INTRODUCTION xviiSomething strange was happening. I felt like I could keep running forever;
I didn’t want to stop. Not only did my physical body feel superhuman, but
I also felt as if my spirit had been freed from a cage. I could feel the other-
worldly spirit of the jungle. The plants, trees, rocks, mountains, water, insects,
animals, sky, and sun were all connected. As the boundaries of my body
seemed to fade away and the walls of my mind seemed to blur, I could feel
one with all. I was having a life-changing experience. It’s what the yogis call
moksha, or the Taoists call nirvana. I’ll never forget that transcendental run
through the Costa Rican jungle.
The interesting thing is, yin yoga is what allowed me to run again even
though I never thought it would be possible. Months after the accident, I had
discovered yin yoga. It’s crazy how you can look back at certain moments in
life and realize how one event can shift your entire future. For me, this was
finding the Yin Yoga DVD with Paul Grilley. I had done lots of power yoga
and vinyasa classes, but this was my first introduction to this other style of
yoga. Paul Grilley’s DVD contained multiple practices you could do, and it
also came with an educational discourse on the science of yin.
I also attended live classes with Bryan Kest in Santa Monica, who always
included a pose in his sequence in which you bring your knees together,
spread your feet wider than your hips, and sit between the ankles. In hatha
yoga it’s called hero pose or virasana. Bryan must have loved this pose
because he would do it two or three times in every class. At first it was pain-
ful, very painful. But it was the good pain, and Bryan always reminded us
not to push too far. He also had a legendary sequence he sometimes taught
called long, slow, and deep, or more famously, LSD. Although he didn’t call it
yin, it definitely was. LSD is a seamless floor series of postures held for long
periods and could often last for two and a half to three hours. At the end of
those classes, I felt reborn!
Within just a few weeks of practicing yin yoga with Paul and Bryan, my
knee had completely healed, and not only did my knee feel better, but actually
my whole body felt incredible. Recently, I set a new personal record running
a full marathon through the mountains. At some point, I even hope to run
an ultramarathon of more than 50 miles (80 km).
So how did this happen? How was I able to go from barely walking to
running long distances? It’s simple. It was yin yoga. Yin yoga became an
integral component of my personal path and practice. As you will see in the
following pages, yin yoga has many layers. Yes, it’s physical, but it’s much
more than that, and to neglect that would be a huge irresponsibility on my
part. So, my aim in this book is to give you my all. My hope is that you will
be inspired to use yin yoga as way to align with the best version of yourself.
We start by covering the background of yoga and the compelling history
of how yin yoga came to be. We will also explore the philosophy of Taoism
and how it relates to yin yoga. From a yoga perspective, we will take a look