- 💛 A Letter First
- 🌱 The Seed Verses
- 🪷 The Practice
- 🌙 What Yin Yoga Is
- ☯️ Yin & Yang, Ha & Ṭha
- 💧 The Moon in Yoga
- ❄️ The Cooling Breaths
- 🌕 The Moon Postures
- 🧘 The Yin Poses
- 🦴 Anatomy & Theory
- 🌀 The Mind in the Long Hold
- 🔗 How the Gaze Soothes
- ⚖️ Doshas, Bodies & the Moon's Hours
- 🤝 Companions of the Practice
- 🌏 Other Paths & Views
- 📖 Stories & Allegories
- ❓ Misconceptions
- 📜 More Verses
- 🗂️ Sources & Notes
- 🙏 A Closing Blessing
💛 A Letter Before We Begin from my heart to yours
My dear friend, I wonder whether you are tired in the particular way so many people are tired now. 🌙
Not the good tiredness of a day's work in the open, which sleep mends. A hot, dry, wired tiredness: the eyes burning by evening, the head still running at midnight, the body unable to stop when at last it is allowed to. You rest, and the rest does not reach you. You take a holiday and come back as you went.
Perhaps you have found your way to a Yin Yoga class for this reason. The room is dim. You are folded forward over a bolster and told to stay for five minutes. And there, in the one place in your week where nothing is asked of you, you discover that you cannot bear it. The hip is the least of it. It is the mind that will not lie down: it itches, plans, counts, composes messages, and wants to know how much longer.
This is the pain I want to speak to: people who are burnt and overdriven, and who have lost the knack of being still and cool.
The old yogis had a complete teaching for this condition. They said that in each of us there is a sun and a moon. The sun heats, drives and consumes. The moon cools, nourishes and restores; and it drips, they said, a nectar on which life depends. A life lived all in the sun burns that nectar up. Half of Haṭha Yoga, the half the West has scarcely noticed, exists to protect the moon.
I am a Trataki. For hours every day I rest my gaze on one point, in the gentle way I describe at Trāṭaka Yoga, with the eyes half-open, like a half moon. On this page I want to show you the lunar side of yoga whole: what Yin Yoga is, its poses, anatomy and theory; the restorative postures of Haṭha; the moon in the yoga texts, Iḍā, Soma and Śaśī; the cooling breaths; and why I say that all of this soothing is completed by the gaze. I will keep three things apart as I go: what the texts say, what has been measured, and what is my own experience. 💛
🌱 The Seed Verses the Veda, the Lord, a physician, a yogi and a sage, on the moon that nourishes and the sun that consumes
One line from the great hymn of creation, and it holds the whole of this page. When the gods are born from the limbs of the cosmic Person, the moon comes from the mind, and the sun from the eye.
So the mind is lunar by nature: it should be cool, reflective, quietly luminous. And the eye is solar: it is the organ of fire, the one that burns. Our trouble is an eye that never stops burning and a mind that has caught fire from it. The remedy is contained in the same line. Soothe the sun in the eye, and the moon in the mind is restored.
पुष्णामि चौषधीः सर्वाः सोमो भूत्वा रसात्मकः ॥gām āviśya ca bhūtāni dhārayāmy aham ojasā |
puṣṇāmi cauṣadhīḥ sarvāḥ somo bhūtvā rasātmakaḥ ||Entering the earth, I uphold all beings
By My vital power;
And I nourish all the plants,
Becoming Soma, the moon, whose very self is sap.
The Lord names Himself as the moon, and says what the moon is for. Puṣṇāmi: "I nourish". Somo bhūtvā rasātmakaḥ: "having become Soma, whose nature is rasa": juice, sap, essence, savour. In the Indian understanding the sun ripens and dries, and the moon fills things with their juice. A person who is dried out, body and mind, is short of moon.
And the first line gives the other word we shall need: ojas, the vital essence. Soma and ojas, moon and vitality, in one verse.
तत्सर्वं ग्रसते सूर्यस्तेन पिण्डो जरायुतः ॥
ऊर्ध्वनाभेरधस्तालोरूर्ध्वं भानुरधः शशी ।
करणी विपरीताख्या गुरुवाक्येन लभ्यते ॥yat kiñcit sravate candrād amṛtaṃ divya-rūpiṇaḥ |
tat sarvaṃ grasate sūryas tena piṇḍo jarā-yutaḥ ||
ūrdhva-nābher adhas tālor ūrdhvaṃ bhānur adhaḥ śaśī |
karaṇī viparītākhyā guru-vākyena labhyate ||Whatever nectar flows from the moon, of divine form,
All of it the sun swallows; and by this the body is yoked to old age.
The navel above and the palate below; the sun above and the moon below:
This is the practice called the Inverted, learnt from the word of the teacher.
Here is the yogis' physiology of exhaustion, in two lines. There is a moon in the head, at the root of the palate. It lets fall amṛta, nectar, the deathless. There is a sun at the navel, the digestive and consuming fire. In the ordinary upright life everything the moon gives falls into the sun and is burnt. Tena piṇḍo jarā-yutaḥ: "thereby the body grows old".
The second verse gives the yogis' answer: turn it over. Put the navel above and the palate below, so that the moon, śaśī, is beneath the sun and its nectar is kept. This is the legs-up posture that every restorative class ends with. Its whole purpose is lunar.
शरत्काले प्रशस्यन्ते प्रदोषे चेन्दुरश्मयः ॥śāradāni ca mālyāni vāsāṃsi vimalāni ca |
śarat-kāle praśasyante pradoṣe cendu-raśmayaḥ ||Garlands of the autumn flowers,
And spotless garments:
These are recommended in the autumn season;
And, in the evening, the rays of the moon.
A physician's prescription. Autumn is the season in which, Caraka says, Pitta, the fire in the body, having built up through the rains, flares. Among his remedies are cool foods, bitter ghee and clean white clothes; and this: pradoṣe ca indu-raśmayaḥ, "and moonbeams, in the evening". The first book of Indian medicine prescribes moonlight for an overheated system.
पूर्णेन्दावुदिते ह्यत्र नैर्मल्यं भुवने यथा ॥ānando vardhate dehe śuddhe cetasi rāghava |
pūrṇendāv udite hy atra nairmalyaṃ bhuvane yathā ||Bliss grows in the body
When the mind is made pure, O Rāghava,
As clearness spreads through the world
When the full moon has risen.
Vasiṣṭha, teaching how the mind's trouble becomes the body's and how both are healed. When the mind is cleansed, ānando vardhate dehe: delight increases in the body. And his image is the rising of the full moon, pūrṇendu, which makes the whole world clear and cool without touching anything.
चन्द्रार्कावपि लीनतामुपनयन्निस्पन्दभावेन यः ।ardhonmīlita-locanaḥ sthira-manā nāsāgra-dattekṣaṇaś
candrārkāv api līnatām upanayan nispanda-bhāvena yaḥ |With eyes half-open, mind steady,
The gaze given toward the nose-tip,
Bringing even moon and sun to rest
By his own stillness…
And the practice. Ardha-unmīlita: half-opened. The eyes themselves take the shape of the half moon. Candra-arkau: moon and sun. Līnatām upanayan: bringing them to rest. The sun is no longer consuming and the moon is no longer consumed. This is the seal of the gaze, and it is the completion of every lunar practice on this page.
