Once you’ve listened, let us know about your experience with this practice in the comments below. And be sure to listen again and again until the exercise becomes more integrated for you.
In this episode, we take a deeper dive into what we had started in episodes 46 and 47, dealing with Wind, with movement and the Sinews, and dealing with the underlying principles of movement, which are Yin and Yang. They are the underlying principles of all things in life and often concepts that are pretty misunderstood because we think of Yin and Yang as being just opposites.
The sun is Yang, the moon is Yin. We have hot climates and cold climates, these opposing elements, but there's so much more involved in Yin and Yang. It’s important to understand this theory as a foundation for how you move your body when you exercise, but also how you move your body through life, and, metaphorically, how you move through and navigate your life in general.
Understanding Yin & Yang
Extreme Yin is going to be something that's extremely cold, like ice, which contains very little Yang – there’s very little movement within ice, but there is molecular movement, which means there is a little Yang. As you add Yang, you bring warmth to the ice, and then it starts to melt, and now that water begins to have more movement.
There is constantly an interplay between Yin and Yang, so there’s no absolute one or the other – they're really interdependent, working together.
They also have an important relationship because one transforms into the other and also too much of one can deplete the other. So if you have excessive Yang, so let's say for example, you're doing a lot of exercise, you're going to be expending a lot of Yang energy that over time, if you're doing too much of it is going to deplete the Yin, the fluid aspect of the body. So we always say that if you're doing exercise that involves a lot of sweating, you're actually leaking your Qi and the fluids – you’re depleting the essence instead of building Qi, which is really the goal of exercise.
Another example is when people do a lot of vigorous exercise late at night, during a Yin time. Then we say you're burning the midnight oil, so you're burning out the fuel of your life source energy.
You can look at this in terms of the seasons as well – you want to be more Yin during the Yin seasons, like Winter. And even during the Summer when you want to be Yang, you have to examine what’s happening in your life. If there’s a lot of stress, then you don’t want to exert too much Yang energy so you can preserve your Yin.
So harmonizing, yin and yang and balancing these different aspects internally in your body is going to optimize your health and ensure that there's a greater possibility for longevity through a greater quality of life.
The Sinew Meridians
The Bladder Sinew Meridian is the most superficial energetic pathway that helps you exteriorize and put your energy out into the world. This meridian is known as Taiyang, or Greater Yang.
But in order to exteriorize your Yang energy, you first need to gather your Yin. In other words, to release your Fire pathway, you need to first gather Water.
The Fire pathway runs more on the posterior, or the back side of the body, where the Bladder Meridian runs, and the Water pathway is more on the Yin side of the body, the front of your body.
The Bladder Meridian is what allows us to put ourselves out into the world and be active. And while that serves us, it's also important to temper that Yang so that it doesn't burn out our Yin, which is why it’s important to balance the Fire and Water pathways to harmonize Yin and Yang.
[00:13:03] When you're dealing with exercise and movement, you're dealing with the Sinew level. And when we're talking about movement, we have to understand it as a progression through life.
So when we're born, we're really little like balls of Yin. We depend fully on our parents, our mothers in particular, to take care of us and to be able to move us around. This really changes once the Fire pathway is activated. When we start to begin at around a month old, to be able to lift our heads, this is when the spine starts to want to become more upright.
As we activate that Yang through the back of our bodies, eventually we're able to crawl and then sit up. And then once we actually are able to walk and prop ourselves upright, this is the full activation of the Fire pathway along the back body, but also of the leg Sinew Meridians, the Yang meridians in the legs.
There's an important relationship between the Yin and Yang as we've mentioned. So when you're wanting to activate the Yang aspect of the body, it also has to be supported by the Yin.
The Yin Sinew Meridians of the legs are the Spleen, Liver and Kidneys, which run along the inner parts of your legs and help to consolidate and ascend energy in the body.
The Spleen ascends but also consolidates Qi, the Liver ascends Qi and blood but also stores blood, and the Kidneys ascend Qi from the lower abdomen
When you're grasping the Earth gently with the bottom of your toes, in particular the big toe through which the Liver and Spleen meridians start and terminate, you're activating [00:17:00] these Yin meridians to draw this energy up into the domain of the lower burner in the lower part of the abdomen to consolidate the Kidney Qi, or Water energy.
