Forrest Yoga
What is Forrest Yoga?
What is Forrest yoga? Forrest yoga is a recently created yoga discipline, developed by a yoga teacher teaching in the West Coast of the United States of America. Ana Forrester, a popular yoga trainer in the West who is known for her acrobatic movements, has incorporated these movements into a complete discipline known as Forrest yoga.
Forrest yoga has been developed after great thought and practice. Ana resorted to yoga after a long history of alcoholism, abuse, bulimia, and epilepsy. Yoga brought her inner peace and tranquillity and she claims that it helped her deal with her own problems. She created an intensely physical yoga style, incorporating the principles of ashtanga yoga and vinyasa style yoga. The yoga practice founded by her aims to strengthen the body so that it can fight its own urges, along with improving emotional health so that emotional wounding can be healed. This is a part of yoga that not many had considered before. Though yoga was always known to be able to relieve stress and improve focus and concentration, this is the first time someone has used it to heal emotional upheaval and popularized this use of yoga.
Forrest yoga contains acrobatic movements which flow into each other with rhythmic breaths. Since Ana uses vinyasa style to strengthen the practice of yoga, the movements are strong, yet lithe. Forrest yoga also has a spiritual side to it where Ana encourages students to go deep within themselves and use yoga practice as a therapy. With this, Forrest also uses the natural elements of Native American healing therapies to enhance the yogic benefits.
In Forrest yoga, there is special emphasis on abdominal work as well breathing. The movements are vigorous and, therefore, there is a lot of sweating. The sweating is aimed at flushing the toxins out of the body.
Most of the newer forms of yoga have been criticised for their close association with their charismatic leaders. More recent yoga forms like Kripalu Yoga and Bikram Yoga have already received their fair share of controversy due to the actions of their respective leaders. Forrest yoga, though not criticized, is also perceived as closely tied to Ana Forrester’s personality. This means that unlike Vinyasa yoga, where there is a lot of flexibility in choosing poses and movements, Forrest yoga does not allow much of wiggle room.
The practice of Forrest yoga practice requires strong physical and emotional discipline. This yoga emphasizes healing and, therefore, those who enjoy rigorous movements will enjoy this yoga style.
Submitted by A on June 30, 2010 at 09:19
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