The first article in this series asked the question “How does my body move?” Before we could examine this question in any depth we took the time to review the Taoist ideas of Yin and Yang. We are now going to return to the original question or rather the question most relevant to Hatha Yoga practitioners: “Why does my body not move the way I want it to?”

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In our last article we elaborated why we should make a distinction between Yin and Yang tissues. Yang tissues should be exercised in a Yang way and Yin tissues should be exercised in a Yin way. Muscles are Yang, bones and connective tissue are Yin. Yang muscles should be exercised with rhythm and repetition. Connective tissue or bone should be exercised with long periods of stasis or stillness. The rhythmic contraction and relaxation of weight lifting is the proper way to train our muscles. The long, sustained pressure of braces on our teeth is the proper way to change their alignment.

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Exercise is now common place in our culture. So common in fact that it might shock people to remember that people who ran marathons in the first part of the 20th Century were considered of questionable sanity. In the 1950s and 1960s it was common for athletes to be cautioned against lifting weights as such practice would diminish their physical skills by making them “muscle bound” and “slow”. How ironic that as of Spring 2005 there is a major scandal in professional baseball about players using steroids. Many of the recently achieved records in hitting homeruns are being examined to see if they should be disallowed because steroid use has made modern players “too strong” and given them an “unfair advantage”. So in just a few decades the popular mythology of weight lifting has turned 180 degrees. What used to be considered detrimental is now considered essential and athletes from the high school to the professional level are coached and encouraged to train with weights. A few decades ago well equipped weight rooms were hard to find and now hardly a high school in the country doesn’t have one.

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The purpose of some Yoga postures is to stress the joints in a beneficial manner. This article explores the different forms of stress that can be placed on a joint so that a Yogi can make the appropriate choices when practicing.

Some yoga postures are designed to beneficially stress the joints of the body to stimulate their strength and flexibility. There are two fundamentally different types of stress: tension and compression. Yogis should learn the difference between the two.

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