YIN & YANG

“Your body is precious. It is your vehicle for awakening. Treat it with care.”

BUDDHA

As I’m talking to many people in my job as a yoga teacher and physical therapist trainee I hear people complaining about their health conditions and their pain and struggles in life every day. 

What I’ve realized is that most of them are very passive when it comes to change and their „healing process“ expecting that there’s going to be that one person or that one pill that is going to help and heal them straight away removing all their pain and health issues without doing anything for it. But this is not how it works at all.

If you want to improve something in your life, especially when it comes to your health you need to understand that YOU are the one who have to change something in the first place. Meaning you need to ACTIVELY take the decision to change something. You need to understand that if you won’t make an active decision for yourself and if deep inside you are not ready to take the steps that are required to go, nobody else will drag you there.

Furthermore, there’s something crucial to understand and to remind yourself of in my opinion:

Our body is already a natural masterpieces and the result of a very long evolutionary process. 

Tiny individual parts such as nerves, blood vessels, muscle fibres, bones and the endocrine system make up complex parts of the body and functional systems that rule our lives with their perfect interaction. 

Many of these conditions on which your mindset, nutrition and movement has a strong influence must be in harmony to function smoothly to stay fit and healthy. Being in harmony means balance like the principe of yin and yang. To simply break this down you can say that if you have too much of one extreme you need to add more of the opposite in order to find balance as the disturbances in the Yin-Yang dynamical balance may result in inflammation, and various disorders including insomnia, Alzheimer’s disease, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, skin disorders, cancer and many more.

Most of the time we’ve got too much yang in our lifes  —> Yang represents the sympathetic nervous system which is activated by danger or stress and puts the organism in a “flight or fight” response. 

The parasympathetic nervous system (Yin part) regulates our “rest and digest” or “feed and breed” functions. 

—> Overstimulation of the Yang energy during long stressful periods puts the body in a hyper-sympathetic state with somatic, emotional, and mental consequences. 

Being sympathetically dominant for too long means we are not spending enough time in the parasympathetic state, and we are missing out on the time we need to heal, regenerate and nourish our bodies. If this continues for a long time, symptoms of “Yin deficiency” begin to appear like difficulties in sleep, muscle tightness, feelings of frustration, constant anxiety and much more. In conclusion, the more balanced our autonomic nervous system, the stronger and healthier we will be.

So how can we balance our autonomic system activating the Yin energy? To make it simply nutrition, movement and mindset. 

Ask yourself the following to find out whether you’ve got more of yin or yang in your life:

• Do you often feel more anxious, nervous or even angry and moody or do you feel most of the time more happy and pleased? 

• Are you rather a negative or a positive person?

• Are you an optimist or a pessimist?

• Do you treat yourself rather good or bad?

• Do you breathe mainly shortly and rapid or long and deep?

If you’re in a Yin deficiency like the majority of us start becoming aware of your „main“ stressors in life and see if you need to turn one of the screws nutrtion, movement and mindest.Then find healthier alternatives to replace your main stressors to take better care of yourself.

Here are some examples of how already small things can change your energy level and your state of health if you are willing to change something: 

• See if there’s something you need to change in your nutrition –> „eat to fuel your body, not to feed your emotions“

• Incorporate any kinds of movements into your day no matter if it’s walking, dancing, working in the garden, etc. (excessive sitting is life-threatening!)

• Cleanse your social media feeds of anything that makes you feel bad about yourself and follow more of those accounts who motivates you and make you feel good

• Schedule time slots for yourself daily. Make your self-care-appointments to your priority.

• Practice gratitude before sleep and self-love and compassion when you wake up in the morning.

• Practice body positivity or body neutrality at least if body positivity feels inauthentic to you.

• Always remember that your body is a piece of nature and a true miracle, so treat it like a temple, not like a piece of sh…

Sending you lots of love <3

Katharina