Grab your Arrows! Forrest Yoga will guide your journey.

Grab Your Arrows! Forrest Yoga will guide your way...

2010-03-12T07:34:00.000-08:00

Why would anyone want to study Forrest Yoga?
- High Caliber of leadership
- Deliberate structure yet freedom for exploring own truth's
- Because when you graduate any of her programs, you are equipped with incredible high caliber tools to employ for the safety and bettering of your students as well as self.

INTENT: To convey my grattitude and inspire other's to bring about Forrest ceremony in their life to 'mend the hoop' of the people.

When I first began my journey with Yoga, it was overwhelmingly mysterious...my very first class was in Portland at a small local gym. I can only recollect coming into downward dog and thinking to myself that this was wrong! I hated it...rather, I hated what I was feeling and how I walked into the class with the assumption it was supposed to be relaxing and feel good. During that session I rode waves of anger and felt my body for the first time in a way that was like my spirit was screaming from the deep recesses of my tangled self...she wanted out! But, I didn't know that was her voice then...I only recently learned to recognize that yoga was a mirror. A reflection held up at point blank range with no way of dismissing the messages that come up.

Needless to say, after that one class, I didn't return for quite some time...until my life of competitive boxing started taking a toll. I began lots of massage therapy and yoga piqued my interest again. I started dabbling a bit here and there and incorporating poses into the boxing classes I was coaching. But I often felt hungry for more in depth knowledge and was about to enroll in a weekend yoga teacher training that would have me 'stamped' as a certified yoga instructor that next day. It was a 'McYoga' course and not knowing anything about yoga at that point, I turned to my sister Kelley Rush, a long time student of Ana Forrest, for guidance. I heeded my sisters advice on learning from someone that will teach more than you could possibly learn in a corporately engineered weekend course.

Kelley had studied with many instructors over the years prior to our conversation and I was curious when she started talking about the FYTT Course offered in Seattle that very November (2003). I enrolled, came out with my mind and body blown wide open and began implementing Forrest into just about everything I could...I walked around the house with active feet, practiced empathing and seeing energy in all people and breathed Ujayii all day long. I wondered how any student of yoga could possibly have learned the depth and magnitude that Forrest has to offer in a weekend course!

I realized that in life there are many options in choosing who to assist us in guiding our path. I owe it to myself to obtain knowledge from the highest caliber people possible. I owe it to my students to bring them the best of who I am. I owe it to the world to bring my best self forward. Then am I able to raise people's expectations and standards for themself.

Practicing and teaching and learning Forrest Yoga has been integral in my pursuit of learning any topic from the most equipped and mastered instructor. But, here's my opinion on why:

From Forrest Yoga, you learn a structure and system, but you are given freedom for exploration. To find out what is true for you and adapt accordingly. That is so refreshing because seldom have I ever taken a class where an instructor has offered us to use our own insight to adapt to our issues. Often times we are lead to follow a pose or alignment in a pose even if it brings about injurious pain. To do as the instructor says because they have higher authority.

I remember one class I had an instructor come up to my active feet and step on my toes saying that I was in her class and needed to follow her guidance and not bring Forrest in...needless to say, that was the last class I took from her.

But with Ana, it's unique in that she has VERY specific reasons 'why' structure is there...if you have a question she has a deliberate answer. Her very essence is with an intent. She walks her own talk. In trainings and with yoga comes the delayering process of stuck spots, emotions, etc and over the years I've witnessed Ana's own evolution. How incredible is it to know that your instructor is indeed not only human, but willing to take ownership for their own challenges...and to adapt.

We all go through our own challenges and it's so important to have strong leadership to assist in our movement with these obstacles! We can't survive on our own...it's a primal instinct to band together when there's danger. In the animal kingdom, bison and buffalo band together and will fight off the biggest predator to help save the herd. They will take on insurmountable odds for the safety of their babes or loved ones. They take a "Warrior's Stance"!

That is one of the core lessons I believe that Ana bestows in all her students. Band together like a tribe and work collectively to take on what comes our way.

In 2007, I was attempting to take on my own trials...be it alone! I enrolled and journeyed to Boston for Ana's Advanced Teacher Training and the first step into Back Bay and upon rolling out my mat in the presence of 'the hoop' I realized I had come home. I felt it in every cell of my being that was where I needed to be and was supposed to go. The 'tribe' or 'hoop' had been calling and I listened.

I am listening again to the tribe beckoning...and I am answering in full force. Taking my warrior stance, I am embarking on the Continuing Ed in Boston and assisting during the remainder of the conference. Not only is my heart longing to be home...but the tribe calls.

