of an issue in my training and life for as long as I've been practicing YSB, and actually even for longer. For all of this time, I had hoped that baguazhang would heal my lower back issue, finally freeing me from the grip it had on me. Partly from doing many of the basic exercises incorrectly, which I attributed the continuance of my discomfort to for a long time, my back pain neither abated nor got significantly worse over the almost two and a half years I've been training. Finally, I think I'm ready to admit that the practice of baguazhang directly will probably not heal my back, although once it is healed (through other means), it will almost definitely strengthen, protect, preserve, and improve it. Admitting it means that I can choose a sensible course of action and follow it, and, unfortunately enough, it will require that I set aside a fair amount of my preciously sparse training time (during the more intense end of the semester and my quest for doctorate) to do so.

There are exercises in bagua that I believe would (help) heal me, and those are definitely going to be included, but they are basic, basic exercises. For instance, I've seen an exercise from the Lion System (holding/rolling the ball), another from the Bear, one from the Snake, and one from the Phoenix System that all help, but doing basic strikes and forms, and even the standing postures, are of limited benefit and potential detriment if I overdo them. What this has meant, after hearing the description of what those exercises are traditionally used for (preparing unprepared bodies for practicing bagua properly), is admitting to myself that physiologically, I have not been prepared to properly study bagua all along, and most of bagua's practices are too physically demanding for my injured, weakened frame.

A fact that set this notion more firmly into my thinking was reading recently that many times in baguazhang or xingyi, a practitioner with a chronic health complaint, particularly hips, knees, back, or shoulder problems, would frequently be given the prescription of studying taijiquan or receiving massage and qigong therapy for a while before being permitted to work on anything but the most basic exercises of the art. This information served me by showing me that it was typical to need to prepare the body correctly before taking on something as demanding as one of these arts, and therefore that the basic exercises in the art might be too tough on the body to create healing in and of themselves in certain situations. That rang true with the fact that frequently, I feel about the same before and after practice in my low back and hips and feel exceptionally better everywhere else. It also left me with wondering what to do next.

Luckily, it seems, I watched my wife heal herself tremendously of a chronic sciatica issue using a version of yoga that actually has Taoist roots, like bagua. Combining that with yoga and sensible stretching practices, approaching them from an experiential, need-based perspective, gave me a practice that I really believed could help fix the root of the problem I suffer. I started it about a week ago, putting serious effort into this yoga/stretching regimen combined with some basic massage therapy on trouble spots (see an earlier post about trigger points), some basic standing, sitting, and prone qigong, and the small number of very basic bagua healing/developing practices (mentioned above), practicing them for 30-60 minutes a day when I usually have very little more time for practice or training available to me (I'll pay tonight for taking out this time to type this up, for instance). In six days, which is tiny compared with the almost eight years I've been suffering this way, I've seen more progress than I expected, though I am not, of course, healed. I hit the point recently that really told me I had to do something, and it's one of the measuring sticks I've been using: I can't jump. Jumping or even bouncing causes severe spasming or failing (it feels like mistrust) in my lower back -- immediately. I also cannot run or jog. That's disturbing because I'm still in my 20's, in good shape otherwise, and should definitely be able to participate in these kinds of activities as ones that build me, not break me. In six days, I've changed enough to where I can do some bouncing around (jumping jacks, for instance) again, I move and stand more freely, and I'm only about half as stiff when I get out of bed in the morning, though it's apparent that the problem still exists. I'm getting measurably better. As the problem has lasted for 8 years or more, I figure that in roughly 8 weeks or so, I will have seen a tremendous change, if I stick with it. If I stay with it to whatever degree is needed for 8 months, I'd be surprised to see anything other than a full recovery.

It's made me immediately aware, for instance, of the tension stored primarily in my lower abdominal muscles, hips, spinal erectors, and quadriceps muscles, tension that prevents me from developing properly in bagua and that keeps me in the prison of constant physical pain and limitation. It's also taught me the exceptionally useful lesson that the body and training must be practiced intelligently with inner sensitivity and that emotional and physical habits create powerful chains that bind us needlessly. It's also made me take responsibility for my condition, no longer wanting to rely on some chiropractor, osteopath, magician, or mysterious energetic miracle to heal me. Ignoring my tissues and mistreating them, be that via an injury or two that I sustained and never healed properly or via training on structure that wasn't ready to train on, have created and maintained this problem entirely at my own fault and decision.

Treating it before, at least for a year now, has centered on the idea that I needed to stretch, going into the tissues mentally and experientially as I did so to release the problems, and I even knew many of the stretches that would be required. Still, I refused to set aside time from my work or training to do it, and things have only gotten worse. Now, I'm ready to admit that this is part of my training, part of what I must do at my level, or else I'll never get to a very high level overall being always limited by this ceiling that I've put over myself. That gives me spirit enough to concentrate on these efforts without the guilt that might normally come from laying in some stretch on the floor instead of walking those extra few minutes around in a circle in my yard, particularly knowing that if I'm as right as I'm almost sure I am about this, I'll be able to more than make up for lost time once I'm whole again.

Gratitude

While my wife was doing a yoga video about an hour ago, I heard the lady instructing remind her viewers/students to always give gratitude for the opportunity to do yoga.

I think such gratitude is immensely appropriate for practitioners of Yin Style Baguazhang, and I'm very thankful for the reminder as well as the opportunity.