I attended a 75-minute Yin yoga class at Yoga Sol.
This type of yoga dir
ectly addressed what I'm most interested in about yoga. First of all, the fact that we stayed in each posture for a long time ga ve me tons of opportunity to meditate and build my concentration and equanimity skills. (Equanimity is of particular interest. I'll get to that later.) As I set tled into each posture, gradually going deeper and deeper, and becoming more phy sically still, I had lots of interesting sensations to take as objects of medita tion. Usually I tried to maintain continuos attention to whatever area was being stretched/activated/released by each posture, or else I'd focus on the feeling of my core muscles relaxing or on my torso rising & falling with the breath and how the posture affects that (all of which are very interconnected, so sometimes more than one at a time). It's clear that in a session like this, I can apply t he same high standards for concentration that I hold for myself in seated medita tion because there is very little to keep track of mentally and there is so much time to stabilize attention on each posture. This is a huge plus for me. It was also a great time to develop equanimity. A lot of these postures required you to trust all of your bodyweight to gravity and become limp. This ta kes a lot of equanimity because gravity can pull you into positions with intense sensations that make you want to tense your muscles back up. So there are a lot of challenging (unpleasant) sensations to relax into, which is a very large asp ect of my meditation practice and something I learned from Shinzen Young. There are also a lot of very pleasant sensations in other times and areas, which presu mably also call for equanimity, but the relationship between pleasure & EQ isn't yet as clear to me as the one between pain & EQ. Even if I weren't trying to build meditative skills in these postures, t here were a lot of purely bodily benefits that I think are so essential for a ha ppy life. Throughout our day, we build up lots of tension in our bodies and I th ink it adds a subconscious layer of stress and discomfort. These postures allow you to release that tension in so many neglected areas, especially since you're giving them the time they need to fully be released, which is more than 30 or so seconds. (I also happen to think concentration and EQ enhance this effect.) I would love to learn more postures that involve letting gravity stretch you and are good to stay in for long periods. I would do a routine like this ev ery morning (I already kind of do, but it needs to be expanded and diversified. And I need to do it less hurriedly). I think it would help with my mood, motivat ion, and energy, and would be like killing two birds with one stone--doing somet hing good for my body without sacrificing any of my meditation time.