🪷 The Practice how Trāṭaka Yoga is joined to the quiet, cooling side of yoga
The method itself lives on one page only: Trāṭaka Yoga. It has three elements: a single point, half-open eyes, and a gentle gaze. I do not repeat the instructions here. I only say how it serves the one who seeks cooling and rest. 🪷
🌙 Trāṭaka Yoga as the mind's yin pose
As a yin practice in itself. 👁️ Learn the gaze at Trāṭaka Yoga, and sit or recline with it in the evening, as that page allows. It is a long, still hold for the busiest muscles you have, those that move the eyes, and for the mind behind them. Nothing is stretched. Something is allowed to stop.
Before a Yin or restorative practice. 🧘 Sit with the gaze first, until the eyes are cool and the breath has evened. Then take your long holds. You will find that the minutes which used to be a struggle with the mind are simply minutes.
Within the holds. 🌗 Once you are settled in a pose, let the quality of the gaze remain: the eyes soft, lowered or lightly closed, resting and not roaming behind the lids. When restlessness comes, do not move the body. Bring the eyes to rest, and the urge passes.
That is all. Cool, still, and enough. 💛
🧭 Does it replace Yin Yoga?
No. The hips, the spine and the connective tissue need their long, gentle loads, and the gaze does not give them that. It gives the long hold its other half: a mind that is also in a yin pose.
🌡️ How to tell it is right
The eyes feel cool and moist; the forehead is smooth; the breath is slow; there is a pleasant heaviness in the limbs and no hurry in the mind. If the eyes smart or the brow is tight, you are staring. The third element is gentleness.
🕯️ When?
The lunar practices belong to the evening and to the cool of the day. A short sitting at dusk, in soft light, is worth more for this purpose than a long one at noon.
🌙 What Yin Yoga Is its history, its three principles, and what makes it different from every other class
Yin Yoga is a way of practising in which a small number of floor postures are held for a long time, usually three to five minutes and sometimes much longer, with the muscles relaxed. Its aim is not the muscles at all. It is the deeper, denser tissues that surround and join them, the fascia, the ligaments and the capsules of the joints, above all in the hips, pelvis and lower spine; and, through the stillness, the mind.
The name is recent. In the late 1970s an American martial artist and teacher of Taoist yoga, Paulie Zink, was teaching long-held floor postures in California. One of his students, Paul Grilley, joined them to a careful study of anatomy and to the meridian theory of the Japanese scholar and yogi Dr Hiroshi Motoyama. Grilley's student Sarah Powers proposed the name "Yin Yoga" to distinguish this quiet practice from the active, muscular, "yang" styles; and Bernie Clark and others have since spread it across the world. The practice of holding postures for a long time is, of course, far older than the name: the Haṭha texts speak of remaining in a posture, and in classical China the long quiet hold was a Taoist exercise.
| The three principles of Yin Yoga | What is meant | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · 🌊 Come to an appropriate edge | Enter the pose only to the first place of real sensation. Not the furthest you can go: the place where you can stay | Connective tissue responds to mild, sustained load. Force makes the muscles guard, and the load never reaches it |
| 2 · 🗿 Resolve to be still | Once there, stop moving. Let the muscles go. Do not fidget, adjust or deepen by effort | Stillness lets the muscles release so that the deeper tissues take the load; and it is the training of the mind |
| 3 · ⏳ Hold for time | Stay: three minutes, five, more | These tissues change slowly. Time does what force cannot |
Many teachers add a fourth: come out slowly, and rest between poses, lying still to feel what has changed. That pause is called the rebound, and for many people it is the sweetest part.
| ☀️ Yang practice | 🌙 Yin practice | 🕊️ Restorative practice | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Examples | Sun salutations, standing sequences, flowing and vigorous styles | Yin Yoga | Supported postures on bolsters and blankets; Śavāsana |
| Muscles | Working | Relaxed | Relaxed |
| Target | Muscle, heart, breath, heat | Fascia, ligament, joint; the meridians | The nervous system: complete rest |
| Sensation | Effort, warmth, sweat | A steady, dull, tolerable pull | None sought: comfort |
| Time in a pose | Breaths | Minutes | Many minutes |
| Rhythm | Movement, repetition | Stillness | Stillness |
| Its danger | Strain, overheating, ambition | Hanging in the joints; over-stretching the hypermobile; a restless mind | Sleep |
| Dosha it calms | Kapha | Pitta; and Vāta if kept warm and not too long | Vāta and Pitta |
🔬 Science's word
Connective tissue is "viscoelastic": under a steady, gentle load it slowly lengthens, a behaviour engineers call creep, and under a sudden strong one it stiffens. Therapists have long used "low-load, prolonged stretch" for stiff joints. And slow, still, floor-based practice shifts the nervous system toward its restful branch.
🌿 Āyurveda's word
What is hot, sharp and mobile is calmed by what is cool, soft and still. That is the whole of Yin Yoga, in the language of the doshas: a practice of śīta, manda and sthira, cold, slow and steady, which are the qualities of the moon. See Trāṭaka Yoga & Āyurveda.
🕉️ Yoga's word
Patañjali's definition of posture is steadiness and ease, perfected "by the loosening of effort". A yin pose is that sūtra practised literally: the effort is loosened, and one stays. See Yoga Āsanas.
☯️ Yin and Yang, Ha and Ṭha two civilisations, one pair: the sun and the moon in nature and in the body
The Chinese word yīn first meant the shady side of a hill, and yáng the sunny side. From that plain picture grew a way of seeing everything as a pair of complements: dark and bright, cool and hot, still and moving, moon and sun. Neither is good or bad. Each contains the seed of the other, and health is their balance.
India has the same pair, and builds the name of a yoga upon it. The commentators explain ha as the sun and ṭha as the moon; Haṭha Yoga is the yoga of sun and moon. The right-hand channel and nostril are solar; the left are lunar. The Praśna Upaniṣad says it in its own way: the sun is prāṇa, the life-breath; the moon is rayi, substance, that which is nourished and nourishes.
| 🌙 Moon · Yin · Ṭha | ☀️ Sun · Yang · Ha | |
|---|---|---|
| In nature | Night, winter, water, earth, shade | Day, summer, fire, sky, light |
| Qualities | Cool, moist, heavy, slow, still, soft, inward | Hot, dry, light, quick, moving, sharp, outward |
| Channel and nostril | Iḍā; the left | Piṅgalā; the right |
| Seat in the body | The head: the root of the palate | The navel: the digestive fire |
| Its gift | Soma, amṛta: nectar, nourishment, ojas | Agni: digestion, energy, transformation |
| In the nerves, loosely | The branch that rests, digests and repairs | The branch that rouses, fights and flees |
| Dosha | Kapha, and the cooling of Pitta | Pitta |
| Tissues, in Yin Yoga's terms | Bone, ligament, fascia, joint: dense, dry, slow | Muscle, blood: warm, wet, quick |
| Organ of sense | The mind (born of the moon) | The eye (from which the sun was born) |
| In excess | Heaviness, dullness, sleep, stagnation | Burning, inflammation, anger, exhaustion |
| Modern life | Starved | Fed day and night |
📈 Chart 1 · The scale of sun and moon, and what tips it
A picture of the idea. Neither side is the enemy: a life with no sun in it is as unwell as one with no moon. But most of us today need no help with the sun. Everything on this page is weight for the left-hand pan.
