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Science of a Yin Pose
You have probably heard the expression “No pain, no gain.” Typically, this applies to a
workout situation. The idea is that if you don’t exercise to the point of pain, then you are
wasting your time. Some people hear this and then they go out and hurt themselves.
This is a tricky expression because it depends on the situation. The reality is that there
is good pain and there is bad pain. Bad pain is when bone is grinding into bone or too
much physical stress is exerted on a particular body part. Usually, in this kind of situation,
the pain will manifest as a sharp sensation, burning, or numbness. This is your body’s way
of telling you that the situation is negative. On the other side of the coin is good pain.
For example, when you get a massage from your favorite massage therapist and they
dig their elbow into a knot of tension in your back, it’s painful. It doesn’t feel good in the
moment. As they work out the kink and get blood circulating through the area, the tension
releases. Then you start to feel better. You find comfort after moving through discomfort.
In contrast, if a therapist is overly aggressive in their touch or digs their elbow into a bone,
such as your spine, bad pain will be triggered and your body will revolt.
Similarly, when you work within a yin yoga pose, it’s important to be able to tell the
difference. You want to imagine that you are both the giver and receiver of the massage.
Exposing areas in the body that are stiff, atrophied, and tight will create uncomfortable
sensations, but that is the good pain you are looking for. Good pain is another way of
saying positive stress. In yin yoga, you want to work with this concept of positive stress.
To initiate the healing effects of yin, you exert positive stress on the tissues. The three
types of stress are compression, tension, and shearing. Compression presses tissues
together. An example is holding a rubber stress ball in your hand and squeezing, or
compressing, it. Tension stretches the tissue; think about a rubber band or a piece of
salt water taffy and how you can stretch it. Shearing is another way of saying twisting.
Wringing out a sponge is a good example of shearing.
In our yoga practice, we perform all three of these actions on our tissues. Just like you
can purify a sponge of its accumulated toxins by squeezing, stretching, and twisting, so
too can you do that for the body. In fact, yogis believe that the human body is like a big
sponge that absorbs whatever exists within its environment. Unfortunately, pollution is
a real problem in many parts of the world and those toxins end up in the body’s tissues.
Wringing out the body daily is one of the best things you can do to stay healthy and help
the body rid itself of toxins.
Now let’s connect the dots by imagining that we are doing a yin posture, the sleeping
swan pose (see figure 4.8). Your front leg is bent, and your back leg extends straight behind
you. The torso folds over the front leg. Depending on your body, you may have support
under your front hip or a block under the forehead. As you come into the posture, the first
thing is to find your edge, the wall of resistance that keeps you from proceeding farther,
and gently lean into it. You know that for yin, time is on your side, so there is no rush to get
anywhere. With the mind quiet, listen to any biofeedback being communicated through
the language of bodily sensation. Fine-tune the pose, looking for your sweet spot. You are
like a musician searching for the perfect pitch. As you find your perfect pitch, find stillness
with a gentle movement of breath waving in and out through the nose. Initially, as you
come into the pose, you will stretch key muscles such as the hip flexors, psoas, piriformis,
and the erector spinae. You are exerting a positive stress on these muscle tissues.
In other styles of yoga, you might come out of the stretch after 30 seconds, but this
limits the benefits that happen when you allow time to flow. After about 90 seconds is a