HATHA to YIN YOGA PRACTICE will BALANCE YIN and YANG and develop deeper body awareness and energetic integrity. Starting with YANG traditional HATHA YOGA is more active asana practice working on the (YANG) muscles and blood flow, building strength, stamina, and flexibility. Followed by YIN YOGA passively holding Yoga Asanas for longer, working on the deep, dense (YIN) connective tissues, bones and joins in the body.
As you hold the poses for extended length of time you put a positive pressure on the connective tissues and deep fascia. At around 90 sec there’s something called a phase change. Phase change is where you go from the Superficial tissues of the body and you start to accesses the deeper fascia and connective tissues within the body. Once you hold a deep stretch you put a positive stress on those deeper tissues and that’s where the magic begins.
The body has something what’s called Fibroblast so just like you have Osteoblast that canbuild your bones to get stronger by lifting weights or doing weight bearing exercises, the Fibroblast is like the Osteoblast, except they exists deep within deep fascia and connective tissue. When you hold deep stretches these Fibroblast are being stressed out so they start to work and draw Hyaluronic acid. (You can find Hyaluronic acid in face creams because it help to moisturise the skin.) The body produces naturally this Hyaluronic acid and it attracts 1000 times its volume and water.
Essentially what you’re doing is you are drawing hydration into deep connective tissues and fascia you are repairing the scar tissue and the adhesions and therefore repairing injuries and starting the healing process.
With YIN yoga people can get young again. It’s often called the Fountain of Youth because it restores youthfulness within our body. We reach a certain age within our lives. If we are not doing any sort of stretching or Yin Yoga your muscles start to waste away, things start to lock up and seize up and you start losing mobility. Bacteria gets trapped in your fascia. It’s like you are not removing the waste and the toxins out of the most important tissue systems in the body and things just start to go downhill fast.
When you do the YIN it keeps that circulation within the fascial system. Research show that as your get older, if you don’t take quality time to stretch, the body will begin to atrophy, stiffen and deteriorate. Yin Yoga will keep the fascia pliable and hydrated, and therefore restoring youthfulness to your body.
It’s very important to incorporate YIN yoga into your practice into your regular YOGA practice and fitness routine. “You can’t always have the pedal to the medal“ just driving and grinding because that’s going to lead to an imbalance.
So even if you are feeling strong, try to exercise a little bit of self-restrain and give yourself permission to kick back, slow down and do a practise that’s just gentle. Sometimes within the busyness and hecticness of life and all the demand that we have as human beings, the thing that we need the most is to just slow down.
