What is the theory of Yin & Yang?

In essence this ancient Chinese philosophy means two halves that together complete wholeness, two opposite yet complementary energies which are always in movement, never static but always balancing and rebalancing into a state of perfect harmony. We encounter examples of Yin and Yang every day. As examples: night (Yin) and day (Yang), female (Yin) and male (Yang)

How it is relevant to my life?

In our busy and often stressful lives our personal harmony can be seriously off balance. Perhaps you deal with an excess of work and not enough relaxation, lots of time spent thinking about the externals of life (deadlines, daily choices, opinions) and a lack of inner contemplation. Striking a balance with ever changing states of energies is hard (really hard!) but it is also possibly the path to a more contented and harmonized existence

Yin and yang are a wonderful way to generate greater self- awareness and make interesting connections between our own conditions and all our possible interactions with the world we live in. Yin and yang allow us to connect ourselves to everything around us so that we can quickly decide what we need to do to bring ourselves back to a more balanced state when feeling any discomfort.

Yin and Yang in Yoga and Simon Low

Yin and Yang yoga started in the 1970’s but has only recently gained international popularity. Simon Low (who will be at Camyoga in 2015 running workshops) discovered this form in 2001 and is now one the foremost experts in it. Here are extracts from his website explaining this popular form of yoga

                           

"In appropriately balanced combination, the 'whole' is greater than the sum of its two parts, offering the most effective & inclusive approach to yoga that I have ever experienced in over 20 years of teaching & practice. I continue to recognize Yin & Yang Yoga's incredible effectiveness as a modality for health"

Read more about Simon Low’s visit in 2015 and book into his workshops

Please come and experience Yin Yoga yourself at one of our evening classes held at Central CAMYOGA

To read more about Simon Low visit part 1 of my blog on this Yoga legend here

Simon Low has over 20 years’ experience as a yoga teacher and is internationally acclaimed. Here are 5 things you should know about the charismatic man who will be visiting us next year!

1 - Simon spent 14 years in the music business. It was high flying and fast paced; a life representative of the ‘work hard, play hard’ moto. It wasn’t till he was in his mid-thirties that he first discovered yoga and started his path to become to yogic mogul he is today!

2 - Simon Low was a founding member of one of the first ever yoga studios in the UK – The Triyoga studios in London. Since then he has continued to delve into the world of yoga; founding the Yoga academy, running international courses, retreats, writing books and yoga videos (Yin and Yang Yoga with Simon Low), he has contributed and been covered by various national papers

3 - Simon is a LEGEND in Yin & Yang yoga (Yin and Yang to be explained in part 2) Simon is famous in the world of Yin and Yang yoga. He views yoga practice as a balance between the body and mind, the spiritual and the emotional, the physical and the mental. He talks of Yin yoga practice as a form of therapy to actively change negative patterns within our minds. This can have successively positive and lasting effects on our wellbeing and is something that is at times forgotten in the modern world within the focused ambition to improve the physical body. “the essence of yoga…is observing our mental attachments, observing our patterns – the whole process of yoga it to undo patterns and to really open us up to the reality of how our mind shapes our experiences”

4 - Simon is an open minded scholar. Simon first trained to be a yoga teacher with Dr Larry Payne at Samata in Los Angeles and has spent over 20 years studying and exploring a varietal wealth of physical, energetic and spiritual practices. You get a real sense that he has studied an incredible amount with gusto and he intertwines his style of yoga with what he learns about anatomy and physiology among other areas of interest

5 - Simon is passionate and outspoken about safety. He teaches his students that they must understand the need to protect themselves and that yoga can cause harm if not practiced correctly. If he believes a classic asana may have the potential to damage he will apply adjustments, for example with Warrior II pose, which he considers to put strain on the lower lumbar area.

In the proximate chapter of this blog we will focus specifically on Yin and Yang yoga and Simon’s teachings within it.

Simon comes to CAMYOGA in 2015: A weekend with SIMON LOW

Research and quotes taken from: Telegraph Interview by Anna Murphy. Interview by Christina Maningo for In The Loop and from Simons own website

Pete Blackaby author of Intelligent Yoga' and pioneer of the 'Humanist Yoga' approach pays a long awaited visit to Camyoga next week for a two day intensive open to teachers and students alike.

In his book 'Intelligent Yoga' Pete introduces the following ideas:

Themes that I think are worthy of debate are the following:

1. Yoga as a modern practice. Most serious students of yoga will know by now that there is a big disconnect between the type of yoga that is practiced in the majority of Gyms and yoga studios today, compared to the type of yoga described in the texts revered by most yogis. There have been a raft of books in recent years pointing out this disconnect. If we take this as our starting point that current yoga is a modern practice, what from the past can we legitimately carry forward into the future and what needs to change? What differentiates modern yoga from exercise?

2. Perhaps most contentiously can we take the ideas of chakras, kundalini prana, and other ideas of subtle energy as reality or are they simply a metaphor for experience, which is certainly the perspective I take. If we take this view and strip out much of the metaphysics how do we now differentiate yoga from other forms of exercise?

3. Anatomy. Yoga is flooded with books on the anatomy of yoga. Having taught the anatomy of yoga for many years, I now feel it can be a red herring leading us down un-useful ways of thinking. There is a place for anatomy, but largely to help explain why some movements are unhelpful, or why some people can do certain poses and others not. What anatomy cannot do is inform about how to move. To understand movement we have to study movement and see how anatomy supports it, not the other way round.

Join Pete 13/14 November Camyoga Shelford BOOK HERE open to teachers, trainee teachers and students