I Thought I Was Just Stretching

Taking yin yoga beyond the mat

Photo by Conscious Design on Unsplash

Downward dog is a torturous position for my body. Unfortunately for me, it is considered a home base, or even a resting pose, in most yoga flows. Because of my tight posterior chain and limited ankle mobility, downward dog is all struggle, stress, and sweat. Honestly, it only feels tolerable when I stack a couple of blocks up under my hands, or when I just skip it and find a child’s pose instead.

Flexibility has always been a challenge for me. Growing up, I routinely failed the Presidential Fitness Test in gym class due to being unable to complete the sit-and-reach standard. In adulthood, I’ve attended dozens of yoga classes with friends but find that I’m not able to keep up with the basic elements and timing of the flow. When the hour ends, I feel frustrated with an undercurrent of inadequacy.

My attitude towards yoga started to shift a few years ago when I discovered yin yoga. Yin is a slow-paced practice where postures are held for an extended period. In an hour-long class, you may only move through a warmup pose, a handful of postures, and a Shavasana relaxation. I’ve found yin to brilliantly complement—both physically and emotionally—the high-intensity exercise that I pursue throughout the week with Orangetheory, Peloton, and running.

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Regular exercise is a core practice for integral coaches to develop the body of a coach. I need stamina, energy, and cognitive clarity to focus on serving my clients and to remain dedicated to my self-development. The recommendation from my coaching faculty for this year of study is to do aerobic exercise 3-5 times and/or yoga 4-6 times per week. I love working out and moving my body, so when I first heard this, my initial reaction was, “Sweet, I’ve got this one in the bag!”

As I allowed time and space to reflect, though, I realized that the intent of practicing exercise during this year of learning and self-development should genuinely push me beyond my normal behavior and comfort zones. In that spirit, I am committed to yin yoga or deep stretching and mobility work one to two times per week in addition to my established exercise practice.

One of the beautiful and unexpected results of my coaching training journey is that I’m more open and curious about pretty much everything. I’m noticing valuable lessons everywhere in life that apply to my own development and integral work with clients. In addition to routinely getting in good, deep stretching, I’ve distilled three lessons from yin that apply beyond the mat to coaching and life.

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Confront the discomfort

Within each yin posture, the goal is to find your edge, which is felt as a moderate level of physical discomfort. Holding the posture should be a “non-neutral” experience, as my local instructor says. In yin, when I find a physical edge it is similar to when I encounter a cognitive or emotional edge in life: I notice sensations of unease, discomfort, and the buzz of anxiety.

Yin has taught me to find that point and not turn away from it. Instead, I confront the discomfort and explore it by sitting within it for five or six minutes. I am practicing bringing curiosity rather than fear to these encounters. Each pose is an invitation to explore what may happen if I gently adjust my position, and what I feel when I find stillness in the discomfort.

Beyond the yoga mat, I’ve been noticing what I tend to do when I feel a moment of discomfort throughout the day. My instinctual response is to back off by distracting myself, such as picking up my phone, checking LinkedIn (my only “social media”) on my laptop, eating something, or folding some laundry. I’m practicing resisting the need to discharge the discomfort in favor of sitting in it as if it were a yin pose.

One of my core functions as an integral coach is to support clients in exploring and navigating the areas in their lives that bring up that familiar buzz of anxiety. It is so tempting, and in the short-term, so much easier to take the distract and discharge route. However, the buzz is often a tell that in the undercurrent there is an opportunity for development. Authentic growth happens in that buzzy zone of discomfort. Just like yin, working with a coach is a non-neutral experience.

Delight in support

Yin has quickly become a metaphor to me for the importance of external support. When I reach for the blocks during a traditional vinyasa class, I feel inadequate, clumsy, and slow, as setting up the blocks interrupts my timing with the flow. As a result, I often would not reach for the blocks when I needed them. In contrast, there’s plenty of time in the yin practice to find the pose and settle into it. I can build a castle of support for myself as needed with bolsters, blocks, and blankets.

I have found the freedom to shift and adjust the pose as my discomfort level changes as well. Sometimes I feel the discomfort easing, which is an invitation to reduce some of my reliance on the supports I’ve constructed. On other days and in other poses, the discomfort builds and I recognize that it is now too intense and I need more support. There is no judgment or comparison, as the practice of yin is based only on how you feel in the moment, not the shape or appearance of your body.

For years, my way of being, especially in the world of work, was to do it all on my own. It seemed that this was how I could provide the most value. Asking for support was admitting weakness or failure; I didn’t see it as an action that could launch me to a new level. But the reality hits when trying to change something in your life, grow in a new direction, or develop a new way of showing up in the world: it can’t easily be done on one’s own. That’s like trying to learn a new language without ever speaking it with anyone else.

A critical question that I ask early and often with coaching clients is, “What support do you need?” As their coach, I am one source of support, but most clients benefit from having at least one person in their day-to-day life “read in” to their growth and self-development goals and the process. A close friend, colleague, or family member is a valuable addition to the team as they are more readily available in the moments when it feels like a grind or when it’s time to celebrate a small win. Like a yin pose, as time goes by, needs for support shift, but sometimes we fail to recognize that. That is why I ask that same question at the end of each session.

Name and take the easy route

Tim Ferriss is famous for his straightforward question, “What would this look like if it were easy?” I apply this in almost every yin pose, and it quickly provides insight into whether I need to take action. When I inquired about this in a frog pose recently, I realized that my arms were trembling. The pose intends to stretch the hips, not build upper body strength. I doubt that I could have endured the pose by holding myself up on my hands for the long haul, so I had to somehow make it easy. I shuffled a bolster onto the mat and dropped my forearms onto it. Within seconds I was in a more sustainable shape while still feeling the stimulus in my hips.

Busyness, striving, stress, and powering through are all tacitly celebrated in our workplaces and society. We feel like “it” (work, exercise, meal planning, dating, or whatever your challenge is) is not allowed to be, and in fact, should not be easy. The harder “it” is, or the more hours we put in seems to reflect on our character. But when I found myself misaligned in the frog pose, I learned that it’s possible to make it easier while still getting the intended result. What if you got even better outcomes on “it” by taking the easy route? Do you believe that is possible?

“What would this feel like if it were easy?" is a powerful tool that can bring similar clarity to coaching topics and help clients challenges that they face. Often the gut reaction is highly actionable if you allow yourself to truly see that response as a possibility. But first, you have to name it.

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I was already noodling with these thoughts about yin when my mentor coach shared a poem by Mary Oliver a few weeks ago. The poem inspired me in that I’m not alone in not being able to touch my toes, and reminded me that we are all beginners over and over when it comes to our growth and self-development.

🪷 “First Yoga Lesson,” by Mary Oliver

“Be a lotus in the pond,” she said, “opening
slowly, no single energy tugging
against another but peacefully,
all together.”

I couldn’t even touch my toes.
“Feel your quadriceps stretching?” she asked.
Well, something was certainly stretching.

Standing impressively upright, she
raised one leg and placed it against
the other, then lifted her arms and
shook her hands like leaves. “Be a tree,” she said.

I lay on the floor, exhausted.
But to be a lotus in the pond
opening slowly, and very slowly rising—
that I could do.