💧 The Moon in Yoga: Iḍā, Soma, Śaśī the left-hand channel, the nectar in the head, and why the yogis guarded it
Sanskrit has many names for the moon, and the yoga texts use each for a different side of the same teaching. I set them out, because they are the vocabulary of everything that follows.
| The name | Its meaning | What it stands for in yoga |
|---|---|---|
| 🌙 Candra | "The shining one" | The moon in general; the lunar current; the left side. Candra-bhedana, "piercing the moon", is breathing in through the left nostril |
| 🐇 Śaśī, Śaśāṅka | "Having the hare", "hare-marked": India sees a hare, not a man, in the moon | The moon as the Haṭha texts usually name it: "the sun above, the śaśī below". Śaśāṅkāsana is the Hare, or Moon, posture |
| 💧 Soma | The sacred juice of the Vedic rite; then the moon, as the vessel of that juice | The nectar itself; nourishment; ojas. The moon is "Soma, whose self is sap" |
| 🍯 Amṛta, sudhā | "The deathless"; nectar | What drips from the moon in the head. To preserve it is the aim of several of the seals |
| ⚪ Bindu | "The drop", "the point" | The seat of the moon's nectar at the top and back of the head; the essence that is not to be wasted |
| 🌊 Iḍā | "Refreshment", "libation"; also a name of the earth and of speech | The left channel, ending at the left nostril: cool, pale, nourishing, inward. Called the Gaṅgā |
| 🌗 Kalā | A digit: one sixteenth of the moon's disc | The moon's phases. The sixteenth digit, which never wanes, is the hidden, deathless one |
| ❄️ Śīta, śītala | Cold; cooling | The quality of all this. Śītalī is "the cooling one", a breath |
न पीयूषं पतत्यग्नौ न च वायुः प्रकुप्यति ॥jālandhare kṛte bandhe kaṇṭha-saṅkoca-lakṣaṇe |
na pīyūṣaṃ pataty agnau na ca vāyuḥ prakupyati ||When the lock of the throat has been made,
Whose mark is the drawing-in of the throat,
The nectar does not fall into the fire,
And the wind is not disturbed.
One line of plain physiology, as the yogis understood it: na pīyūṣaṃ pataty agnau, "the nectar does not fall into the fire". Pīyūṣa is another word for the moon's amṛta; agni is the sun at the navel. The bowing of the head that closes the throat is, for them, a dam across the stream that runs from the moon down to the fire.
I do not teach the lock here. I quote the verse for its picture: there is a cool essence above and a fire below, and wisdom lies in not letting the one pour away into the other.
📈 Chart 2 · The moon's nectar and the sun's fire
Haṭha Pradīpikā 3.77 and 3.79, drawn. However one understands the "nectar", as a subtle essence, as the body's reserves, or as a poetic name for deep restoration, the picture describes something every exhausted person knows: what should be feeding us is being burnt.
Three kinds of practice follow from this picture, and they are the three lunar pillars of Haṭha Yoga. One reverses the positions of sun and moon: the inverted postures. One cools the fire: the cooling breaths and the left-nostril breath. And one stills the whole exchange: rest, and the seal of the gaze, in which "moon and sun are brought to dissolution". We take them in turn.
❄️ The Cooling Breaths Śītalī, Sītkārī and the breath of the moon: what the texts say and what has been measured
शनकैर्घ्राणरन्ध्राभ्यां रेचयेत्पवनं सुधीः ॥
गुल्मप्लीहादिकान्रोगान्ज्वरं पित्तं क्षुधां तृषाम् ।
विषाणि शीतली नाम कुम्भिकेयं निहन्ति हि ॥jihvayā vāyum ākṛṣya pūrva-vat kumbha-sādhanam |
śanakair ghrāṇa-randhrābhyāṃ recayet pavanaṃ sudhīḥ ||
gulma-plīhādikān rogān jvaraṃ pittaṃ kṣudhāṃ tṛṣām |
viṣāṇi śītalī nāma kumbhikeyaṃ nihanti hi ||Drawing in the air along the tongue, and holding it as before,
The wise one should let the breath out slowly through the nostrils.
Swellings of the belly, disorders of the spleen and the like, fever, Pitta, hunger, thirst
And poisons: this breath, called Śītalī, destroys.
Śītalī, "the cooling one". The tongue is rolled into a tube and the air is drawn in along it; anyone who tries it feels at once the cold on the tongue and in the throat. The text's list of what it removes is a list of heat: jvara, fever; pitta; burning hunger and thirst. Note the word for the out-breath: śanakaiḥ, slowly, gently.
| Practice | How it is described | What the texts claim | What has been measured |
|---|---|---|---|
| ❄️ Śītalī · "the cooling" | In-breath through the rolled tongue; out through the nose | Destroys fever, Pitta, hunger and thirst | Small trials in people with high blood pressure found a modest fall in pressure and a calmer heart rhythm 🟢 |
| 🌬️ Sītkārī · "the hissing" | In-breath through the teeth with a soft "sīt"; for those who cannot roll the tongue | Removes hunger, thirst, sleepiness and lassitude | Studied together with Śītalī, with the same result 🟢 |
| 🌙 Candra-bhedana · "piercing the moon" | In through the left nostril, out through the right | Cooling, calming; the reverse of the heating "sun-piercing" breath | Left-nostril breathing has tended to lower heart rate and pressure in small studies 🟡 |
| ⚖️ Nāḍī-śodhana · alternate-nostril | In left, out right; in right, out left | Cleanses the channels; balances sun and moon | The best studied of the yogic breaths: lower heart rate and blood pressure in several trials 🟢 |
| 🐢 Slow, long out-breath | Simply breathing out for longer than in, at about six breaths a minute | — | Reliably shifts the nervous system toward its resting branch 🟢 |
I describe these so that you will know the family. They are safe and gentle as breathing goes, and they are best learnt from a teacher; the cooling breaths are not for cold weather, a cold constitution or a chest that is congested. I add one observation of my own: after sitting with the gaze, I find the breath has become slow and even in both nostrils without anything having been done to it. The cooling breaths cool by a technique. The gaze cools by removing what was heating.
🌕 The Moon Postures the poses that bear the moon's name, the salutation to the moon, and the restorative heart of Haṭha Yoga
| Posture | What it is | Its lunar quality | The eyes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🙃 Viparīta Karaṇī · "the Inverted Action" | Lying on the back with the legs raised, against a wall or supported at the hips | The lunar posture above all: the navel above the palate, "the sun above and the moon below", so that the nectar is kept | Soft, lowered toward the chest, or closed |
| 🐇 Śaśāṅkāsana · the Hare, or Moon | From kneeling, folded forward with the forehead to the floor and the arms extended or beside the body | Named for the moon. Cooling, quieting; the brow rests on the earth | Closed, or resting at the floor |
| 🌙 Ardha Candrāsana · the Half Moon | In some schools a standing side-bend; in others a balance on one leg and one hand with the body opened sideways | The shape of the crescent; opens the lunar, left side and the right in turn | The raised hand, or one fixed point |
| 🌒 Crescent postures | The low lunge with arms raised; the standing crescent | Named for the curve of the new moon | The thumbs, or upward |
| 🌕 Candra Namaskāra · Salutation to the Moon | A modern sequence, the evening counterpart of the Sun Salutation: slower, with side-opening and low lunges; in one school, fourteen positions for the fourteen days of the moon's waxing | Practised facing the moon or at dusk; flowing but unhurried | Moves gently with the body, and rests |
| 🦋 Supta Baddha Koṇāsana · Reclining Bound Angle | Lying back, soles together, knees supported | Opens the pelvis, the seat of the water element; deeply restful | Closed or soft |
| 🐊 Makarāsana · the Crocodile | Lying on the belly, head on the folded arms | The Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā's resting pose; the belly breathes against the earth | Closed |
| 🕊️ Śavāsana · the Corpse | Lying on the back, still | "Removes fatigue and gives rest to the mind" | Closed, by custom. See Yoga Nidrā |
These are the restorative postures of Haṭha Yoga, and they are as classical as any head-stand. In the twentieth century B. K. S. Iyengar developed them into a complete method with bolsters, blankets and blocks, so that an ill or exhausted person could be placed in a posture and held there by the props, doing nothing. His students made of this the "restorative yoga" now taught everywhere.
