Rejuvenate your Kidney Jing this winter, by firstly honouring the element of the season - Water. Lotus Bay Yoga's Founding Yoga Teacher Amy Weidlich writes here about how important the element of water is in winter.

Be with the water, drink the water, charge up the kidney Jing with restful practices and relaxation.

I had the delightful experience of teaching a yin practice to a beautiful couple at lunch time yesterday. They are parents in flow with two amazing daughters and had gifted yoga to each other for their anniversary. I’ve been working with them for a couple of weeks and for this particular practice we were reaching into our Yin side to explore compassion. Hopefully a more still practice was able to offer some of the deep rest they needed to keep on. It was a kidney urinary bladder Meridien practice which was ideal for these two and probably for all of us at this time of year- for so many reasons.

Firstly, it is a compassionate act to work in a Yin way, at 60 to 70% effort. In winter, we can hold off on the overachieving spirit and trust the momentum gathered in Summer and Autumn can carry you through the winter. This winter time is perfect, it demands that we be where we are and allowing for a season of rest and recharge, deeply.

There’s lots of different choices we make with all our energy but considering the mother influence of Jing formed in the kidneys, is a wonderful reminder to be with the idea of ‘rest’, so natural to this season.

The kidneys act like a well-spring for our foundation energy known in TCM as Jing. Our prenatal Jing, the energy or life force we are born with, lives in the right kidney. It’s the energy our parents gave us and often relates to the energy our mothers experienced during their pregnancies with us.

This jing lives is like our energetic pre-disposition, in the Taoist tradition they also believe it defines the anticipated length of our life. The second category of jing is our post-natal jing. This can be found in spleen qi (via food) and lung qi (via air or prana). I think of it being like our foundation nutrition. Winter is definitely a season where we are drawn to eating hearty stews and soups, so keep on with earthed water food.

Now circling back from our spleen and lungs to our kidneys, we also have kidney specific jing found in the left kidney. Kidney jing is the dynamic mixing of the pre and post natal jing, which happens in our kidneys and it’s from this, that our qi grows out of and animates us. This jing energy is like this mother energy that like tapping an aquifer, or the well spring, that our qi or animating energy grows out of.

At Lotus Bay Yoga in Little Bay we’ll be honouring the water element all throughout the winter season, with our Happiness Meditations running through classes June and July- then in August, Amy Weidlich is going to take us on Surfs Up Trip through the history of surfing in Australia, on the yoga mat. Woohoo!

Drink water, be the water x

namaste,

Amy Weidlich