The Five Yin Yoga Asana Archetypes (As Taught By Paul and Suzee Grilley)
Archetypes are notably recurrent themes that we experience when moving our body in asana. They are motifs, patterns, and help us to classify and understand the biomechanics of shapes that we use in (Yin) Yoga practice. Paul Grilley and his wife and teaching partner Suzee Grilley have devised five main archetypes that encompass the majority of the asana experienced in the Yin Yoga practice. (There are seven, they claim, that encompass the totality of Yoga asana.)
These archetypes are useful tools to adapt your own practice to your unique body and for understanding how to adapt students to the intention of your class. They allow for a greater scope of practice and understanding them will make you a better teacher. Guaranteed.
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👏🏼Yoga👏🏼is👏🏼full👏🏼of👏🏼bullshit.
I’ve been practicing yoga for a long time (since a teen) and the whole time my bullshit radar has pinged.
It’s something I struggle with - the practice has given me SO MUCH. And the industry is full of such absolute baloney sometimes it makes my skin crawl.
You read the books with the nice words by the gurus, then dig deeper and read of their gross manipulation of people and power. You look to the modern ‘gurus’ and find the same - almost universally. Nice words, shit behaviour.
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What is Yin Yoga? (And What It Isn't!)
By now, most people who practice Yoga have likely stumbled upon Yin Yoga, a seemingly modern style that originated in its current form in the 90s in LA and has now made its way around the world. Over the last five years, Yin has become incredibly popular and is now a regular part of many practitioners’ daily or weekly practice (take a look at the Google Trends result for Yin Yoga over the last 5 years).
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On Courage
I did something this weekend that scared me. In the lead-up I was tense and short, uneasy and probably unkind. I let it get to me. But I got there and I did it and it was fine. And it got me thinking about the ways in which we cope, the patterns that we have developed to keep us safe.
Lashing out, tapping out, projections and distractions. Funny, because it doesn’t really do shit to help us, it’s just another way to try to control the inevitable, uncontrollable is-ness of life. Which is futile.
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A personal history of food…
Since I was a teenager, when I switched from my parent’s diet to a vegetarian diet complete with the world’s most religious and least healthy soy milk, So Good by Sanitarium (I know, I know), I was fascinated and appalled by our food system. I had witnessed calves being branded and neutered in my first year of high school, we visited battery farms and piggeries. I rescued chickens from the ag shed and mice from the science labs. I was heartbroken at how animals were treated. I stopped eating meat immediately.
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