Down doggin’ in the puddles!

August 23rd, 2010

Last night was a hoot — got to assist Happy Buddha’s (www.yogadowntowntampa.com) & Yoga Tampa Bay’s (www.yogatampabay.com) program of free yoga in Curtis Hixon park.  This is what the space looks like in the sunlight:

What we had was a bunch of very game, intrepid & cool yogis/yoginis doing their yoga thang under the overhang as a torrential Florida downpour complete with thunder & lightning surrounded us.

It was actually really awesome. 

As one yogini mentioned to me after, plenty of studios have to pay money for a sound system & CDs of rain/nature sounds while we get it for free!  And the electricity in the air produces more than lightning… it flowed through the group; I could feel the storm in the skin of the yogis I assisted.  Not just because we were kinda soaked sometimes. :)

If/when I get some photos of the actual event (when assisting, waaay too busy for pix ;) , I’ll post ‘em!  

Today, I assist Yogani/Exalted Warrior foundation.  That is an amazing program (www.exaltedwarrior.com) which I will post on tomorrow.

And remember, free yoga in the park, Sundays at 6pm, Rain Or Shine!!

Yoga in the Museum(s)

August 22nd, 2010

Thereseems to be a wonderful trend in Tampa yoga right now.  Monthly Yoga in Museums!  Yesterday, Jen from Yogani held what I hear was a gorgeous vinyasa flow session at the Tampa Bay Art Museum while Erin Wheeler partnered with Happy Buddha Yoga Lounge & Yoga Tampa Bay to do an all-ages practice at the Tampa History Museum. 

This time I went to the class with Erin because I hadn’t had a chance to practice with her, & it was a lovely time.  She has a great presence & playful, sweet energy.  We meowed in cat & mooed in cow & jumped around, surrounded by maps & paintings of old Tampa.

Bow pose with awesome background!
After class, Beloved Husband & I toured the museum.  What a great day. :)
Next month, on Sept 4, I’m thinking of checking out the Art museum for Jen’s class.

Tips for Teaching

August 20th, 2010

Subbing the nooner at Yogani today — hips & agni sara & forearm balance variations, O My!

In that spirit, here’s a link to a great blog article on teaching from Suburban Yogini:

http://www.suburbanyogini.com/2010/08/17/suburban-yoginis-tips-on-being-a-yoga-teacher/

I’ve been working with two from Forrest Yoga teacher training right now:

1) Be authentic.

2) Teach who is in front of you.

So far, these  have covered a lot of ground!! :)

Interview with Ana Forrest

August 19th, 2010

YogaCity NYC | Local New York City Yoga News and Information.

There’s a great interview done by the fabulous yogini Erica Mather on an NYC yoga scene service.  The link is above.  I’ve also quoted it below.  We’ll see if I get in trouble. :)   I love this interview especially because Ana speaks directly to the power of the practice she’s created, & the  tools she works with to access deeper levels of feeling & wisdom.

(And Ana will be at Pure in NYC this coming weekend, if you can make it there!!)

Teaching to the Deeper Healing

Ana Forrest has taught many serious yogis.  Take your pick of well-known teachers, people like Jill Miller, Isaac Pena, Baron Baptiste, dig around in their backgrounds, and you’ll find that many of them have studied with Ana, been inspired by her, or hung out and practiced with her at the Santa Monica Forrest Yoga Circle studio.

She’s the grass roots, underground matriarch of many a practice.  She’s a fierce and merciful yoga warrior whose life work is “Mending to Hoop of the People,” and to this end she’s created a deeply intelligent and healing practice that is steeped in Native American traditions and constantly evolving as she and her hoop of teachers evolve.  Ana’s skill in sequencing is unparalleled, and her ability to draw forth the truth, power, and beauty of her teachers and students is superior.
 
I spoke with Ana over the telephone last week, asking about the development of her yoga style, the effects of it on the human body and spirit, and why it might be of interest to people who have never experienced it before. I hope you enjoy, and join Ana and I for a  juicy yoga ceremony this weekend at PURE East.

