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All forms of exercise share two features in common:
- first we must stress the tissues,
- then we must let the tissues rest.
Yang tissues do better when stressed in a yang manner and yin tissues do better when stressed in a
yin way. Stress has many negative connotations in our culture because we forget the "rest" part of
this equation. But to have no, or little, stress in our life is just as damaging as having too much
stress. We need to stress the body, and we need to rest it. There is a yin/yang balance here that
leads to health. Too much of anything is not healthy.
Yang exercise targets the yang tissues: the muscles. Muscles love to be rhythmically and repetitively
moved. Any static holds are brief. The muscles are elastic and can take this type of exercise. However,
to apply yang exercise to yin tissues could damage them. Yin tissues, being more plastic, require gentle
but long-held stresses. Imagine bending a credit card back and forth one hundred and eight times every
morning. It wouldn't take many mornings of this for it to snap in half. The credit card is plastic,
just as our ligaments are. To rhythmically bend ligaments over and over again, as some students do
when doing drop back from standing into the wheel, can, over time, damage the ligaments, just like
the credit card was damaged The warning here is … do not apply yang exercise techniques to
yin tissues!
Applying a yin exercise to yang tissues could also be damaging! Holding a muscle in a contracted state
for a long period of time is called "tetany" [1] and may damage the muscle.
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Is it better to tighten muscles (yang) or relax them (yin)? That depends on your intention. We tighten our muscles
to protect our joints. We relax our muscles so we can exercise our joints. What is your intention in the pose you
are doing?
Many health care professionals shudder at the thought of exercising joints; they have the mistaken view
that all exercise is yang exercise. Despite this concern it is possible to exercise ligaments, bones, and
joints. In fact, it is necessary. However, being yin tissues means we must exercise them in a yin way. And
then, please remember the important second part of this equation - we must let them rest!
[2]
There is a lot of research proving the importance of stress and rest beyond just developing strength physically,
but it is beyond the scope of this journey to go into it further. [3]
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1 -- Tetany is an involuntary cramping of a muscle.
2 -- As an aside, the theory of exercise applies beyond the tissues of our body.
We need to have stress, and then rest, in all areas of our life in order to be healthy. This can include our
relationships, our mental abilities, and even our immune system. For example, cancer patients rarely get colds
before getting their cancer. Their immune systems were not exercised by colds and thus were weaker than the
immune system of people who did get colds regularly. We need to stress our immune systems, appropriately, in
order for them to be strong. But we also need rest. Migraine sufferers rarely have heart attacks because
their migraines force them to slow down and adopt a yin lifestyle for the few days that their migraines
occur. Like our tissues, our lives require periods of stress and rest.
3 -- If you are curious about the above examples, feel free to start a discussion
in the Kula discussion board.
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