Restorative practice and Yin Yoga are cousins and are often confused. In a yin pose there is a mild, deliberate load on the tissues: one is at an edge. In a restorative pose there is none: every part is supported, and the only aim is rest. The first is the moon as stillness under gentle stress; the second is the moon as pure repose. A wise evening practice uses both.
🧘 The Yin Poses the principal postures, their classical cousins, what they reach, and the meridians they are said to feed
Yin Yoga gives its postures plain English names of its own, partly to remind students that these are not the muscular versions of similar shapes. The list is short. Most practices use six to ten of them.
| Yin pose | Classical cousin | What it loads | Meridian pair it is said to feed | Its character |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🦋 Butterfly | Baddha Koṇāsana, rounded forward | Inner thighs, outer hips, lower spine | Kidney · Bladder; Liver | The gentlest fold; a good first pose |
| 🐛 Caterpillar | Paścimottānāsana, relaxed | The whole back line: spine, back of the legs | Bladder · Kidney | Quieting; draws the senses in |
| ↔️ Dragonfly (Straddle) | Upaviṣṭha Koṇāsana | Inner thighs, hamstrings, low back | Liver · Gallbladder; Kidney | Wide and patient |
| 👞 Shoelace | Gomukhāsana legs | Outer hips, deep rotators | Gallbladder · Liver | Strong; often emotional |
| 🦢 Sleeping Swan | Pigeon, folded forward | Outer hip of the front leg; front of the back hip | Gallbladder · Liver; Stomach | Deep release of the hip |
| 🐉 Dragon | The low lunge | Front of the hip and thigh of the back leg | Stomach · Spleen; Kidney | The most intense; fire meets patience |
| 🐎 Saddle | Supta Vīrāsana | Front of the thighs; arch of the low back | Stomach · Spleen; Kidney | Strong; not for sore knees |
| 🦁 Sphinx and Seal | A soft Bhujaṅgāsana on the forearms, or on straight arms | Lower spine, in a long gentle arch | Kidney · Bladder | Restores the curve lost in sitting |
| 🐸 Frog | Maṇḍūkāsana, knees wide | Inner thighs, groin | Liver · Kidney; Spleen | Humbling |
| 🧒 Child's Pose | Bālāsana; Śaśāṅkāsana | Lower back, gently; hips | Kidney · Bladder; Spleen | Rest and return |
| 💗 Melting Heart | Anāhatāsana | Upper back, shoulders, chest | Heart · Lung, through the arms | Opens what desk work closes |
| 🍌 Bananasana | A reclining side-bend | The whole flank, from hip to armpit | Gallbladder | A crescent moon, lying down |
| 🌀 Reclining Twist | Supta Matsyendrāsana | Spine in rotation; outer hip; chest | Gallbladder; Bladder | Wrings out and settles |
| 🐌 Snail | Halāsana, relaxed | The whole spine in flexion | Bladder | Strong; only with a healthy neck |
| 🧱 Legs up the wall | Viparīta Karaṇī | Nothing is loaded: the legs drain, the back rests | — | The classical lunar pose. Often the last |
| 🕊️ Final rest | Śavāsana | Nothing | — | Never omitted |
☯️ On the meridians
The fourth column is the Yin Yoga tradition's own teaching, taken from Chinese medicine, in which twelve channels of qì run through the limbs and trunk in pairs of a yin organ with a yang organ. The idea, developed by Dr Motoyama and Paul Grilley, is that these channels run in the connective tissue, so that a long hold which loads a line of tissue also stimulates the channel in it. Kidney and Bladder belong to water, the most yin of the elements, which is why forward folds and gentle back-arches are the core of the practice. It is a beautiful and suggestive map. It has not been demonstrated by anatomy, and I give it as a traditional teaching, not as a finding. The Indian counterpart, the nāḍīs, I have described in Kuṇḍalinī.
🦴 Anatomy and Theory in plain words: what a long hold does to tissue, to the nerves, and why time works where force fails
🧵 Two kinds of tissue
Muscle is elastic, warm and full of blood. It likes rhythm: contract, release, contract. This is "yang" tissue, and yang exercise suits it. Around and between the muscles is a tougher fabric: the fascia that wraps everything, the ligaments that tie bone to bone, the capsules that enclose the joints. It is drier, stiffer and slower. This is "yin" tissue. Stretch it quickly and it resists like a rope. 🟢
⏳ Creep
Hang a small weight on a strip of such tissue and it lengthens a little at once, and then goes on lengthening, slowly, for minutes. Engineers call this creep. Remove the weight and it gradually returns. It is the behaviour of all "viscoelastic" materials, honey-like and spring-like at once. A long, mild hold uses creep. A short, strong pull does not allow it. 🟢
🛡️ The guard reflex
A muscle stretched hard or fast contracts to protect itself; that reflex is how the doctor's hammer makes the knee jump. While the muscle guards, it takes all the load and the deeper tissue receives none. This is why the first principle is a mild edge and the second is stillness: only when the muscle lets go does the pose reach what it is meant for. 🟢
🩹 Stress that heals
Living tissue adapts to the loads placed on it: bone thickens, ligament strengthens, fascia stays supple. Tissue that is never loaded stiffens and shrinks, as anyone knows who has had a limb in plaster. Physiotherapists treat stiff joints with "low-load, prolonged stretch", and have found it more effective than brief, forceful stretching. Yin Yoga is that, self-administered and gentle. 🟢
🌿 The nerves
Stillness, the floor, dim light, slow breathing and long out-breaths all signal safety to the nervous system. Heart rate falls; digestion resumes; muscle tone drops. This shift to the resting branch is probably the larger part of why people leave a yin class feeling as they do. In a five-week trial, stressed adults who practised yin yoga showed less stress and worry, and a fall in a blood marker linked with strain on the heart. 🟢
⚠️ The cautions
Ligaments do not have the blood supply of muscle and are slow to mend. Those who are very flexible by nature should not hang in their joints; they need less depth and more support. The same for pregnancy, recent injury and inflamed joints. And no pose should produce sharp, burning or electric pain, or numbness. The edge is a place one can stay. 🟢
📈 Chart 3 · Why time works where force fails
A schematic drawing of the principle, not a measurement of any one tissue. The shape of the thick line, fast at first and then slow and long, is why yin poses are held for minutes, and why the third principle is time.
🌀 The Mind in the Long Hold the real difficulty of Yin Yoga, and the eye's part in it
Every teacher of Yin Yoga says the same thing: the body is not the hard part. A healthy hip can rest at a mild edge for five minutes with no trouble at all. What cannot rest is the mind. Deprived of movement, music and novelty, it does what an over-stimulated mind does when the stimulation is switched off: it produces its own.
There is a recognisable sequence, and nearly everyone passes through it.
📈 Chart 4 · Five minutes in a yin pose
The third box is where a yin practice succeeds or fails. The tissue needs minutes three, four and five. Whether the practitioner is still there to give them depends on what the mind does at minute two.
Now consider the eyes during that rebellion. In an over-driven person they are never still. Even behind closed lids they flick and dart, following the thoughts. The eye is, in the yogic understanding, the organ of the sun and of fire; Āyurveda says simply that "the eye is made of fire". In the body's own terms it is the most yang organ we have: the fastest muscles in the body move it, several times every second, all the waking day.
So here is the gap in the practice. Yin Yoga gives the hips a long, cool, still hold. It gives the spine one, and the shoulders. It does not, of itself, give one to the eyes; and the eyes are where the heat is.
