Have you ever experienced something unexpected after practicing yoga? Maybe you signed up for class because you wanted to get strong, but you left chanting a mantra. It could be that the physical sensations or emotions that came up in a meditation left you floored. All sorts of things happen when we practice.
I never saw it that way
Everyone who practices will eventually run into some of this. The degree to which it happens varies due to a number of factors. The refrain of, “What was that?” could be its own mantra as far as I’m concerned. There’s even space for us to unpack that stuff if we wish while observing the niyama, svadhyaya (self-reflection).
At this point in my yoga life, I’ve been around for a minute. Many of you have been practicing longer, so I don’t want to give the wrong impression. I’m no master, and I don’t have decades of experience. I have, however, seen some things come up through the practice of yoga. I was surprised by what happened after this recent round of training, though.
Yin Yoga training started!
It’s been so great to be fully in student mode for this training. I know that we’re always students, but to be taking notes and embarking on a journey of intentional, concentrated learning is like coming home for me.
After the first lecture, I gained so many insights into the how and why of Yin Yoga. I’ll be diving into that deeper after I’ve had some time to absorb and fully process the entire training.
One thing that really stood out to me, though was the impact that time and movement (or lack of it) can have on our bodies. This relationship is probably pretty intuitive for most of us. If you remain sedentary for too long, you start to feel stiff. When you wake up in the morning, you're naturally inclined to stretch. When you don’t move for extended periods of time, restriction really does start to happen, and there’s a physiological reason why you feel that way.
The training has already helped me understand why that happens to our bodies. It’s just reaffirmed my conviction that we need to move in as many ways as are accessible to us in order to care for ourselves.
It gets weird after this, though. I expected to go into the lecture learning about the science behind Yin Yoga. This did not disappoint. I didn’t expect someplace in the back of my mind to continue to make connections between the passage of time and a sort of stagnation that occurs when there is no movement, though. Surprise!
A work in progress
One of the things I find most frustrating about myself is that I can never seem to keep a space neat without a lot of conscious effort. Some of the more urgent household chores have become part of my mindfulness practice, but other aspects of caring for my space fall to the wayside. If it’s not urgent like a dirty litter box or running out of socks, then it’s not high on my priority list. You don’t even want to know the last time I did the windows. Okay… okay…. I’ll cop to it. It’s never. Since I moved into this house in July of 2020, I haven’t cleaned a single window besides wiping the occasional smudge on the inside of the glass. Remove the screens? How do you even do that?
Something about going to that first Yin Yoga lecture and seeing the impact that motionlessness has on the fascia (a connective “fabric” that runs through the entire body) brought the areas of stagnation in my environment into sharp focus. I couldn't unsee how dingy the windows looked.
Yesterday, I donned my blue cleaning gloves, grabbed an old bucket, some water, some cornstarch, and some rags, and I set out to see what I haven’t been able to see. After a fair amount of muttered cuss words and a few conscious breaths, I figured out how to remove those screens. It wasn't rocket science after all.
A moment of care
I only had time to do a few windows before I had to go to work, but what a difference this simple act of care made. The quality of the light in my space transformed. The grime of the years shed easily, and I wondered how I could have neglected this small detail for so long. When the room was able to breathe, the light revealed more things that need care. I could see the piles of books to be read and projects half-completed. I could see the accumulation of dust on surfaces long untouched while I've whirled through being.
I was able to see so many areas in my environment and in myself that require just a little more care than I’ve been giving them. I’d like to apologize formally to the windows first of all. I really didn’t know what I’d been missing. As for these other areas of accumulation, I'm not feeling overwhelmed even though there's a lot to do. I got a good dose of hope about them in Yin Yoga training. The fascia tends to get stuck when there is no movement, but motion provides maintenance. Motion perpetuates the capacity for motion, in a sense.
In cases in which the body has been held in a certain way for extended periods, the feeling of stuckness (and the actual fibrous tissue causing that feeling) can still change. It may require more elbow grease and time, but it’s never too late to make a positive impact. My environment is the same. I've got to show a little more love to the space around me. It might require some extra TLC, but it's so worth it.
So there’s unexpected outcome number one of my first day of Yin Yoga training. I started doing the windows for the first time in my life, and I remembered to care about some things I often forget. After I was able to see the impact of the accumulation of grime, it was easy to make the commitment to make it better. Just like the fascia connects and contains everything in your body, this practice of Yin Yoga has a way of connecting to one’s whole being.
Here's what's next
That's all I've got for you today, my friends. I wish you great learning and clear seeing as you move through the days ahead.