Today we are exploring the question whether Forrest Yoga helps you to become sharper mentally, and if so, how?
I want to start this off by saying that EVERY SINGLE ONE person is very intelligent as we are all designed to even be smarter than supercomputers. Supercomputers are inspired by our human brains, which are largely unexplored. Every time a person steps into my class, I see the Beauty within that person and very often their unexploited potential. Then, I do my best to expose their gifts so that they can recognise them and put them into good use to improve their life standards as well as the energy they ripple into the rest of the world with their actions and intentions.
However, unfortunately, although we all have high potential (without exceptions), not everyone behaves in intelligent ways. Please, take note of the DIFFERENCE here between being and acting intelligently. These are two different things. There are numerous reasons why someone doesn’t behave according to their highest potential, some of them being trauma of low or high degree. A typical example is:
From a young age copying kinaesthetically the limiting beliefs and behaviours of our closest people. All babies and children learn by imitation, by feeling and empathing, so if their parents, teachers and peers at school behaving in stupid ways, that gets stored as a neurological pathway in the brains of the kids and dictates their reactions in all triggers and situations in life later on. Here’s when it gets interesting.
On the one hand, some people deny the responsibility to track down and become aware of such limiting and consolidated beliefs up the end of their lives and they die having lived a life on autopilot. Naturally, such people are the kind of folks who are bitter against others, numb, lost without purpose, plagued by frustration, depression and autoimmune diseases. Physically, they are frequently (not always!) the ones whose skeletal posture is suffering and they live in pain, which is a result of being stubborn towards change. Such people tend to look around to put the blame on someone or something else to avoid facing objective reality and self-reflection. These are the people who end up dying without having said the “I love you’s and I forgive you’s”.
On the other hand, you have kind of people who stand up against their conditioning and see very every second, every trigger, uncomfortable situation and loss of temper as an opportunity to grow and learn something new about themselves. They are more transparent with themselves about observing their autopilot patters of behaviour and listening to their subtle inner voice when it says “you know what, you can choose to ignore that this action doesn’t feel appropriate or right and go about as business as usual, but if you choose to listen, although you will have to swim through the waters of discomfort, you will evolve and learn something new about yourself”.
I am not saying that it is always easy to make the choice to evolve, nor that we should always make that choice. We are not made to be perfect and it is of highest importance to not be super strict and punish ourselves. My point here is to acknowledge that sometimes we don’t have the bandwidth to take up all the fights. And that should be fine as long as it is an aware choice.
Now, how is all that connected to our Forrest Yoga practice?
In Forrest Yoga, it is our core principle to stay connected to the “observation mode” of the brain. We opt for staying connected during the entire duration of inhalations, exhalations as well as the spaces and transitions between them. I encourage my students to breathe deeply –yet not forcefully– into their entire core so that they can create a feeling map of their body. By staying within feeling this way, the student can do their reality check: What parts of my core or entire body are numb today? Or what parts of me are delighted today? By connecting to the visceral sensations of the body and not having to rush from pose to pose, we sharpen our intuition because we becoming better cartographers of our inner state. When we achieve that on the mat - which is a relatively stress-free arena- then we gradually become more advanced to feel how our body speaks to us off the mat -which more of a jungle!- as we are making life decisions or experiencing situations and triggers in our environment. In other words, we become more adept at interpreting what feels good or bad based on our intuition and not the voices of the mind that are often driven by fear and insecurities. We consult the entire body and that is a much more reliable source of information, than just a small part of ours, our heads.
Another core element of Forrest Yoga that I love using is Ceremony. And there are Ceremonies of many kinds. Our ancestors from all corners of this planet acknowledged and valued the significance of Ceremony. They would often step out of the dry layer of logic and step into the Mythic and imagination, which is the layer where all unconventional geniuses like Einstein tune into in order to download information from the Universe and make our lives on this planet happier and more interesting and exciting! My view is: if you can imagine it, it must have come from somewhere, don’t discard your insights. Trust your intuition and imagination and let your mind wander in those different frequencies. In my view, many mental illnesses are born due to uncontrolled and excessive engagement with such frequencies, that can have been caused by trauma. The scientists will need another century or two to prove this, but we don’t live that long, so no time to waste here. Mental illness can very often be reversed if mitigated early with Forrest Yoga and Ceremony, so that the mind rests in the body, consults it and both work together. Disconnection from the body and the trauma stored in our cell tissue is one of the main mechanism causing mental illness, which in fact is a result of the unwillingness of the person to see and acknowledge the Truth that something needs to change. Change needs courage to overcome our shame about our vulnerabilities and this is what most people lack. To understand how difficult to admit our shame is, please take a look at the scientific community as an example. When a new, ground-breaking idea backed up by scientific evidence pops up and goes against the current consensus and requires a complete destruction and re-establishment of the foundations of society, it is very rarely welcomed and integrated immediately. The reason is that it is associated with unpleasant consequences for the careers of many well-established and high-prestige people, who have difficulty to adapt to the new situation by admitting that they have made a mistake. Of course, it takes two to dance tango: We have build our societies in a way that vulnerabilities are very shameful and are considered as weaknesses, therefore we are very quick to not only judge, but also punish those who come out with honesty and admit that what they have been doing is now proved to have been wrong. It is the responsibility of all of us to be compassionate and be able to discern who is really ludicrous and we need to protect from and who is honest and we need to forgive. Such matters will always be subject to individual assessment and the best way to discern them is to be connected to what I mentioned above: the voice of your entire body. I believe that this is what the Chinese were trying to explain with the yin/yang philosophy. It is never white or black only.
I can write a book about how we achieve such sharpening of intellect through Forrest Yoga and Energy Medicine -and I believe I will in the future- but I highly encourage you to experience it. Talking about it is like trying to convey what it feels like to become a parent to those who have not experienced it themselves. They will never really get there with words. It is the same with Forrest Yoga. It is a highly experiential system that focuses on what works and gets shit done.
Feel free to contact me for any questions. I would love to dare you to participate in any of my upcoming events, such as immersions, retreats or teacher trainings. Feel free to navigate my website and see if anything fits your schedule!
Tons of love and gratitude for taking the time to read my article!
Ilias