Today I was finally able to complete the 50 hour Yin Yoga Teacher training that I commenced 8 months ago in September 2015.  I was unable to complete the original course due to a ‘wake-up’ call that arrived by way of a bike crash.

The change that occurs in ones physical and emotional and mental bodies through a Yin Yoga practice was in some way similar to the change that occurred for me post-accident.  The moment that I collided shoulder first into the giant cyclist travelling at 20km an hour and I hit the ground – I had to let go and surrender to the incredible pain I was feeling… Obviously the body instantly created morphine to keep the pain at bay.  But there was an instant knowing that I had to release to the accident…. and surrender myself and be in the moment (THIS was really happening and there was no way out, no escape or distraction that I could run too)….

I made the choice in this moment that I would heal, and that this was the ‘stopping’ I had been calling too me for a few months unconsciously, and therefore would commit to daily meditation practices (yes practices, plural) to manage the pain, and to begin to unwire all these aspects of self & personality that were not doing me any justice anymore, these rough edges to my personality that needed to be sanded down and polished back… I wasn’t going anywhere fast, I needed to be still as much as possible… so I had the time.

So Yin Yoga in one sense, is surrendering yourself for up to 5+ minutes to the sensations and discomfort that the body may send up to your brain and disturb the mind, to try and force you to move, fidget and distract from the present moment.  You learn to cultivate patience and a single pointed concentration to ‘be with the body’…. All this begins the ‘rewiring’ of the central nervous system, the repatterning of the synaptic connections in the brain to strengthen your nerves and resilience in life and to help shift the habitual loops of thought, that keep us locked into our ‘old belief’ patterns to who we THINK we are.

Our thinking creates beliefs that keep us locked into past ways of being and doing…
Our thoughts limit the realisation that we can do anything… that we are ultimately able to achieve the dreams we dream… we ARE unlimited!!!.

The thoughts we think create our own limitations… therefore… STOP THINKING…  Get out of your head… become the unlimited beings that we essentially are… this truth is hiding deep within our Self, covered by all these onion layers of false beliefs and programmes that were encoded into our sub-conscious from the ages of 0-7 and through the education/ indoctrination system of our teens.

13173286_1015578408496525_3167825988196154575_oLife is to be lived…and to live better and more harmoniously we can sand the rough edges and polish our personality back through daily practice in any of the mind-body disciplines that are out there in the world to become more aware and mindful of all that is going on inside and outside of us (in our minds, our emotions, our bodies and environments)…  The practices help us ‘unplug’ from the matrix… a ‘waking’ up from the programmed thinking we all are caught in… and an opening out into a deeper truth of who we are as human beings and why we are here in this body, with a consciousness in this present time.  A part of you right now is hearing this and possibly understanding this on some level, whilst the other programmed part is beginning to push this understanding down into the back of your mind… for if we start believing & accepting a deeper more profound truth, than it means we have to start to let go of a LOT of the ways we currently live & think & exist in the world.  Change isn’t easy… and waking up to the truth around us is even more testing on our resolve…  THIS is why we resist the pain and discomfort from merely sitting in a yoga pose for 5 minutes at a time…  You are attempting at ‘changing’ the physical structures of the body which will in turn re-knit the mental/emotional structures within the psyche… If you aren’t ready for it… you will fidget and move and the mind will continue to spin until, before you realise, you have subconsciously moved out of the pose…

The Yin Yoga gist is simple:

1) Get into a pose and stay for at least  3 minutes

And when in the pose

2) Let go.  Surrender to what is…

This ‘practice’ we can then take into our daily life… when we have daily challenges or confrontations we are able to SIT in the discomfort that this ‘other’ person(s)/ situations is bringing out in us… We start to see what it is that ‘triggers’ us and possibly start to peel back ‘why’.

The wake up call I had back in October… the beginning of this next chapter I find myself in now, forced me to surrender to what was, accept my shortcomings, my insecurities, to start to believe in my strengths and let go of my past and BE in the moment.  A moment where I can begin to DREAM of a future me that I truly want to become…

When you start to see your own limitations, your own resentments, you are truly humbled…the positive spin is that you also start to see your gifts, your strengths and that the negative critic that has always torn you down, in itself is your friend, your onetime ‘coach’ who really just got a little out of control somewhere along the way.  And when you start becoming friends with this coach, the negative critic, made up of many of the past programmes of shoulds/coulds and musts, when you can begin to soothe this internal voice, you start to take control of your life and become your own counsellor…   and all this from simply holding your body in positions that are not the normal everyday positions (for most people!)

The journey continues… and a daily practice of Yin yoga allows me to let go to the present moment and be in the body… the onion layers begin to fall away and even reality at times is questionable… but thats another blog post!

Happy Yin-ning Yinsters!!!