gaInstitute
Preserving the Spirit
Master Paulie ZinkThe Founder of Yin Yoga
Paulie Zink was the sole protégé of Chinese martial arts and Taoist yoga Master Cho Chat Ling. Master Cho came to Paulie’s home and instructed him privately every day for six to eight hours. About three hours of his daily practice were devoted to Taoist Yoga and Chi Kung. Paulie was taught the Taoist arts of yoga and Chi Kung as a foundation for his martial arts training. Master Cho instructed Paulie in three distinct Kung-fu styles (collectively called Tai Shing Pek Kwar) combined into a discipline that demanded tremendous mental concentration, harsh physical exercise, and esoteric spiritual practices. Master Cho trained Paulie for a total of ten years and never charged him for his tutelage.
A three time international martial arts grand-champion, Paulie is renowned for his fluidity, flexibility and artistry of motion. Paulie continues to evolve his Taoist art of yoga by adding postures, variations, and insights. Through his many years of study, practice, and teaching he has further developed this ancient tradition into his own distinctive and dynamic style he calls Yin and Yang Yoga. He brings to his teaching over 30 years experience and a profound knowledge he conveys with a simple clarity that comes from true understanding.
PaulieZink.com
Got Its Name
Paul Grilley studied Taoist Yoga with Master Zink for about a year in the late 1980’s and learned the beginner's level of the art. Grilley then taught the basics he learned about Taoist Yoga to Sarah Powers. Sarah began teaching what she learned from Grilley and changed the name to Yin Yoga. Grilley also incorporates his own philosophy and theories and those that he learned from his studies with Dr. Motoyama into his teachings. In order to avoid confusion Master Zink now refers to his Taoist art as Yin Yoga or Yin and Yang yoga.
The complete art of Yin yoga encompasses:
Yin Yoga- Postures of stillness for promoting growth, clearing energetic blockages, and enhancing circulation.
Yang Yoga- Postures for developing core strength and muscle tone, balance, and stamina.
Taoist Flow Yoga- Including both Yin and Yang
yoga, Taoist Flow is more than just a sequence of postures. In Taoist
Flow the process of transition from pose to pose is as integral to
the practice as the postures themselves. Taoist movement incorporates
continuous, smooth and circular motion that promotes
relaxed confidence, fluidity and grace in the body.
Taoist Alchemy- Cultivating and harmonizing the five alchemical elemental energies that are contained in the universal life field and animate distinct qualities in the body such lightness, fluidity, strength, springiness and calm.
Chi Kung- These exercises involve very simple and gentle movements and breathing techniques. They are designed to increase vitality and to restore harmony in the natural rhythms and functions of the body and its energetic field.
Yin yoga is Master Zink's unique style of Taoist yoga which originated from the ancient Taoist health practices, philosophy, and spiritual traditions of China. Being in harmony with the rhythm and flow of nature is the essence of Taoist attitude.
Yin yoga draws upon the doctrine of the five elements and the principle of yin and yang used in Chinese medicine and acupuncture. Yin and yang are the polarities of a whole, the complimentary opposites of dark and light, cold and hot, soft and hard, female and male that allow all things to come into being. They are the two sides of a coin. One cannot exist without the other. Yin and yang is the vibration of the universe, the energy that informs all life.
In the practice of Yin yoga specific yoga postures are used to invoke the spiritual attributes of various creatures, both real and mythical, and to activate the transformational properties of the five alchemical elements, thus enlivening and harmonizing these energies within the body and animating the primal spirit that resides within us all. Integrating the power and healing aspects of these principles will help to balance emotions and put one into accord with the true nature of our being."Yin yoga is an art form not an exact science. The purpose of yoga is to take us out of the systems of social convention, indoctrination, and mechanistic ways of thinking, not to reinforce them by demanding conformity to rigid, limited paradigms. Yoga does not require scientific approval or validation. Intellectualizing the practice of yoga serves to obstruct a deeper understanding of its essence. The real power to authorize truth is contained within each and every one of us. "
Paulie Zink
“What has made technology so destructive, and what has made science so terrifying is that they have exercised spirit. There is no spirit left. And spirit is necessary. By getting rid of spirit, science forever abandoned the possibility of explaining life. They wont be able to. As long as they are reductionist they can forget about explaining life.
If we were to allow the spirit back in then our science would begin to look like alchemy. I believe we have to get past this subject-object dualism. And in the area of technology the way you get past it is in the concept of the philosopher’s stone.* What we need and want is a marriage of spirit and matter where the modalities of each are honored in that marriage.
Alchemy was the belief that there was a perfect form of matter. And if you could create this form of matter it would make you immortal. [This magical matter is an undifferentiated, primordial material that can be willed to assume any form.] It is the externalization of the soul. It is matter behaving as though it were spirit or spirit behaving as though it were matter. And I think a reclaimed science would take this much more seriously because it is possible. I have actually seen the ordinary laws of physics violated. This means that the ultimate set of laws is not the set of [physical] laws that appear to be in operation.”
Terence McKenna
excerpt from the lecture Mind and Time, Spirit and Matter available at SoundPhotoSynthesis.com
*The Philosopher’s Stone is a legendary alchemical substance believed to be able to transmute base metals into gold. In the Taoist tradition it was considered to be an elixir of life capable of rejuvenating the body and achieving immortality and transcendence of the corporeal form.