When you're accumulating Yin Qi, you're accumulating the Water and this is what you’ll use combust into Yang Qi in order to become light and be able to run fast.
The Microcosmic and Macrocosmic Orbit Meditations help to circulate energy throughout your body through the primary source channels of Yin and Yang, known as the Du and Ren Meridians, which are also the Fire and Water pathways of the body. In this way, these meditations also connect the Fire and Water energies, cultivating Heart-Kidney communication, which helps you realize and live out your life purpose. To purchase access to these meditations, click the button below:
The Fire Path
So the idea is to draw energy up along the Water pathway, and then be able to exert that energy, that Yang Qi through the Fire pathway.
When you inhale, you gather energy through your feet from the earth while drawing energy from heaven through the Lungs. Since the Lungs descend into the Kidneys, you’re establishing communication in this way between the upper and lower burners to establish a consolidation of Water.
[00:19:52] When you exhale, now you've drawn all this energy into the front, now you're going to release that energy up your spine with your exhale, and as you release it up your spine, you imagine it go all the way up to the top of your head and out through your limbs.
[00:20:49] So imagine that you're kind of zipping up the energy along the inner part of your body as you inhale, and then you're expressing it out through the limbs and through the back body with your exhale.
When you're climbing and you're going up a hill, you need the power of the Fire path to climb that hill. So you're basically drawing the Water down into your lower belly, lower abdomen, even down to the base of your pelvic floor.
And then with your exhale, you're allowing the energy to release up your back. So it's down the front up the back in a loop. That's the Fire path.
Now, this is really powerful when you're going up a hill because you need the power of the Fire. So you're drawing in with your in breath into the front of your body, and then you're releasing with the out breath and you're relaxing the back of the body. And that's going to make you lighter as you go up the hill.
The Water Path
[00:23:14] So when you're going downhill, you're doing the opposite. You're drawing the Fire path down into the Kidneys. So you're drawing the energy down into your lumbar. and then you releasing the Water with your exhale so that energy that gets accumulated at the pelvic floor and lower burner is going to be able to release and rush up the Water path, which goes all the way up into the face.
So this energy is looping now from the back down to the front up and as it goes up the front, out the Sinews of your arms and legs along the Yin side of your limbs, i.e. the front side of your thighs into the tops of your feet where the Stomach Meridian helps you put the brakes on. So as you're breathing out, you're actually slowing down.
So when you’re going downhill, you’re going to work with the Water path.
[00:26:18] Doing exercise and movement in this way brings a lot of intention into whatever you're doing, which is always important for deeper cultivation.
But it also makes you understand how the awareness that you put into everything that you do can actually create energy or Qi – so you’re using your mind to activate your body.
So it just gives you this sense of empowerment around using the ability of your mind to propel yourself, not just in the exercises you do, but also in how you express yourself in the world, how you move through the world and how you feel and experience your daily life.
The Microcosmic & Macrocosmic Orbit Meditations
If you want to learn more about how to cultivate these Water and Fire pathways, you can work with the Microcosmic and Macrocosmic Orbit Meditations, which are now more than 50% off for a limited time. This is a really powerful way to learn how to harmonize Yin and Yang, understand this concept of the Fire path and Water path, how Qi moves along the front and back of your body, and then learn to control that Qi and help it circulate throughout your entire body.
This is going to help you feel more alive, physically, but it's also going to help you get clarity of mind so that you can fulfill and live out your life purpose.
Our hope for you is that you start to make movement your medicine. And so as we provide you with more of these tools here on the podcast with what's available on our websites, you'll start to feel more embodied and more empowered to use your body to change your life. And eventually our hope is to bring back to revitalize the Yin Yoga Integration course, as an online course.
The best way to keep posted on all of our developments and the programs that are coming out for you in the very near future is to join our online international community and get a free 5 Step Guide.
And again, it's that repetition and that consistency that will help make this more integrated for you. So don't feel overwhelmed. Just go back and listen again, know that we're always here as a resource for you to support you and know that with practice, you will be able to find that progress that you're looking for.
Let us know your about experience with this practice in the comments below. And be sure to listen again and again until the exercise becomes more integrated for you.
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