–Erica Mather
 

EM: You invented a yoga style.  What did you find missing that you wanted to add? 
AF:I found many things missing, but what I found was missing the most was the connection of how to make use of a yoga practice to address the challenges that I was facing.  For example I had incredible amounts of pain in my knees and back, my head and neck.  Also, the emotional agony I lived in, and the disconnect from my spirit, which broke my heart…. I created Forrest Yoga

so people can make use of their yoga practice to address the challenges that they are facing. What works? And how can you shift it so it works?
 
EM: How can I add your perspective even if I haven’t formally studied with you?
AF:To learn how to teach yoga, you must be taught how to teach, which also means going through the ceremonies that deep inside connect you to your power, so that you can connect to your authentic self and teach from there, which is way more important that learning any teaching technique.  You learn to teach from your own power and love, and taking a class does not teach you that.  It just teaches you how to do asana.
 
Then, of course, you can  take a Forrest Yoga Teacher Training.  In the meantime, you could study the DVDs, and Five-day Audio CD Intensives to learn how I teach different levels and how I sequence…but you’ll only learning a little bit.  You must work with me in a context that teaches about teaching, because taking classes teaches about how to do yoga, but not how to teach.    

EM: You’ve created some distinct “Forrest Yoga” poses.  How often do find yourself creating new poses?
AF: Usually it comes around the need, but sometimes playfulness.  When something is not being addressed, the pose is the pathway for addressing the need.  Sometimes in the creation of poses comes out of creative play, not out of a need that has gone previously unanswered.  For example, a creation that came out of need is “Ana’s Boat Series.” [editor’s note: a three-part series of therapeutic exercises that build off of boat pose.]  Boat almost handled the problem. Cobra Pushups almost handled the problem, but there was a whole segment of my spine that was not being addressed, and it took some experimenting to find the asana pathway to the part of me that was weak, injured, and un-nourished
 
EM: What guidelines or suggestions can you offer for aspiring teachers? 
AF: Get on your wind horse—your breath—and take it on a journey inside.  Stay present.  If you catch yourself teaching in a habitual way, explore how you can change your habits and you will never be bored.  If you stay within the confines of your habitual patterns, you will be bored everywhere you go.  
 
EM: How do the Forrest Basic Moves

invite the nervous system to unwind and release personal memory?
AF: This depends on the personal memory and the Basic Move.  Let’s start with an ungrounded person who has had life experiences that disconnect them from the legs.  Teaching this person to get Active Feet [Press evenly through the ball of the foot and the heel, lift the toes.] helps them get a new stability in their body, which definitely unwinds all kinds of anxious holds, and subtly teaches them how to walk through their life path and their world with more awareness.
 
Let’s talk about the neck.  Learning the Basic Move of Relaxing the Neck [in a pose like Triangle, instead of turning the head to look up at the ceiling, relax the neck, allowing the ear to move towards the shoulder and opening up the side of the neck] reduces the stress levels through the entire nervous system which then affects the entire musculature system which effects the way the brain functions and the chemicalsthat the brain produces.  Another wondrous aspect of relaxing the neck is the possibility of deep and true internal communication between the brain and the rest of the body’s wisdom centers, the chakras. 
 
When we have information flowing between our chakras and our brain, we make better decisions; we have our full “counsel wheel.”   Each chakra is like a wisdom keeper for our life.  To consult with each one gives us a broader perspective on how to solve our life problems instead of just asking one anxious, confused, caffeine pumped-up, isolated, mad-man in the ivory tower, brain.  
 
When one makes decisions based on information from all of our power centers, instead of just the brain, this sets us to move through our lives more wisely, and makes us proud of the way that we live, because we make wiser decisions; because we’re accessing more of our wisdom, which always feels good.
 
Often teachers and students new to Forrest Yoga will ask me  about how this practice connects you to the emotional body and why is it important to do so in the practice? 
 
Unresolved or undigested emotions store in our cell tissues as pain, fat, dullness, or disconnect.  When we nuke someone for stepping on our toe, it’s an over-reaction that’s embarrassing.  Practicing Forrest Yoga warrants a space for the release of these pockets of emotional backlog.  When emotional backlog is released, it makes us able to respond to our life in a fresh way, instead of being subjected to the way we might react to the years of backlog that get triggered at some point.  And it’s much less embarrassing.  When we’re disconnected from ourselves, we’re disconnected from those that we most love.  When backlog releases, we are more able to connect to what matters most to us, what is most precious to us.
 