Helen Keller once said "Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much". In yoga you develop a deeper sense of knowing your own actions and how they impact the world...over the decades we, as humans have done a great deal of damage and now it's important to restore. To restore ecologically but first tribally. We must band together to bring about what once was true for the earth. We owe it to our children and ourselves to raise our own standards and become stewards of the earth, and stewards for our people.

"As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill." - Helen Keller

I will return again, and invite you to join me on the banding together of our tribes...reunite and prepare with highest quality of attention and focus to learning and equipping with tools to take back to our people. Teach from an incredible place steeped in passion for living!

A-Ho!

Reflection on assisting Ana Forrest at Yoga Journal Conference SF

2010-02-01T10:46:00.000-08:00

I'm presently sitting here at Oakland Airport awaiting departure back home to Portland. This last week was one of the most insightful and profound experiences to date. It's been a dream come true being around and working with people who are so deeply committed to working on developing themselves in order to assist others to do the same.

I was able to be alongside and assist some of the most incredible people on Earth, in my mind. Ana Forrest (Forrest Yoga Founder), Colleen Millen from Sacramento (Lead Assist), Kelley Rush from Seattle area (Road Manager) and in tow come equally loving people to crew: Destiny Goldsberry from Roseville (Assistant), Inez Unitus from Aha Yoga, SF (Assistant), Marilyn Castilaw from Cowgirl Country, Sacramento (Assistant), Kristin Goldsmith from Oakland (Assistant).

I learned a few new poses (Weathervane & Roadkill) but mostly I learned more about people. People I have longed for in my life. The quality of humans I never would have met had I not opened myself up to learning and embrace developing friendships.

I often ask myself what impact Yoga has helped me with...until now, I've not had an answer. It's not the asanas (poses), pranayama (breathing), music, clothes, philosophies, teachers, studios, deep reflection, meditation, strength building, contribution, financial gain, prosperity or abundance, per se...to me, that's all on the outer sphere of what Yoga has opened me up to.

Like most things in life, when you align yourself with people and activities that resonate or just make sense even when you can't explain it, that's how you know! That's how you know what you are doing in your life is on track or that you are learning the lessons you need in order to arrive to the next lesson. From this vantage point, life really begins to work in magical ways! Challenges and obstacles seem irrelevant because you know you are on your way to something Bigger and Better than any one thing could knock you off course.

I feel as though I've finally found my tribe. My home of sorts. The type of family I've always wanted but until now, have not opened myself up to finding. My rules of how to act as a Yoga Coach and what to profess or who to let in to my close sphere...those rules, or layers, are ALL dissolving. I'm back to knowing that I don't know what MY reality is or what that means...All that I know now, is that I don't know more than I'd like to think I know. Does that make sense?

For me...the best and most precious gift Forrest Yoga bestows is this...we are an eclectic tribe of intelligences and geniuses with special gifts and powers. We ALL have our uniqueness about us! We don't dress the same, we don't talk the same, we don't act the same, we don't teach the same, we don't look the same, like the same things or have the same strengths or weaknesses. Of course there is a lot of overlapping and similarities...but we are a panel of individual creatures bonded by a common thread. We are given permission to be ourselves…to explore our interests and what brings us closer to happiness and fulfillment as well as to each other.

We are encouraged to tap into our higher self and seek out truths that only our higher self knows. We are taught to find a threads end of our own uniqueness and expound on that. To nurture, cultivate and grow from that threads end to develop it into an entire wardrobe. To draw out of us what is Remarkable and truly Incredible…to tap into inner resources to find each of our own gifts to the World.

We are lead by an incredible leader who has found her OWN way in the world and she holds space for us ALL to do the same.

Reinvention

2009-12-27T21:58:00.000-08:00

A new beginning of sorts is unfolding as we speak...past endeavors and passions have been reignited as of late. Sometimes we don't need anyone to tell us where or when to embark on our true path...sometimes we need to listen to the deep burning desire to do what we are destined.

Although Yoga has not left my heart in it's entirety over the past two years while I built up another business, it still feels like I've become reacquainted with a lost love. This past week, my creativity has been at an all time high as I charge forward on my renewed life and love for yoga and creating a new way of viewing healing...one where you are to be involved with your pursuit to happiness & health.

Soon to follow will be the launch of several workshops, a new website and announcements of fun things to fascinate upon. To stay abreast of the latest ways you can benefit, join my blog, find me on facebook (willowryan) or send me an email (imagine@willowryan.com).

"Go forth and set the world on fire" - St. Ignatius Loyola