Chinese language tends to describe the Organs and their functions in poetic terms. Their language is metaphorical, often drawing on images from nature and human governance to describe the various processes of human health.
Everyday Sublime: Shedding Light on Yin Yoga and Meditation
Yin Yoga and meditation are refinements of awareness. The purpose of this podcast is to illuminate the theory and practice of Yin Yoga, Chinese Medicine, and meditation as three interwoven tools for apprehending the "Everyday Sublime." As Stephen Batchelor says, "the mystical does not transcend the world, but saturates it."
Available in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, Castbox, Overcast, PlayerFM, Beyondpod, PocketCasts, TuneIn, and (almost) anywhere else you listen to podcasts!
Bernie Clark: Understanding Yin Yoga
Here, Bernie Clark talks about the fascial concepts of dynaments and creep. He discusses some misunderstandings of Yin Yoga, as well as how to think about propping and assisting in Yin Yoga.
Chinese Medicine: What is Essence?
“The best way to affect positively one’s Essence is by striving for balance in one’s life activities: balance between work and rest, restraint in sexual activity and balanced diet. Any irregularity or excess in these spheres is bound to diminish the Essence. A direct way to positively influence one’s Essence is through breathing exercises and such exercises as Tai Ji Quan and Qi Gong.” – Maciocia
Bernie Clark: The Science of Yin Yoga
Listen to Bernie Clark discuss: antifragility, confusion between correlation and causation, the four levels evidence in science, piezoelectricity, and Yin and Yang stress on our tissues. Essential listening for Yin Yoga teachers.
Chinese Medicine: What is Blood?
The second big function of the Blood in Chinese Medicine is that Blood is said to have the function of ‘moistening’ tissues. Strong Blood prevents things from drying out. Healthy Blood keeps the tissues moist, keeps the eyes from feeling dry, keeps the sinews (or tendons) lubricated, and moistens the skin, nails and hair, preventing all from becoming dry, cracked, and brittle.
Bernie Clark: Hypermobility and Hyperextension
Many people express concern about issues of hypermobility and hyperextension in Yin Yoga. Here Bernie Clark explores these concerns and logically defends Yin Yoga. Essential listening for Yin Yoga teachers.
Bernie Clark: The Mindset of a Teacher
For yoga teachers, it can be a challenging process to unlearn rigid rules of alignment and to adapt their teaching to the unique experience of their students. Here, Bernie Clark will walk you through how to think about and teach functional alignment in Yin Yoga and beyond.
Chinese Medicine: The Sources and Functions of Qi
As with everything in Chinese Medicine, all entities – whether they be a type of energy, an organ, or a meridian – tend to be defined by the functions they perform. And the concept of Qi is no different. It’s classification as a type of energy is defined by what functions it performs, and for Qi there are Five Primary Functions.
Chinese Medicine: The Meridians
One way of thinking of the Meridians of Chinese Medicine is that they are, generally speaking, channels of communication within the organism along which subtle informational signals are transmitted.
Emerging From Hibernation
Back from the Yin phase of Winter Hibernation, I’m excited to tell you about what’s in store for Season 2 of Everyday Sublime. I have a couple of quick updates about the Summers School of Yin Yoga, and a line-up of superstar interviews for 2018. We’re off to a great start this year, and I’m looking forward to connecting again.
Winter is the Most Yin Time of Year
In 2018, the Summers School of Yin Yoga will be unrolling a unique way study Yin Yoga with a modular curriculum, as well as a way to earn a 200hr or 300hr certification in Yin Yoga, if you’re interested. Each of the core modules of the school will include an online component (taken prior to attending the session) and a live four-day immersion. This will allow us to start at a much higher level when we come together live, and will provide a much richer learning experience overall.
Chinese Medicine: What Is Qi?
Qi is “perceived functionally, by what it does,” is critical to remember. Entities in Chinese Medicine are almost unanimously “perceived functionally,” that is, defined by what they do. We’ll see this affirmed again and again when we look at the meridian system. Meridians are defined by what they do, functionally – the organ system – organs are defined by what they do, functionally – and the Vital Substances of the body – which again are defined by what they do, functionally for the whole organism.
Chinese Medicine: Mastering the Relationship
A point that many authors and practitioners of Chinese Medicine often reiterate is that as qualities of change, Yin and Yang are in a constant process of controlling and balancing one another. A static, unchanging balance is never achieved. What is observed and assisted, however — both by the skilled yoga practitioner and practitioner of Chinese Medicine — is a smooth process of balancing
Chinese Medicine: The Flow of Yin and Yang
By observing Yin and Yang dynamics both in the macrocosm and within the microcosm, the overarching intention was always one of promoting harmony. When honored, observed and respected, Yin and Yang describe processes of change that can be fluid, harmonious and balanced. Of course, if neglected or disregarded, the ceaseless process of change between Yin and Yang can break down and no longer be a smooth, harmonizing process of balance, but rather turn into a disruptive, chaotic, and jarring dynamic of imbalance.
Chinese Medicine: Taoist Origins
Taoists observed how the play of cycles in Nature would manifest in parallel within their internal experience. Understanding and attuning to the world outside facilitated an ability to bring the internal microcosm into harmony with its world, and vice versa, where greater understanding of the microcosm – especially through meditative insight – supported this harmonization with the external environment or macrocosm.
Chinese Medicine: A Holistic Paradigm
A holistic approach to medicine will formulate a diagnosis of a patient’s condition by taking into consideration the complex dynamic of everything going on internally with that patient, as well as external influences of interpersonal relationship, work, and climate. Whereas a more conventional approach to medicine will try to identify a singular causative factor that generates illness and which needs to be eliminated or suppressed.
The Jazz Session: Ode to Aaron Goldberg
I find Aaron’s trios are the settings where his personality and voice shine brightest. In my interview Aaron, he talked about the depth of connection that forms between jazz musicians when they’ve played together for years and years and years, and it’s that level of connection and interpersonal knowing that facilitates the kind of expression and improvisation that is so charged and captivating. It’s that depth of familiarity which facilitates the sublime.
Yin Meditation: A Creative And Functional Approach To Meditation
In a Yin approach to meditation, you encounter the raw materials of your life: sensations of the body, perceptions, ideas, thoughts, views, and opinions. And in coming to know these elements more directly, you can shape and make of them what you will. How you act, think, speak, work, and rest are all of one process that you examine and develop in the workshop of your meditation practice. You are both the artist and the creative subject.
Yin Meditation: How To Fail At Meditation
What I’m about to suggest as a way of working with sleepiness will likely cause you to question my sanity. But, for me, and many that I’ve spoken to and worked with, allowing sleepiness to be, i.e. letting it go on, is the most effective strategy for working with it. And, in the context of this lesson, by doing so, you might find yourself inadvertently entering deep states of stillness by specifically not fighting sleepiness.
Yin Meditation: Relaxing Within the Hindrances
In contrast to more active and Yang ways of working with the hindrances, I’ve found it incredibly fruitful to adopt a more Yin approach. Rather than deploying any prescribed technique or strategy for dealing with them, I’ve found that bringing a relaxed, receptive, tolerant, and curious energy towards the hindrances is a really good first step. These qualities reframe the energy that my mind tends to have in approaching each hindrance. I’m not so much in attack mode any longer. I’m a bit softer and friendlier, encouraging a broader exploration of their energy.