EM: As a highly experienced teacher, do you still have the experience of teaching a class you didn’t feel so good about?  How do you handle that situation?
AF:Get grounded, get connected.  Study what felt weak or disconnected, and implement what I learned from that study in the next class.  I’m constantly assessing my classes, which is why they continue to change and grow.
 
I do not teach automatically, and anyone who does is shutting down their power as a teacher.  Hunt it down, and get rid of it forever. 
 
 
EM: How do you find inspiration in poses that you have been practicing for 30+ years? Furthermore, how do you inspire others when you are teaching these poses after the thousandth time?
AF:Teach to who’s in front of you, not how many times you have to teach something.  Teach people how to inhale with the freshness and curiosity of, “If I can teach this person to inhale, I can change their life, and how exciting is that?!”  I do not accept boredom or cynicism in my teaching, hunt it down, risk being authentic, and take a deep inhale before speaking, and it will be fresh. 
 
 
EM: Why is Forrest Yoga a good fit in the New York yoga culture? 
AF:Because the majority of New York people I’ve met have really quick and clever minds, and like to be challenged by new things.  Many of them need to breathe, they need adventure, they need discovery, they need that challenge.  That is true everywhere, but overall the people who go to New York need and crave the adventure and that exciting pace.  But they also need to know how to get off that adrenaline wave, and they need to know how to surf the exciting energy, which the deep breath and the relaxed neck will give them. 
 
Forrest yoga will provide them with the skills to surf the exciting energy without getting sick from it.  Relaxed Neck, Deep Breathing, Connecting to your authentic self:  these things make our life adventure much more enticing.

EM: We love your mp3 downloads on your website and we would love to see more videos from you.  Is this something we can expect in the near future?
AF: We’re recoding more this year.  It’s happening soon!  MP3s will be coming out on YogaVibes.  

For more about Ana’s workshop at Pure, click here.

What a difference a month makes

August 18th, 2010

A month ago, I knew pretty much no one in Tampa.  

Today, went to the am Zumba class & was greeted like Norm in Cheers.  Ran an errand afterwards at CVS & bumped into a neighbor & also had a nice chat with the regular clerk there.  Took noon yoga at Yogani & half a dozen friendly faces said hi, frequently with hugs included.  Got home & talked to my next door neighbor for 15 minutes before getting into the door.

The world is a much friendlier place than even I ever thought.  Lots of open arms & open hearts.  I am blessed.

Letting it soak in

August 17th, 2010

So many good events in the past week.  Didn’t get to sleep enough for about four days, but I caught up last night (and there might have been a wee tiny nap this afternoon too :) .  Took a loooong savasana after my own home practice today to just feel & let it soak in.

To return briefly to the Forrest Yoga Mentorship, Final weekend, Second day (as promised)… the big things that rounded out the weekend for me were the assisting clinic, our shared practice & the talking circle. 

Assisting clinics are fabulous things when the assists are good.  And Forrest assists are tasty good indeed.  It’s great to get to run the assist on each other, swapping back & forth, & get honest, informed feedback on what worked & what didn’t.  I used to find these clinics kinda dreadful because I feared so much touching someone else & being touched myself.  If Forrest has done nothing else for me (& it’s done ALOT else), it has helped me work through that fear.  Learning to touch in a healthy, safe, healing way & to receive that kind of touch yourself is a HUGE thing.

The shared practice was awesome & hard because we taught each other.   We teachers are very ornery students sometimes. :)   On the other hand, it was a gift to each other & other teachers are also very great to teach because they know better than anyone all the little challenges involved.

And the talking circle… talking circles are sacred ceremonies.  Each person holds the talking stick & speaks in turn.   The content of what anyone says is held in confidence, but I will give you the questions that guided the closing circle.

1) What are you grateful for?

2) What did you learn?

3) What will you take away from this experience?

Good guides for letting it soak in.

Neck Traction in the Park

August 16th, 2010
Photo courtesy of YogaTampaBay.com. 
This is from Sunday 6pm free yoga in Curtis Hixon Park, courtesy of Happy Buddha Yoga Lounge located on Cass St(wwww.yogadowntowntampa.com) .  
As you can tell, it’s tough work  to assist yoga classes in Tampa… :)  
Actual word-based post tomorrow… soooo blissed out tired after weekend (and morning) of yoga!