Female: So let us start with one of the meridian pairs in the body the kidney and urinary bladder with the butterfly. So we are going to bring our feet together about six inches away from the groin and we are just going to kind of acquaint our feet with one another. You can hold on to the feet, you can have the hands right along side the feet whatever feels comfortable, but what you are going to do is take a deep breathe in and as you exhale you are going to come into the position.
So Kim and Amy are going to continue to demonstrate as I talk you through this. The kidney bladder meridian is really responsible for our core chi in our body. The kidneys are endowed with something called prenatal chi, which is energy that is given to you at the time of birth, really through your mother. So whatever mind state she was in and also the father that helped to come together to create you. The two of those people actually imbued you with a certain measure of energy which rest in your kidneys from the time of birth and it is called prenatal chi.
That energy actually speaks to the length of your life, your longevity. So the kidneys are really the primary center that we want to target in Yin Yoga or Makahos (Inaudible) and when you are over in this position you are actually exposing the kidneys. Not literally exposing them but actually stretching all the tissue around them so that they can get nourished. So as you are in this position what you want to do is send very quiet easy focused breathe just through the body in this position and once that is happening is that if you start up appearing you feel really stiff and cranky and frustrated if you can surrender that is a really important word in this practice. If you can surrender to the breath what winds up happening is that you melt and all of the fascia the deep connective tissue in the body which was beneath the surface of the muscles starts to stretch like taffy.
So the girls behind me are just breathing and they are giving themselves over to gravity and what is happening is by virtue of the fact that they are taxing the tissue, the fascia, they are sending electrical signals through those meridians and those pathways that go directly to the kidneys and kind of bathe them in a nourishing glow and an energy. So we have been holding this pose for something probably close to five minutes or more but really every yin most every yin pose or every Makahos (Inaudible) you do can be done up to 10 or 15 minutes. But if you are doing it on a fly you can just do it for about 10 breathes.
So after we have come to our utmost place of extension, we are going to take a deep breathe in everybody and then exhale. Uncurl through the spine; take your time because after you have been holding a position like that you might get light headed. You have just released an abundance of energy up through the trusting channel that is your spinal column. Trusting channel is a name used in Chinese medicine. Chesham Zenati (Inaudible) is another name used in yoga. So take a deep breath in this position, exhale, and just feel the energy that you have just started to create and let us go into full forward bend which is another exercise that targets the kidney and urinary bladder.
So you are going to extend the legs out in front of you and here again for modification if you have trouble sitting upright you can actually just hold your arms and place them behind you and just kind of get acclimated to the position. If you have more flexibility you can sit up right and then take your hands just along side your legs and really just let your body fall down towards the mat and breathe. So the beauty of this practice is that you are working at your own pace listening to your own body. It is not one of these where you are really trying to stretch forcefully which you should not do in any case but with yin yoga you are actually befriending gravity and as I have said all of the deep connective tissue starts to give so if you suffer from chronic back pain in any aspect of the back while at first there might be poses that create a kind of discomfort in those areas if you stick with this practice and you trust and focus the breathe.
Little by little miraculously that back pain will go away. So continue to melt if you feel like you have passed your edge if you are comfortable in a certain place and you want to come out of it further you can do that to. So you want to find a place where you feel a bit of a challenge in the tissues. You do not want to be completely complacent with where you are. You should not feel nothing; you should feel like you are constantly gently pushing the envelope with this.
So we will stay here for a few more breathes everyone. You can let the features flap. They do not have to stay perfectly parallel. That is another great aspect of the yin practice but it is kind of calm as you are practice. You can really let down which again happens so rarely in today’s world. Last breathe and exhale roll up through the spine and let us come to child’s pose in between.
So again after you have held a pose for a long time, it is important for you even to move even slower than we are on this DVD. Really take stock of what it feels like and in child pose which is another great kidney refresher. You want to hold it for breathes or as long as you want and just feel how the body melts into the earth. Keep the breathe moving it is really, really important. So after we come up out of child’s pose which we are going to do now. We are going to move to another meridian pair and before we do you girls can sit around and we are going to assume the dragon fly position with legs out to the sides.
I just want to speak for minute about the emotional component of the organs. The kidneys that we just worked on in Chinese medicine actually connect to emotions. So the kidneys speak to fear if you feel cranky or grump the way I mentioned earlier when you do these poses you actually go into a place where you confront your fear and if you breathe through it you will see—11
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