That is what I mean by calling Trāṭaka Yoga the mind's own yin pose. Look at how exactly its three elements answer Yin Yoga's three principles.
📈 Chart 5 · The three principles of Yin and the three elements of the gaze
The pairing is my own; no text makes it. But I think it is exact. The same three conditions under which dense tissue will release are the conditions under which the eye, and the mind behind it, will release.
🔗 How Trāṭaka Yoga Soothes, Cools and Restores ten ways, from the eye inward
I mark each as before: 🟢 measured in studies; 🟡 follows from established science but not tested on this practice; ⚪ my own experience and the testimony of the texts.
1 · 🌗 The eye takes the shape of the moon
Wide eyes are the sun's: alert, gathering, bright. Half-lowered lids are the moon's. The Haṭha Pradīpikā's verse on bringing sun and moon to rest begins with the words "eyes half-open". The posture of the lids is itself the first cooling. ⚪
2 · 🧊 The organ of fire is cooled
Āyurveda places a form of Pitta in the eye and says the eye is made of fire. Screens, glare and effortful staring heat it. A soft gaze with lowered lids admits less light, lets the eye stay moist, and gives its muscles rest. I find the eyes rested and cool after sitting. ⚪ and 🟢: a trial found less eye-strain with Trāṭaka practice
3 · 🗿 The busiest muscles get their long hold
The eye makes several quick jumps every second of waking life. Resting on one point is a yin pose for those muscles and for the brain circuits that drive them. Nothing else in a yin class provides it. 🟡
4 · 🌬️ The breath becomes lunar
A slow breath with a long out-breath is the breath of the resting nerves. After every sitting I find the breath quiet and even in both nostrils: neither sun nor moon predominating, which the texts call the two "brought to rest". ⚪; small studies record slower breathing after Trāṭaka 🟢
5 · 🫀 The heart slows
A small study of Trāṭaka found a shift in the heart's rhythm toward the calming branch of the nerves. That is the same shift yin and restorative practice aim at, reached through the eye. 🟢 small study
6 · 🔥 Pitta is pacified
What is hot, sharp and intense is calmed by what is cool, soft and unhurried. Two of the three elements of the practice, half-open eyes and a gentle gaze, are Pitta's medicine exactly. The driven, burnt-out person needs these more than any stretch. 🟡 by Āyurveda's reasoning
7 · 🧠 The mind is given its own pose
In the long hold the mind rebels because it has nowhere to be. The point gives it somewhere. A mind that has learnt to rest on one thing can stay in a hip-opener for five minutes without complaint. ⚪
8 · 💧 The nectar is kept
However one reads the yogis' image, the meaning is that restoration should not be burnt up as fast as it is made. The gaze stills the exchange between sun and moon at its source. I can report only what I find: more ease, deeper sleep, a lighter body. ⚪
9 · 🌙 Sleep deepens
The evening sitting lets the senses turn back before bed. In a small study, daily Trāṭaka improved sleep in people with insomnia. Deep sleep is the body's own great yin practice, and the one on which all the others depend. 🟢 small study. See Deep Sleep
10 · 🕊️ Rest becomes restoration
Lying on a bolster with a racing mind is rest for the back and for nothing else. The quiet brought from the gaze is what turns a supported pose, and the final lying-down, into what they are meant to be. See Yoga Nidrā. ⚪
🔬 What science has and has not tested
- Yin Yoga. A handful of trials, most of them short. Five weeks of practice reduced stress, anxiety and worry in stressed adults and lowered a marker in the blood associated with cardiovascular strain. Evidence on flexibility and tissue change specifically from yin practice is still thin. 🟢 🟡
- Restorative yoga. In a year-long trial in adults with metabolic syndrome, restorative yoga did as well as or better than active stretching on several measures. It has helped fatigue and mood in women treated for breast cancer. 🟢
- Slow and cooling breathing. Good evidence that slow breathing shifts the nervous system toward rest; small trials for the cooling breaths. 🟢
- The moon. Careful sleep-laboratory work has found that around the full moon people take a few minutes longer to fall asleep, sleep about twenty minutes less, and have less deep sleep, even when they cannot see the moon. Why is unknown. The moon's light itself is far too faint to act as daylight does. 🟢
- Nectar, meridians, channels. Not demonstrated. I give them as the traditions' own maps. ⚪
- Trāṭaka. Small studies: calmer heart rhythm and breathing, better sleep, less eye-strain, better attention. No study has compared it with yin or restorative practice, or tested the form I teach. ⚪
References are at the end; the wiring from eye to nerves is in Trāṭaka Yoga & Science.
⚖️ The Doshas, the Five Bodies and the Moon's Hours who needs the moon most, where it works, and when to practise
| 🔥 Pitta | 🌬️ Vāta | 🌊 Kapha | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Its relation to the moon | Needs it most. Pitta is the sun in the body; the moon is its remedy | Needs the moon's stillness and moisture, but not its cold | Has plenty already. Too much moon is heaviness |
| How it shows on the mat | Impatient in holds; pushes past the edge; hot, flushed, irritable; watches the clock | Cannot be still; mind races; gets cold; often over-flexible | Loves it; falls asleep; rises heavier |
| Yin and restorative practice | Ideal. Forward folds, twists, legs up the wall; cool room; evening | Good if warm, well supported, and not too long. Fewer poses, more props, a blanket | Sparingly, and after movement. Shorter holds; gentle back-arches to open the chest |
| Cooling breaths | Yes: Śītalī, Sītkārī, left-nostril | No: they chill. Alternate-nostril, gently | No: they add cold and damp |
| Moonlight | Caraka's own prescription | Pleasant if warmly dressed | Not needed |
| Its element of the gaze | Half-open eyes; a gentle gaze | One steady point | The wakeful, open eye, so that stillness does not become sleep |
Āyurveda adds the reason why all of this matters to the body. The essence of all the tissues, ojas, is described as cool, moist, sweet and stable: it has the qualities of the moon, and it is called saumya, "of Soma". Heat, hurry, worry and sleeplessness waste it. Coolness, rest and contentment build it. To soothe the moon in oneself is, in the physician's language, to protect one's ojas. More in Trāṭaka Yoga & Āyurveda.
| The body | What the lunar practices give it | What the gaze adds |
|---|---|---|
| 🍚 Annamaya · body of food | Long, gentle loads for joint and fascia; rest for muscle; cooling | Rest for the muscles of the eyes and face; a lower setting of tension everywhere |
| 🌬️ Prāṇamaya · body of breath | A slow, lunar breath; the nerves turned toward rest; nectar kept | An even breath in both nostrils: sun and moon at rest |
| 💭 Manomaya · body of mind | Practice in staying with sensation without reacting | The mind's own yin pose; the senses turned back |
| 💡 Vijñānamaya · body of understanding | What surfaces in the long hold is seen and allowed to pass | A steady seat from which to see it |
| 🌸 Ānandamaya · body of bliss | The sweetness of the rebound; contentment with nothing added | "Bliss grows in the body when the mind is made pure, as clearness when the full moon has risen" |
🕰️ The moon's hours and days
🌆 Evening
Dusk is the junction of day and night, sun and moon, and the texts call such junctions the hours when the middle channel flows. It is the natural time for yin, for restorative postures and for the gaze. Caraka's word for the hour of moonlight is pradoṣa: the first part of the night.
🌕 Full moon and new moon
In the tradition of Mysore, vigorous practice is set aside on the days of the full and the new moon, and these "moon days" are given to rest. Many who keep them find the full moon stirring and the new moon heavy. A quiet practice suits both.
