Recently returned from Zurich, on ‘The art and science of an embodied practice and teaching’ course with ex dancer and now embodied yoga teacher of teachers, Julie Martin, with her mentor of 25 years, Gary Carter.
Gary has years of fascial research and dissection under his belt. Along with a previous life as a body builder (80% nutrition), now in his 60s, his teaching mode is very much of moving anatomy, felt in the body. Yes, as he says, classic anatomy is important so we understand it (and key for surgeons!), however the reality of the moving body is that there is no clear separation. The entire fascial network is like a glorious cross weave, with the muscles collaborating. If we have 600 muscles or so, can we explore the sensing and feeling of one muscle, moving in 600 directions? That’s a very cool idea.
Muscles are about motility. And did you know, they have no sensation? Their primary reason is for movement. When we say we have sore muscles, it’s actually the fascia we are feeling. The connective tissue that is rich in proprioceptors and nerves.
So, where does the moonlit path of yin arise? Can we let our hard working yang muscles soften, so the surrounding fascial network gets the cooling off message. These days, relaxation and felt awareness are indeed an art. With so much hyper-vigilance in the system being deemed normal, it can be a heady mix of self confrontation and revelation to meet ourselves again and again in the inner calm of moonlight. The waxing and the waning, the crescent and the fullness. Grandmother Moon as a deeply feminine ally, helping us bear witness to inner struggle, to slowly illuminate the darker corners of the psyche.
An embodied yoga practice helps us open up to the issues in the tissues. The somato-sensory system that so much of modern medicine ignores.
Can we trust our own body to move in ways that encourage the feeling of agency, autonomy and sovereignty. We then learn to listen to the inner rivers, to feel the curves of the topography, our bones, our organs, the titration of glandular secretions. We can never completely know this work. It is vast.
The exploration however is the healing. Exploration without expectation. Move on your terms. Modern postural yoga has done a disservice in some ways, on creating too much fixation on rigidity in poses. Which just affirms tension patterns. We need the release. The softening. The slowing….
Yin is a cooling energy, dark, feminine, slow….mysterious. It holds no tangible answers. It asks that we open new gateways of creativity, to nourish the right mode of the brain.
How will you walk this moonlit path of yin?
Take a long bath, take an evening stroll without distraction, hold someone’s gaze without looking away, immerse in a few lines of poetry at the start or end of your day, connect with your dreams, get to know the phases of the moon, the scintillating smell of cooking the slow stew on the stove…..
To sip, oh so tenderly, a cup of chamomile tea…..
With so much yin love to you.
Ciara Jean Roberts