I had the pleasure of attending Ellen Heed‘s workshop today ( finally a yoga workshop…yeah! ) and it was very eye opening and I learn a couple of interesting things from Ellen. I did not attend yesterday’s sessions which sets the “theory” part of the entire workshop with lecture from morning until evening. Today’s morning session consisted of more theory plus a yoga class where she assessed every one of us to see which body type we belonged.
It was interesting to note that she fused all the different schools of medicine from western anatomy, holistic healing, ayurveda and traditional chinese medicine. She had probably done extensive studies on all these, picked up the essentials that made sense, tested and experienced from her own work with her clients. All these translate into her knowledge which she shared with us.
She talked about each of us having different body types which result in differences in our joints and muscles makeup. She uses the TCM ( traditional chinese medicine ) way of differentiating between body types in regards to yoga practice. Two general types were classified – mainly the Spleen and the Liver. ( she derived these from chinese five elements of metal, wood, water, fire and earth. Spleen is earth body type and Liver is wood body type. If you are spleen body type and if you have chemical imbalance in your body, you can get yellowish whereas live body type, you get kinda green )
Spleen people are those who are born with less collagen in their connective tissue. What this means is that spleen people are more flexible or rather they are born more flexible since there is less fiber in the connective tissues. ( and wow, we actually go into the detailed anatomy of the makeup in the muscles! Bio 101…. lucky that I took Biology before! )
Liver people are those who have thicker connective tissue. They have more collagen in their connective tissue which is denser and hence they are less flexible. These people in general, need more warmups than spleeny people and hence liver people actually enjoys hot classes. ( but if you practice yoga long enough or you started young with exercises, then you could still be very flexible )
Yup…. I am of a spleeny constituent. Which explains why I never really liked hot yoga (I get irritated and pretty much breathless…). According to Ellen, most spleeny people do not like hot classes as they get breathless, easily flushed (blood move out from the organs easily), more easily nauseous and claustrophobic. I went “AHA” when she mentioned all these… I always wondered why many people enjoy hot classes while I dread thinking of going for hot class.
More to share tomorrow… ( it was really very interesting but I need sleep now…. caught a cold today… )
Technorati Tags: Ellen Heed, hot yoga
I’m one of the Liver people, but I don’t like Hot classes too. I felt hard enough to breath deeply in room temperature, let alone in a room at 38-39 degree.