Saturdays have started to look really similar week after week, not in the boring routine kind of way, but in the most interactive way a Saturday could be. I wake up, make my coffee, eat my protein pancakes (yum), and prepare for Forrest Yoga with Cheryl Deer from 10-12. They call it Yogi Playground. Sometimes if I am feeling ambitious I will take Lucinda's 8am at Core Power Yoga beforehand... on a good day. This past Saturday was an especially good yoga day. I'm trying to think back to my mood before I went into class and I cannot for the life of me remember how I was feeling. Your mindset always effects the quality of your practice. That is the very reason why I enjoy Forrest Yoga so much. The healing qualities of Forrest allow for an easy change to your mindset. To be completely honest about what is currently happening in my life, I recently lost somebody that I really cared about. You guessed it, a break up. When two people break up, a lot of negative emotions typically arise. Self-doubt, fear, sadness, shame, what have you. In this particular situation however, it has given me a lot of strength to see my own true nature, and the true nature of other people. What I will put up with, what I won't, and the complete understanding that healing is a choice.
If you are somebody working on personal growth, or making the conscious decision to heal, the first step is to be open. Cheryl's class taught me so much about myself that I didn't know was possible. I have always rejected meditation as a way to connect with the mind, because I always just said, "it's not for me." Well, that actually doesn't make any sense. Meditation is available to everybody, if you want it. We started the practice last saturday with pranayama, breathing. It was a style of pranayama I had never done before. It's called bhramari breathing, or the humming yoga breath. The physical purpose of bhramari breathing is to reduce stress or fight/flight response. In the spiritual sense it clears the chakras in order to return to a balanced state. The word Bhramari comes from the sanskrit word bhramar or Humming Black Bee. Starting at the crown chakra, close your eyes, sip in air to the top, and then hum as you exhale. As you breathe in this exercise, focus your breathe to each chakra all the way down to your root chakra. It's a really calming pranayama and set the mood perfectly for class.
Last week Cheryl themed about connecting with spirit. As we breathe through our asana practice, and clear our energy, the more we can visualize our spirit and create wholeness. Let me just start by saying that spirituality is new to me. I say that because it is always something that has been there, but never really resonated with me... I am now understanding that it's because I haven't found something to resonate with. I grew up Episcopalian and went to church every week, and although it's something that my parents have chosen for themselves, it's not something that I have ever truly connected with. There is no bad or good in that, it's just personal. I have taken many Forrest classes with Cheryl, but this first introduction to connecting with spirit is what jumpstarted my own transformation to personal growth. I left that two hour class with this sense of deeper understanding for myself...almost like I really knew who I was and what I wanted/needed in life. I by no means think I am enlightened, but by allowing myself to be open to this new method, I can now work towards feeling whole and grounded. I can't take this blog post home yet and have it make sense to how I'm dealing with this break up until I write post number 2 of The Forrest Experience...being written....now.
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