🍂 Autumn
The season when Pitta flares, and the season of India's most beloved full moon, when sweet rice is set out under the moonlight overnight and eaten in the morning as a cooling food. Caraka's prescription and the people's festival agree.
🌡️ Heat, in weather or in life
Summer; fever passed; anger; overwork; long hours at a screen; the years of life in which the body runs hot. Whenever the sun has been too much, the moon is the remedy.
🌙 The monthly rhythm
Many women find that the days of menstruation ask for the lunar practices and nothing strenuous, and several schools teach so. Supported, cooling postures, and rest.
🚫 When not
In cold, damp weather; when one is already heavy, chilled, low or sleepy; on rising, for a sluggish constitution. Then it is the sun that is wanted, and movement. Balance is the teaching, not the moon alone.
🤝 Companions of the Practice what else feeds the moon
🌙 Deep sleep
The body's own nightly yin practice, and the one no other can replace. Caraka says that happiness and misery, nourishment and wasting, strength and weakness all depend on sleep. See Trāṭaka Yoga & Deep Sleep.
🛌 Conscious rest
The lying-down at the end of practice, and the art of remaining awake within it. See Yoga Nidrā Realised by Trāṭaka Yoga.
☀️ The sun, in its place
Yin without yang becomes heaviness. Some active practice, walking, the standing postures, keeps the blood moving and the joints strong, and makes the stillness sweet. See Yoga Āsanas.
🍚 Cooling food
For an overheated system Āyurveda advises what is sweet, bitter and moist: milk, ghee, rice, sweet fruits, cucumber, coriander; and less of what is sour, salty, sharp and fried. And water, sipped. See the Gut.
📵 Darkness after dark
The moon cannot rise in a house lit like noon. Dim the lamps in the evening; put the screens away an hour before bed. The eye is the gate by which the sun enters at night.
🧘 A quiet mind
The long hold shows what the mind is carrying. Worry heats; grievance burns. See Overthinking; for the sitting practice itself, Meditation; and for the fire that must not be forced, Kuṇḍalinī.
🌏 Other Paths and Views what the Taoists, the physicians of China, the religions of the moon, the scientists of rest and the poets have said
☯️ Lǎozǐ: the soft overcomes the hard
The Dàodéjīng is the scripture of yin. Nothing is softer than water, it says, yet nothing surpasses it in wearing away the hard. The living are supple; the dead are stiff. The spirit of the valley does not die, it says, and it is called the mysterious female. Its highest counsel is wú wéi: not-forcing. A yin pose is that teaching practised with the hips.
🏮 Chinese medicine: when yin runs low
Chinese physicians describe a condition they call deficiency of yin: the cooling, moistening reserve is spent, and an "empty heat" flares. Its signs are a remarkable portrait of modern burnout: restlessness, dry eyes and mouth, flushed cheeks, heat in the palms, sweating at night, sleep that will not hold. The remedy is not to fight the heat but to rebuild the yin: rest, quiet, moistening food, early nights. And they say the eyes belong to the liver, which is replenished when one lies down.
🕯️ The day of rest
"Six days shalt thou labour… but the seventh day is the sabbath." Among the Ten Commandments, beside those against murder and theft, is a command to stop. The Jewish Sabbath begins at dusk, with lamps lit and work laid down. It is the most enduring institution of yin in the West, and those who keep it say that it keeps them.
🌙 The peoples of the moon
Islam reckons its months by the moon, and each begins when the new crescent is sighted: a whole community standing at dusk, gazing at one point in the western sky. Jews bless the waxing moon out of doors each month. Buddhists keep the full and new moons as days of observance. In Japan people gather in autumn simply to look at the full moon. Much of humanity's religion has been a looking-up at that cool light.
🏃 The science of recovery
Sport science has learnt what the yogis knew: the body does not grow stronger during effort. It grows stronger in the rest that follows, and without enough of it training makes an athlete weaker. "Over-training" is now a recognised condition, with a racing pulse at rest, poor sleep and low mood. The remedy has no technology in it. It is rest.
👁️ Rest for the eyes
Eye-doctors advise those who work at screens to look away at a distance at regular intervals and to blink. A century ago an American physician taught "palming": covering the closed eyes with the warm hands. His claim that it cures short sight has not held up; that it is restful, no one doubts. The eye has long been known to need its own repose.
🧪 Unusual and unproven ideas
For completeness. That the full moon causes madness, crime and births: the word "lunatic" records the belief, and large studies have mostly failed to find it. Water left in moonlight and sold as "moon water"; planting by the moon's phases; gazing at the moon to open an inner eye. Ice baths, a very yang road to a yin end. Hold these lightly. That moonlight is beautiful and that looking at it is calming needs no study.
🩺 The rest cure, and its lesson
In the nineteenth century a famous American doctor prescribed weeks of enforced bed-rest, mostly to women. It was a moon with no sun: isolation and idleness, imposed. Many were harmed. It is a caution worth keeping beside all praise of rest. Yin is restoring when it is chosen, measured, and balanced with activity. The teaching is the pair.
📜 The poets
The Chinese poet Lǐ Bái drank alone beneath the moon and made a party of three: himself, the moon and his shadow. Legend says he drowned leaning from a boat to embrace the moon's reflection. The Japanese monk Ryōkan, robbed of the few things in his hut, is said to have wished only that he could have given the thief the moon in the window. The poets have always known that this light asks for nothing and gives rest.
📖 Stories and Allegories the teaching, told the old way
वीक्ष्य रन्तुं मनश्चक्रे योगमायामुपाश्रितः ॥bhagavān api tā rātrīḥ śāradotphulla-mallikāḥ |
vīkṣya rantuṃ manaś cakre yoga-māyām upāśritaḥ ||The Lord Himself, seeing those nights
Of autumn, with the jasmine in full bloom,
Turned His mind to loving play,
Taking shelter of His own yoga-māyā.
The opening verse of the five chapters that devotees hold to be the heart of the Bhāgavatam. It is the full-moon night of autumn; the next verses describe the moon rising, reddening the east. And the first act of the Lord is given in one word: vīkṣya, "having looked upon". He sees those cool, white, flower-scented nights, and His mind turns to love.
It is the tradition's highest picture of what the moon is for. Not sleep only, and not rest only. In the coolness of that light the heart turns toward its Beloved. The sun is for work. The moon is for rasa.
🌘 Why the moon wanes
The Moon-god married the twenty-seven star-daughters of Dakṣa and loved only one of them. The neglected wives complained, and their father cursed him to waste away. He dwindled night by night, and with him all that grows. At last he took refuge with Lord Śiva, who could not undo the curse but softened it: fifteen days waning, fifteen waxing. And Śiva set the thin crescent in His own hair, where it shines still. The moon that is fading is the one the Lord wears. What is depleted in us is not thrown away. It is taken up, and it grows again.
🐇 The hare in the moon
A hare, a monkey, a jackal and an otter resolved to give alms on the full-moon day. The others found food to offer. The hare had only grass, which no man can eat; so when a hungry traveller came, he shook himself, that no small creature in his fur should be harmed, and leapt into the fire to give his own body. The fire did not burn him. The traveller was the king of the gods, who drew the hare's likeness on the face of the moon so that the deed should be seen for ever. This is why the moon is śaśī, "the one with the hare".
🕊️ The bird that drinks moonlight
The poets tell of the cakora, a partridge that lives on moonbeams alone. All night it sits with its eyes fixed on the moon, drinking the nectar of the rays, and it wants no other food. It is the tradition's image of the devotee, and I think of the yogi too: one who is nourished through a steady gaze at what is cool and bright.
