This week’s Yin class was inspired by IKEA’s ‘The wonderful everyday’ advert which came on the TV just as I sat down to think about a theme for my class. I thought to myself, it’s all well and good IKEA giving us wonderfully-comfy sofas to lounge on for hours but then we have to undo all of that slouching! And the idea ‘Undoing the everyday’ popped into my head 😃.
Many of us spend hours each day sitting, driving, looking at screens, reading, watching television or simply staying in one position for long periods. In that sense, modern life is full of stillness so you could say that we’re not exactly lacking in Yin! The problem is that we’re experiencing the same limited range of shapes over and over again.
Think about how you spent your day. Were you sitting at a desk? Driving? Looking down at a phone? Working at a computer? Chances are your body spent much of the day with the hips flexed, the spine rounded, the legs together and the arms reaching forwards.
None of these positions are bad – the body is incredibly adaptable and designed to meet the demands we place upon it – but the challenge comes when we repeat the same movements and postures day after day without offering the body anything different.
So this week in our Yin practice, we approached it through a slightly different lens – it wasn’t simply to stretch and load the connective tissues, it was to explore movements and directions that everyday life rarely provides.
How we approached this in class
We began in Reclined Butterfly. As the knees fell apart and the soles of the feet came together, we gently loaded the tissues of the inner thighs and invited the hips into a range of motion that most of us rarely experience. Sitting, walking and driving all keep the legs moving primarily forwards and backwards. Reclined Butterfly reminds the hips that they can move sideways too.
From there we moved into Reclined Dragon, a posture that almost directly undoes the shape of sitting. While sitting keeps the front of the hips in a shortened position, Reclined Dragon gently lengthens the tissues at the front of the body, including the hip flexors. It provides an experience that many of us simply don’t encounter during a normal day.
Reclined Shoelace then shifted our attention to the outer hips and glutes. By taking the hips into a different range of motion, we explored tissues that often become accustomed to doing the same thing repeatedly. The goal wasn’t to force flexibility but to maintain adaptability and remind the body that it has more movement options available than everyday life might suggest.
The theme continued in Bolster Twist. Most of us spend our days moving forwards, yet the spine is designed to rotate. A supported twist gently introduces movement into the muscles, fascia and joints around the spine, ribs and waist. It’s less about stretching and more about restoring variety, reminding the body that it can move in multiple directions.
Melting Heart brought our focus to the upper body. Modern life often places us in a slightly rounded position whilst typing, driving or scrolling, with the shoulders forward and the chest closed. Melting Heart gently reverses that pattern, opening the chest, shoulders and upper spine while creating space through tissues that can become accustomed to being shortened.
We finished with a supported heart opener, lying back along a bolster angled up on some Thai cushions (everyone’s favourite posture!). This may have been the clearest example of undoing the everyday. So many of our daily activities encourage the spine to round and the chest to close. Supported by the bolster, the body could completely relax while experiencing a shape that many people rarely encounter. There was nothing to do, nowhere to get to and nothing to achieve. Simply an opportunity to let the body experience something different.
One of the things I like about Yin is that rather than trying to force the body into deeper shapes, it encourages us to think about movement variety. The body doesn’t necessarily always need more stretching, it needs reminding of its options. Our joints, fascia, ligaments, tendons and muscles all benefit from experiencing a range of movements. When we repeatedly move in only a few directions, certain tissues become very familiar with those demands while others receive very little attention.
Yin offers a chance to re-balance that – not because everyday movements are wrong but because the body is designed for more.
See you soon in the cabin!
Michelle x
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