Badlands Yoga

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Yin Yoga: Change Structures by Living in them Differently (ours and society’s)

Rather than steering clear of feeling the edge, we steer into it. An edge is discomfort of some kind: tightness, tension, rigidity, stuckness, nothingness. It can dissolve into burning or sweetness only to emerge as a different expression of force. Exploring discomfort means staying open to things being different, becoming what they weren’t or what we couldn’t see. It slows things down. 

You find new edges in yin by melting – not by pushing. This procedure runs counter to most of our unconscious habits in just about every way. 

Yin Yoga is a Goldilocks practice: not too little, not too much. 2 minutes once a month isn’t likely to do much. 2 minutes once a day will, with time. 2 minutes with rest before 3 minutes and more integration, before 2 minutes with rest, repeated regularly changes how we live. This practice makes it more and more likely we will meet difference, challenge, and discomfort with equanimity.

Working with discomfort in our bodies is a laboratory for our discomfort with people who believe or act differently from us. The immovable lines that seem to divide us socially and politically are constructions — habits — we feel in our bodies. Habits of thought and movement alike create lines of tension and rigidity — as well as laxness — in our bodies. When we are confronted with whoever the “other” is for us, ….. Read more on Elephant Journal …