by Youngbear Roth

Created on: June 24, 2010   Last Updated: July 18, 2010

TITLE: 'YinSights: A Journey into the Philosophy & Practice of Yin Yoga' by Bernie Clark
ISBN: 978-0968-76651-4
Publisher: YinSights

'YinSights: A Journey into the Philosophy & Practice of Yin Yoga' by noted author and Yoga teacher Bernie Clark is a beautifully conceived detailing of the development of Chinese Yoga – a traditionally static Yoga as opposed to the combination dynamic/static form that hails from India.

The asanas and the sequencing are similar, however, in the static Chinese style of 'Yin Yoga', stasis in a position is used to focus on imparting healing, strength, and anti-aging qualities to connective tissues and joints rather than on the muscle tissues that come into play during dynamic or repetitive Yoga styles. Both approaches create profound changes in organs, systems, and metabolism, and both express philosophical and spiritually contemplative elements.

Mr. Clark's biographical statement tells us that his Yoga practice encompasses both the dynamic styles, such as Ashtanga and Power Yoga, and the softer, yin-styles, as exemplified in Yin Yoga, and that he holds thirty years of Zen meditation in his background. However, upon studying 'YinSights', I have found his biographical statement lacking. It does not come close to doing Bernie justice as a passionate champion of Yoga - the exercise, and a master historian and philosopher of East meets West cultural and contemplative consciousness and transpersonal traditions as demonstrated in the historical and philosophical Yoga journey that he traces and is able to unify between China's non-dualistic Buddhism, India's dualistic Samkhya tradition as expressed in 'The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali', and an interesting Western European compare and contrast of Carl Jung's psychoanalytic model culminating in "When Buddha Meets Jung."  

Bernie Clark establishes his trademark as a methodical, accessible author when he explains step by step that Yin is a sister term to Yang, two words growing from one another, related, yet used in general parlance to express opposites. In this case, Yin being the gentle Yoga and Yang being the hard Yoga. Yang Yoga targets muscles and stresses muscle fibers with shorter static timing and also repetitive movements.  This strengthens muscle fibers but is damaging to connective tissue.

Yin Yoga targets joint tissues, their health being improved using gentle movements and flows with sustained holding times of anywhere from three to twenty minutes.  This Yin

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