Paul & Suzee Grilley present their method and approach to Yin Yoga which has been a real success on the yoga scene for almost two decades now. Filling a void left by a very dynamic and competitive approach to yoga, which was quickly caught up in consumerism and digital technology. Paul and Suzee Grilley are considered the founders of the Yin Yoga approach.
Consumerism that has long been catching up to the yin that all the uninspired teachers say they practice and teach (It’s one of the trendy things). I don’t discredit the method at all, I got interested in it and bought Bernie Clark’s book which contains a mass of super interesting information and which I apply in the classes for seniors. Moreover, I find a lot of common points with the therapeutic yoga of Iyengar. What I notice is that some teachers, under the guise of doing yin, go into the facilities of their body without understanding the consequences on the long term.
It has become a catch-all practice, which rubs the client-student the right way without ever confronting him in his limits. This is where consumerism catches up with this formidable method which corresponded to an urgent need to stop competing in yoga. Today everybody does hatha flow vinyasa and yin and even yin flow??? In two years it will be other practices that will be mainstream and yin will become interesting again. Thank you for not misinterpreting what I have written.
Yes, as teachers we are constantly faced with our egos. It is sometimes difficult to resist it, we are tired of pleasing. This is why I continue to follow the classes of my teacher-master in Iyengar who has a sometimes irascible side and who has built himself on the great sincerity of the practice without ever falling into the ease of pleasing. The trend in personal development today and in the yoga world is to never accept suffering, death, injury, failure, which is where we make the most progress as human beings.
It is difficult to confront this, with one’s own darkness and this is the depth of the teachings of hatha yoga, the union of the sun and the moon. It is this side too “round” too “flow” of a certain current yoga that I criticize because of a certain ease and rather immediately mastered it dodges the depth of a relation to the body. Yoga is also about establishing a relationship with oneself from the body (the tangible aspect of reality).
If this one is superficial, too easy, too immediate, the relationship to the body becomes a kind of conditioning which in turn locks the person in a relationship that removes him from himself. This kind of practice is endemic to our lifestyle, zapping and social networks, mass of superficial information that develops a kind of hyperactive intelligence.
My son is now 19 years old, and I am amazed and quite surprised by his quick and sharp intelligence, as well as that of his friends. But at the same time I feel a great uprooting on their part. They lack the foundations, a certain tradition (please don’t misunderstand him…) In short, an anchoring. I personally enjoy teaching two courses at the university and I admire the liveliness of its young people. I try to bring them some of this “anchoring” and alignment in practice. But in any case, I have a lot of fun there and with the seniors who need a different kind of anchoring.
The audience I have more difficulty with, is the people who have practiced vinyasa, flow. The first time they come to my class they don’t understand my class and either get stuck or get surrounded as quickly as possible. I feel a great loneliness and a disconnection to the body even if it has the qualities of flexibility.
