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Yoga Styles Dying from the Yin-side Dona Tumacder-Esteban As a child, part of my fervent prayers was to die ahead of everyone else in my family. I didn’t fear dying as much as I feared being left alone dealing with the remnants and the changes that came with it. When I began to explore the spiritual path through dance, yoga, and meditation, I found myself praying for death once again – this time as an escape from the mundane daily grind into “something more” that I thought existed only when the physical body dies. One day, after months of taking sanctuary in the dynamic silence that followed meditative dance and asana practice, an energy seized my belly and grew from there into a spontaneous explosion I could not contain. I got out of my bed, ran to my mother’s room and exclaimed, “I close my eyes and I see God. I open my eyes and I still see God. Am I going insane?” It was a glimpse of “something more.” I knew right there, heart pumping and all, that something inside me had died. And something inside me had also been born again. Since then, life has been a constant stream of deaths and rebirths. Sometimes death is painful like broken hearts, lost friendships, and unfulfilled dreams. Sometimes death is a welcome refuge – the death of each and every moment which, just as inevitable as death itself, gives way for a new and hopefully better moment to be born. Without a doubt, each “death” was transformative. GOING DEEP WITH YIN The idea of death as a transformative force became more concrete when I dove deeply into the practice of Yin Yoga, a healing and calming practice where we come into asanas with relaxed muscles and stay in stillness for 3-5 minutes. Through Yin Yoga which fuses both yoga and Taoist philosophy with the practice of mindfulness, I witness the process of death and birth happening in the different layers of my being. The Taoists were great observers of nature and its birth and death cycles – from seasonal changes, to the movement from day to night and back to day, to the sprouting of a seed and the falling of its fruit. They noticed how each phase reflected the forces they called Yin and Yang. Moreover, these ancient sages noticed that rather than absolutes, yin and yang energies are contained in each other in varying degrees depending on where they are within the cycle. Eventually, one gives way seamlessly to the other. Human beings, as part of nature, go through the same birth and death cycles. The word Yin by itself is closely linked with death. As the counterbalance to the more active, dynamic, and creative Yang energy, Yin is contracting, passive, dead still. But to say that Yin is death is incomplete. Professor Mac Cueto, a therapeutic consultant and Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner from Manila, explains “death of the physical body can be seen as the separation of yin and yang. The yang gets liberated as shen or spirit, and the yin is consumed and begins to consolidate, getting ready for the next cycle of embodiment and rebirth, hopefully this time more refined.” Victor Chng, Asia’s leading Yin Yoga teacher and teacher trainer, states it clearly. “Yin is not only about death. Yin is about renewal. It is an opportunity for the old to die and the new to be born. This is how we heal and how we obtain new energy.” In the Yin state, energy is conserved and preserved in a state of pure potentiality, ready for new growth. This is most apparent in the physical body, for example, which renews itself fully every seven years. The deep connective tissues which are the focus areas of the Yin practice are no exception. As we stress the tendons and the ligaments through Yin Yoga’s passive stretches with relaxed muscles, we create micro tears which allow the connective tissues to continuously regenerate and remain young resulting in more suppleness and flexibility in the body. According to Dr. JP Prado, a medical doctor and osteopath in Manila who advises his patients to cultivate a Yin practice to complement dynamic exercise and help heal the body, these micro tears are akin to cells dying giving space for new cells to be born. He adds no two cells can occupy the same space so the old has to die to give birth to the new. Even in the living body, death is necessary for life to flourish. Although in the beginning of a Yin Yoga practice, physical sensations are the most noticeable, these sensations subside and other layers of our being take center stage. Yin Yoga done in the spirit of Svadhyaya or self-inquiry allows us to keenly observe our thoughts and emotional reactions within the inherent stillness and silence of the asana. Just as our cells die and renew, thoughts and emotions also come and go. Through this witnessing, we are able to authenticate our experiences and cultivate awareness of habitual thinking and feeling caused by impressions deep in our consciousness. Without the distraction of movement, we are confronted with the truth of who we are at this moment, giving us a blessed opportunity to let go of habits that no longer serve us, to make space for new and better impressions. Yin Yoga has helped me drop my tendency towards reactivity. In its place came responsiveness. Again, death and rebirth. YANG BECOMES YIN, YIN BECOMES YANG Yin and Yang is a cycle without a beginning and an end. As we move through Yang, we consume and eventually destroy leading us towards death. As we move through Yin, we repair, renew, regenerate, and prepare the ground for new embodiment. While Yin is death, it is also a passage so that life can start anew. Everything changes is the inherent promise of this cycle. Yet even with this promise, we so desperately hold on to that which are transient in life, that which are continuously changing. As a teacher and practitioner of Yin Yoga, I perceive this desperation as muscles refusing to yield, almost as if the validation of its existence only happens the tighter it grips the bones. I feel it in practice each time I latch onto a thought and follow its story until I am entangled in events that have been, or stories that have yet to be. For this reason, I find solace in chanting this mantra as I surrender into a Yin asana. Asato ma sat gamaya (From the unreal to the real) Tamaso ma jyotir gamaya (From darkness to light) Mrtyor ma amrtam gamaya (From death to immortality) 25