🌊 The moon in the water
The moon is reflected whole in a still pond and broken into a thousand trembling pieces in a ruffled one. The moon has not changed. A mind stirred by heat and hurry reflects nothing clearly, not even its own nature. Let the water lie still, and the whole moon is in it.
👉 The finger and the moon
A teacher points at the moon. The foolish student studies the finger. All the postures, breaths and theories on this page are fingers. Do not mistake the bolster for the rest, or the technique for the coolness. Look where they point.
🏺 The clay jar
In the Indian summer, water is kept in an unglazed clay jar in the shade. No ice is added. The jar sweats, slowly, through its pores, and by evening the water inside is cool. It is cooled by stillness, shade and time. That is the whole method of the yin practices; and a person who is given the same three things will cool in the same way.
❓ Misconceptions, Gently Answered ten things sincere people believe about Yin Yoga, the moon and the gaze
1 · "Yin Yoga is easy yoga, for those who cannot do the real thing."
It is simple, which is different. Five still minutes at a mild edge ask more of most modern minds than an hour of movement. The strongest students are often the ones who find it hardest.
2 · "Yin and restorative yoga are the same."
Cousins. Yin applies a mild, deliberate load to deep tissue. Restorative practice applies none: it supports the body completely so that the nerves can rest.
3 · "The deeper I go, the more benefit."
The first principle is an appropriate edge. Depth makes the muscles guard, and then nothing reaches the tissue the pose was for. Less depth and more time is the rule.
4 · "Yin Yoga is an ancient Chinese system."
The name and the modern method are a few decades old, formed in America from Taoist exercise, Haṭha postures, anatomy and meridian theory. The principle, long quiet holds, is old in both India and China.
5 · "Stretching ligaments is dangerous."
Forcing them is. Mild, sustained load is what keeps connective tissue healthy, and what therapists use to restore it. The cautions are real for the very flexible, the injured and the pregnant, who need less depth and more support.
6 · "The moon in yoga is only poetry."
It is a precise teaching in poetic dress: there is a cooling, restoring side of our physiology and a heating, consuming side; the first is easily overwhelmed by the second; and there are practices that protect it. Modern medicine says the same in other words.
7 · "Cooling practices are good for everyone."
They are medicine for heat. A person who is already cold, heavy and low needs warmth and movement. Caraka prescribes moonbeams for the season when Pitta flares, not for the depth of winter.
8 · "Rest is laziness."
The body repairs, the brain consolidates and strength is built in rest, not in effort. A culture that despises rest produces the burnt-out people for whom this page is written.
9 · "Trāṭaka is a fiery practice: staring until the eyes water."
Not as I teach it. Half-open eyes, a gentle gaze, no strain. It rests the eye, the organ of fire. The Haṭha Pradīpikā gives half-open eyes as the posture in which sun and moon are brought to rest.
10 · "The gaze has nothing to do with Yin Yoga."
Yin Yoga gives every part of the body a long, still, cool hold except the part that is most restless and most heated: the eye, and the mind behind it. The gaze is that missing pose.
📜 More Verses on the moon, on essence, on effort loosened and on measure
मरीचिर्मरुतामस्मि नक्षत्राणामहं शशी ॥ādityānām ahaṃ viṣṇur jyotiṣāṃ ravir aṃśumān |
marīcir marutām asmi nakṣatrāṇām ahaṃ śaśī ||Among the Ādityas I am Viṣṇu;
Among lights, the radiant sun;
Among the winds I am Marīci;
Among the stars I am the moon.
In the same verse the Lord is both: ravi, the sun, among lights, and śaśī, the moon, among the lamps of night. Neither is the lesser. He is the pair.
The Upaniṣad's shortest definition of the Supreme: rasa, sap, essence, savour. It is the word the Gītā uses of the moon, "whose self is rasa". A dried-out life has lost its rasa, and all the lunar practices are for its return. The Upaniṣad says where it finally comes from.
Prayatna-śaithilya: the slackening of effort. No school of posture takes this sūtra more literally than Yin Yoga. And its second half is the part usually forgotten: ananta-samāpatti, the mind resting on something without limit. The body's effort is loosened by the pose. The mind's is loosened by the gaze.
अमृतं ग्रसते सूर्यस्ततो मृत्युवशो नरः ॥nābhi-mūle vaset sūryas tālu-mūle ca candramāḥ |
amṛtaṃ grasate sūryas tato mṛtyu-vaśo naraḥ ||The sun dwells at the root of the navel,
And the moon at the root of the palate.
The sun swallows the nectar,
And so man falls under the power of death.
Gheraṇḍa's statement of the same teaching, before he describes the Inverted posture. It gives the two addresses plainly: the sun at the navel, the moon at the palate.
वृषता क्लीबता ज्ञानमज्ञानं जीवितं न च ॥nidrāyattaṃ sukhaṃ duḥkhaṃ puṣṭiḥ kārśyaṃ balābalam |
vṛṣatā klībatā jñānam ajñānaṃ jīvitaṃ na ca ||On sleep depend happiness and misery,
Nourishment and wasting, strength and weakness,
Potency and impotence, knowledge and ignorance,
Life and its absence.
The physician on the greatest of the yin practices. Puṣṭi, nourishment, is the same root as the Lord's puṣṇāmi, "I nourish, as the moon". What the moon does for the plants, rest does for the body.
Vāgbhaṭa's one-line physiology of the eye, and it has two halves that must both be heard. The eye is tejo-maya, made of fire: this is why it burns, and why cooling it cools the person. But its special danger is śleṣman, Kapha: heaviness, dullness, drowsiness. So the eye is not to be drowned in rest. It is to be kept cool and awake. Half-open; neither wide nor shut.
न चातिस्वप्नशीलस्य जाग्रतो नैव चार्जुन ॥
युक्ताहारविहारस्य युक्तचेष्टस्य कर्मसु ।
युक्तस्वप्नावबोधस्य योगो भवति दुःखहा ॥nāty-aśnatas tu yogo 'sti na caikāntam anaśnataḥ |
na cāti-svapna-śīlasya jāgrato naiva cārjuna ||
yuktāhāra-vihārasya yukta-ceṣṭasya karmasu |
yukta-svapnāvabodhasya yogo bhavati duḥkha-hā ||Yoga is not for one who eats too much, nor for one who does not eat at all;
Not for one given to too much sleep, nor for one who stays awake, Arjuna.
For one measured in food and recreation, measured in effort at work,
Measured in sleep and waking, yoga becomes the destroyer of sorrow.
The last word on sun and moon. Not too much waking and not too much sleep; effort, and rest from effort; each yukta, in measure. The Lord does not praise the moon over the sun. He asks for the balance of the two, and promises that sorrow ends there.
🗂️ Sources, Editions and Notes so that you can check every line
📚 Texts and editions
📚 How the verses were checked
- Caraka Saṃhitā, Sūtra-sthāna 6.48 and 21.36, checked against the Sanskrit text published online by the Charak Samhita Research, Training and Skill Development Centre (carakasamhitaonline.com).
- Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 10.29.1, checked against the text at vedabase.io.
- Quoted exactly as on the Trāṭaka Yoga page, where the editions are given: Haṭha Pradīpikā 4.41; Yoga Vāsiṣṭha 6(1).81.41; Yoga Sūtra 2.46–47; Aṣṭāṅga Hṛdaya, Sūtra-sthāna 2.5 (the line on the eye); Bhagavad Gītā 6.16–17 as in Deep Sleep.
