Yin Yoga for the Heart & Lung Meridian
With the beginning of spring we shift into a more yang time of the year. It’s getting warmer outside. After grey cold winter months we enjoy more outdoor activities with warmer temperatures. Usually. But what is normal these days, this year, this spring 2020, we were asked to stay indoors, experiencing a global lockdown due to the spreading of COVID-19. It’s often witnessed, that we feel low on energy at spring time, the seasonal change from winter to spring. With this new virus effecting us all globally, starting teaching yoga live online I thought we do a yin yoga practice that stimulates the heart and lung meridian to induce and strengthen our immunity system. A sequence I taught a lot around the world, especially for surfers, as the focus is 100% on the upper body. But with its deeper level benefits on the meridian lines I thought it’s the perfect routine for the kick off in online yoga teaching.
No matter where I taught this sequences, it turned out to be everyones favorite! Especially in places I used to teach yoga for surfers. But it’s perfect for everyone who is working at the desk, on the computer keyboard all day, so literally for everyone of us. Considering the new home office lockdown situation, missing a proper desk at home many of us improvising at home and feeling the result in their posture. This routine opens and releases stress and tension from the upper body, arms, neck and shoulders. All those areas that are so famous for trying stress and tension, in our everyday life. We all know how our posture suffers from long working hours on the computer or telephone. So this sequence is literally for everybody.
As we address the heart it is quite common to release a lot of emotional stress. Which I found to be very important in recent weeks and months of social distancing. People always suffer from many different emotional impacts, but with the recent rigid restrictions it comes down to all of us at the same time, on top to what we have to deal with anyways. With following the lockdown rules to slow down the spreading of Coronavirus we all experience a new stress level of uncertainty, not knowing what the crisis results will look for us in future. So we need to give space and time in our routine to allow us to let go. To be soft to become strong again. Even the strongest among us need to rest sometimes. And it might be just a release for the upper body limbs for many who prefer to go with the physical body. But still it’s important to focus on the upper body in yin as well as we spend time on the lower and mid body. As for he Yin aspect. Not just that we, from the Daoist point of view, see the human body divided into Yin and Yang, left Yin, right Yang, it is also Yin for the lower body as its seems closer to the earth, the legs are heavier and slower in movement compared the arms. So it is Yang for the upper body, the upper body, from the midline to the head (=thoughts) and our arms, that move light and quicker than our legs.
Right now, with Coronavirus controlling our life, we experience how little we actually can plan and control or lets say how little we can actually rely on our planning. Our Yang qualities, which we learnt to prioritize so much falling back and we need to trust more, trust something that we don’t know. We need to give in to the more Yin qualities like intuition, trust, caring, creativity, emotions.