Day 9/365 — Yin Yoga

I decided to do the Yin Liver practice from the Insight Yoga with Sarah Powers DVD.  It’s an hour long Yin yoga routine focused on the liver/gallbladder meridians and featuring wide legged child’s pose, a gentle backbend, some twists, and lots of external hip rotations.  On the outside it’s a quiet looking practice, but once I get into the third or fourth minute of pigeon it feels like a lot of work to stay calm.

In the Insight Yoga DVD, Sarah talks about how the liver is associated with the emotion of anger and to be on the lookout for feelings that come up during the practice, particularly the strong hip oriented postures like pigeon.

A few years ago, my husband and I took some yoga classes together.  Oftentimes, we would get to the hip opening postures and they would stir up feelings of anger in him, to the extent that he’d sometimes leave class early to avoid them.  I always attributed his frustration to his lack of flexibility, but now I wonder if he may actually have been experiencing a release of liver energy.  Even though it sounds a little “out there” to me, his reaction to the liver/gallbladder poses was so consistent that maybe there’s something to it.