Showing posts with label Warrior. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Warrior. Show all posts

Thursday, 19 October 2017

Forrest Yoga with Ana Forrest & Jose Calarco

Leave your Ego at the door, 

just bring your self in... Aho!



Credit Forrest Yoga (Facebook Page)
People who are drawn to Forrest Yoga which is known for its challenging transformational properties are seeking healing, often arriving broken in some way be it body, mind or both. They are carrying suffering and spending time with this healing practise really can be of great value to overall well-being. It may not be easy but it will be worth it.

It is explained by Ana & Jose how spirits walk among us and they are welcomed into the space through a ceremony of music and dance offered by Ana & Jose who gracefully create an atmosphere of wonder and anticipation with an air of seriousness in respect for the elders and the journey to be embarked upon by all attending.


Learning to take the energy that you put into neurotic thoughts to fuel things that benefit you and your healing path

Upon entering a Forrest Yoga workshop you are invited to prepare yourself to connect with your spirit inviting it to shine. To do this you are asked to shift your energy from the offset and you are made aware that to do this you must let go of held neurotic thought patterns. Unhelpful patterns keep you stuck, unable to move forwards. These held patterns are something we all have especially in this age of chaos we live in. Long standing neurotic patterns form our personality traits as they become embedded; thoughts, fears, actions and reactions. A classic neurotic thought is "I can't" a lie often told by our inner critic, Forrest Yoga invites you to work with this by finding and focusing on your inner spirit turning the neurotic energy you would normally waste on unhelpful patterns into proving the critic wrong instead. We need to shift none nurturing ingrained patterns to release ourselves providing the space we need to connect with our true self, our spirit. 

Forrest Yoga encourages you to acknowledge your own suffering to be able to let it go and move on from it rather than hanging on to it waiting for that recognition from someone else. The practise and its philosophy invites you to realise that injuries are indeed a gift, for each time we suffer we have to learn something new to recover from it and move forwards in our life wiser than we were prior to the suffering.

Ana Forrest carries an important message which could easily become an effective daily mantra "Staying present takes care of the future" another great use of our energy for our own gain as we focus on the here and now, a particularly useful mantra when suffering conditions such as; anxiety, PTSD, addictions and many more.


The healing space

Looking at these workshops from a trauma perspective the space is equally as important as the teachings provided. Practising any Yoga can bring up 'stuff' for anyone but Forrest Yoga works particularly deeply and for those having suffered trauma something other than the breath to focus on when facing a trigger often helps. Having a number of potential drishti (focal points) sprinkled around the room creates the opportunity for grounding and calming, these could be a candle, a Buddha, a drape anything that can be homed in on while you reconnect to calmness. It would be good to point out these drishti at the beginning of the workshop to allow those who may feel the need to create a good association with them from the start, providing a resource to home in on should the need arise.


Self healing with your breath and mind

Instead of having an often aggressive attitude towards an injury as you vent your frustrations to it learn to bring peace and offer healing. Guiding your breath to heal an injured, tweaky, emotionally broken or operated area can really aid your healing process as you inhale good energy into this area and exhale its toxins out with every single breath.

Forrest Yoga can guide you to change it can literally detox the struggles you carry with you; chronic pain, old tweaky injuries, deep trauma. Layer upon on layer of 'stuff' can be sweated out and moved on. It can reintroduce a wrung out overall sense of calmness that you can't familiarise yourself with at first as it has been gone for so long. Your senses become quieter paradoxically somehow softer yet sharper, analytical thinking reduces, as you become lost in the release it seems you have to be lost to be found again to greet that found you without all those layers of defence you have grown over the years. 

Forrest Yoga guides you to build your warrior heart, illuminate your core, heal your back or any other part of you that needs your healing energy and to celebrate your practise, allowing your spirit to shine.

Completing a Forrest Yoga workshop can leave you lighter than when you began creating the space that was needed to get to know yourself again. The practise can often be considered not easy but it is what you make it, learning to say to yourself 'what part of this can I do today' and really listening to the reply (without talking yourself out of something due to imagined weakness) can be liberating as you discover you can do so much more than you imagined possible, really listening to yourself becomes empowering.

Forrest Yoga holds the potential to open you up to become what you should be along your healing journey by unveiling what you need to do to achieve your dharma; your life purpose, your greatest happiness.



For more information about;
Ana Forrest
Forrest Yoga
or to buy her inspiring book 'Fierce Medicine' just follow the link; https://www.forrestyoga.com






Monday, 1 June 2015

Om Yoga Show Manchester 2015 | Yogi Ashokananda


Uplift the Body & Prana 

with Yogi Ashokananda 

 

Jumping Warriors working up a sweat with Yogi Ashokananda @ Om Yoga Show Manchester 2015

Entering this workshop you would not expect the larger than life personality that springs out of this gentle and petite individual who incidentally turns out to be a surprisingly powerful teacher. His unexpected yet delightful humour lifts each yogi as the poses build and each are put through their paces, his encouragement creates the confidence in participants to try more advanced poses and to see just how far they can really go beyond their fears or disbelief.

The journey starts with breathing and yogis are encouraged to engage the root lock at the perineum (Mula Bandha) as they inhale, effectively sealing in the prana from each new breath and releasing the lock on exhalation. Yogis are also instructed to curl the tip of their tongue up to touch the roof of their mouths; this encourages ujjayi breathing, activates the diaphragm and regulates the appetite it also prevents jaw tension building up during practise.

Yogis are encouraged to not let their muscles be lazy and poses are demonstrated with accuracy throughout the workshop, there are cleansing Kriyas and a series of asana that twist the body into new realms releasing both physical and emotional toxins held within. The Yogis work up a sweat as the class progresses and the energy in the room rises as they jump through a series of warriors alternating their leading and back leg with arms constantly raised.

The workshop ends without a svasana as Yogi Ashokananda expresses with a light hearted voice, “I don’t teach svasana because we all sleep at night anyway”… The Yogis are gifted with bursts of laughter though heightened by the comments of Ashokananda as he encourages everyone to really let themselves go, his laughing becomes hysterical in itself which makes everyone laugh even more. He stresses how important it is to laugh daily explaining how you don’t even have to find something funny to laugh at as your brain doesn’t actually know the difference it just knows you are laughing and produces the happy chemicals anyway, so treat yourself and make sure you laugh every day!

 "May your feet have the courage to walk where your heart beats" Yogi Ashokonanda

Example of Ashokananda practicing Kriya