Autumn Lotus Yoga

Beloved Husband & I are well into move-to-Cambridge chaos – losing internet & unable to post again til Thurs night!  Tragedy!!  : ) Will keep practicing & post a whole teacher training program rant  once I have access to cyber-civilization again.  

On that note, tho’, I wish wish wish I had kept a better journal during the Forrest TT back in April 2008.  Honestly, I was too physically/emotionally/mentally wrung out to do more than practice, bathe, eat, sleep & do it again. 

But I did send out a family & friends email worth sharing cuz it does give a pretty good flavor of what I felt at the time. 

To quote:

“The adventures continue… I’m 22 days into a month long yoga intensive in Chicago. The schedule is indeed intense — 6-9 am meditation and yoga; 11:30-5:30 teacher training and a second (sometimes even a third) class. I go to sleep at about 8 pm each night and the ban on alcohol all month is completely unnecessary.  The ban on coffee however lasted 2.5 weeks for me and now I am back on the espresso and consider it fully justified.

Training with Ana Forrest has been likened to joining the Navy SEALs, though I don’t think they have to talk about their feelings nearly as much.  A friend thinks it sounds more like ROTC training — which may be about right, since at least three people cry like girls every day.  : )

How to describe Ana?  She looks like a Native American wise woman with the physical dexterity in her fifties that 12-year-old Romanian gymnasts dream of having.  She was an alcoholic, bulimic, epileptic, born crippled and fixed these problems through smarts and strength.  She walks her talk every second and has enormous street cred for healing. 

And, if she’d joined the military she would have been one of the best general officers I’ve ever seen.  She’s a born leader: compelling, direct, kind, challenging her troops to step past their edge without breaking them down, humorous, able to talk about big picture and fine detail in a single breath.  I have loved and hated her in quick succession and sometimes simultaneously.  Frequently because, damn it, she’s usually right.

What’s new after three weeks? 

-          Doing neti is now like brushing my teeth.  For the uninitiated, this is a saline nasal lavage.  I really didn’t want this to work as advertised, but darn it, you really can breathe better doing this regularly.  Highly recommend it for allergy sufferers.

-          Checking out the world upside down has become such a cool trip.  My forearms now have calluses on them from elbow balances and I’m working on Scorpion, which is like a back bend while balancing on your forearms and also working towards full lotus in Handstand. 

-          Still not fully convinced on the yoga doctrine that we house emotions in specific areas.  Case in point, when I get a deep adjustment I do want to whimper and cry.  This is not because I’ve suddenly accessed emotional turmoil (that’s usually right up there on the surface, thanks : ) but because it kinda hurts!!  However, our habitual postures and mannerisms to leave significant marks on our geometry so stop slouching when you sit at the damn computer!! : )

 

-          I can’t say this has been exactly fun, but it has been intense and useful.  Hope you are also having a hell of a spring — drop a line, please, when you can.  In a few days we move into an anatomy lecture workshop and I am insanely excited about the prospect of getting to sit in a chair.  Woo hoo, chairs! 

Namaste — the sacred in me does a shout out to the sacred in you!”

PS:  For even more Forrest experience entertainment, check out my friend’s fab post on her virgin…er, first : ) workshop last weekend, at http://schmetterlingyoga.blogspot.com/

Tags: Forrest Yoga, Teacher Training

This entry was posted on Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 2:58 pm and is filed under Forrest Yoga, Teacher Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.