- In the standard readings, not separately checked: Ṛg Veda 10.90.13; Bhagavad Gītā 10.21, 15.13; Haṭha Pradīpikā 2.57–58, 3.72, 3.77, 3.79 (verse numbers in the third chapter differ between editions); Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā 3.33; Taittirīya Upaniṣad 2.7; the peace-chant of Yajur Veda 36.17. The Praśna Upaniṣad on sun and moon is 1.5, paraphrased; Sītkārī is Haṭha Pradīpikā 2.54–56, paraphrased; the Crocodile posture is Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā 2.40.
- On Yin Yoga: Paul Grilley, Yin Yoga: Outline of a Quiet Practice (2002); Sarah Powers, Insight Yoga (2008); Bernie Clark, The Complete Guide to Yin Yoga (2012). On restorative yoga: Judith Hanson Lasater, Relax and Renew (1995). The names of the poses, the three principles and the meridian pairings follow these teachers.
- The hare in the moon is the Sasa Jātaka (no. 316); the waning of the moon is told in the Mahābhārata and several Purāṇas; the Dàodéjīng lines are from chapters 6, 76 and 78; the Sabbath commandment is Exodus 20:9–10 in the King James Version.
- The Devanāgarī on this page is generated from the transliteration. If you find an error in either, please tell me and I will correct it.
🔬 Science
🔬 References
- Daukantaitė D, Tellhed U, Maddux RE, Svensson T, Melander O. Five-week yin yoga-based interventions decreased plasma adrenomedullin and increased psychological health in stressed adults: a randomized controlled trial. PLoS ONE 2018;13:e0200518.
- Hylander F, Johansson M, Daukantaitė D, Ruggeri K. Yin yoga and mindfulness: a five week randomized controlled study evaluating the effects of the YOMI program on stress and worry. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping 2017;30:365–378.
- Kanaya AM, Araneta MRG, Pawlowsky SB, et al. Restorative yoga and metabolic risk factors: the Practicing Restorative Yoga vs. Stretching for the Metabolic Syndrome (PRYSMS) randomized trial. Journal of Diabetes and its Complications 2014;28:406–412.
- Danhauer SC, Mihalko SL, Russell GB, et al. Restorative yoga for women with breast cancer: findings from a randomized pilot study. Psycho-Oncology 2009;18:360–368.
- Light KE, Nuzik S, Personius W, Barstrom A. Low-load prolonged stretch vs. high-load brief stretch in treating knee contractures. Physical Therapy 1984;64:330–333.
- Schleip R, Klingler W, Lehmann-Horn F. Active fascial contractility: fascia may be able to contract in a smooth muscle-like manner and thereby influence musculoskeletal dynamics. Medical Hypotheses 2005;65:273–277.
- Weppler CH, Magnusson SP. Increasing muscle extensibility: a matter of increasing length or modifying sensation? Physical Therapy 2010;90:438–449.
- Zaccaro A, Piarulli A, Laurino M, et al. How breath-control can change your life: a systematic review on psycho-physiological correlates of slow breathing. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 2018;12:353.
- Shetty P, Reddy BK, Lakshmeesha DR, et al. Effects of Sheetali and Sheetkari pranayamas on blood pressure and autonomic function in hypertensive patients. Integrative Medicine 2017;16:32–37.
- Telles S, Nagarathna R, Nagendra HR. Breathing through a particular nostril can alter metabolism and autonomic activities. Indian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology 1994;38:133–137.
- Raghuraj P, Telles S. Immediate effect of specific nostril manipulating yoga breathing practices on autonomic and respiratory variables. Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback 2008;33:65–75.
- Cajochen C, Altanay-Ekici S, Münch M, et al. Evidence that the lunar cycle influences human sleep. Current Biology 2013;23:1485–1488.
- Casiraghi L, Spiousas I, Dunster GP, et al. Moonstruck sleep: synchronization of human sleep with the moon cycle under field conditions. Science Advances 2021;7:eabe0465.
- Meeusen R, Duclos M, Foster C, et al. Prevention, diagnosis and treatment of the overtraining syndrome. European Journal of Sport Science 2013;13:1–24.
👁️ Studies of Trāṭaka
👁️ Trāṭaka
- Talwadkar S, Jagannathan A, Raghuram N. Effect of trataka on cognitive functions in the elderly. International Journal of Yoga 2014;7:96–103.
- Raghavendra BR, Ramamurthy V. Changes in heart rate variability following yogic visual concentration (Trataka). Heart India 2014.
- Raghavendra BR, Singh P. Immediate effect of yogic visual concentration on cognitive performance. Journal of Traditional and Complementary Medicine 2016;6:34–36.
- Mallick T, Kulkarni R. The effect of trataka, a yogic visual concentration practice, on critical flicker fusion. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 2010;16:1265–1267.
- Swathi PS, Bhat R, Saoji AA. Effect of Trataka (yogic visual concentration) on the performance in the Corsi-block tapping task: a repeated measures study. Frontiers in Psychology 2021;12:773049.
- Swathi PS, Saoji AA, Bhat R. The role of trataka in ameliorating visual strain and promoting psychological well-being during prolonged use of digital displays: a randomized controlled trial. Work 2022;71:327–333.
- Shathirapathiy G, Mooventhan A, Mangaiarkarasi N, et al. Effect of trataka (yogic gazing) on insomnia severity and quality of sleep in people with insomnia. Explore (NY) 2022;18:100–103.
- Rajbhoj PH, et al. Effect of Trataka Kriya on selected psychological parameters in school teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic situation: a randomized controlled trial. Indian Journal of Public Health Research & Development.
All of these studies used the classical form of the practice, most of them with a candle flame, in healthy volunteers or in people with poor sleep or tired eyes. None compared Trāṭaka with yin or restorative practice, and none tested the form I teach. I list them so that you can see exactly how much is known, and how much is not.
🙏 A Closing Blessing from one who looks, to one who is weary
वनस्पतयः शान्तिर्विश्वे देवाः शान्तिर्ब्रह्म शान्तिः सर्वं शान्तिः शान्तिरेव शान्तिः सा मा शान्तिरेधि ॥dyauḥ śāntir antarikṣaṃ śāntiḥ pṛthivī śāntir āpaḥ śāntir oṣadhayaḥ śāntiḥ |
vanaspatayaḥ śāntir viśve devāḥ śāntir brahma śāntiḥ sarvaṃ śāntiḥ śāntir eva śāntiḥ sā mā śāntir edhi ||"Peace is the sky; peace the mid-air; peace the earth; peace the waters; peace the plants. Peace the trees; peace all the gods; peace is Brahman; peace is all; peace, only peace. May that peace come to me."
The oldest prayer for coolness that we have. It finds peace already present in the sky, the waters, the plants and the trees, the things the moon nourishes, and asks only that the same peace reach the one praying: sā mā śāntir edhi. Nothing is to be made. It is to be let in.
My dear friend, you have read a great deal about the moon. Now let me take it all away again, and leave you with almost nothing. 🙏
You have lived a long time in the sun, and you are scorched. There is a cool side of you that has had no evening. It does not need another effort. It needs shade, stillness and time, like water in a clay jar.
So when the day is done, dim the lamp. Lie over a bolster if you wish, or put your legs up the wall, and stay. And before that, or after, or in place of it, sit quietly and let your eyes come half-open, like the half moon, and rest them softly on one point, as it is taught at Trāṭaka Yoga. Let the eye, which has burnt all day, be cool. The rest of you will follow it.
May the sun in you be quieted and the moon in you be kept. May what was wasting be set in the Lord's own hair, and wax again. May the still water hold the whole moon. And may peace, which is already in the sky and the trees, come also to you. 🌙💛
Trataki Dhruvaji