Forrest Yoga and Energy Medicine Retreat - Is it worth it?

My beautiful people, hello!

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog. My intention is to create healthy scepticism, new perspectives and inspiration so that you live your life in a passionate, exciting and renewing way. Now, onto the topic of today: Forrest Yoga and Energy Medicine Retreat. Is it worth it?

The answer to this is a sincere and wholehearted “YES”.

And people say “But, Ilias I have not practiced enough yoga and 2,5 hour classes sound long”.

My answer to this is that you absolutely don’t need to worry regardless your physical condition, age, injuries and mental state. Forrest Yoga and Energy Medicine –at least the way I teach them– can meet you at your level and honour your process. Are you a physically advanced student that loves arm balances, deep backbends and exciting poses? You will get them! Plus, extra challenges that will help you to develop more mentally, physically and spiritually. Are you a more inexperienced practitioner and you need milder versions of stretching and strengthening your body so that you can connect deeper to your Spirit instead of injuring yourself or getting irritated because you usually sit down for half of the duration of the yoga classes you attend? Well, I have you covered. I am there to supervise and assist you on how to move your body safely in a way that brings effervescence, release and apparent progress. Trust my expertise after working with hundreds of people (can be more actually!) that I know how to approach you, as long as you give me permission. Here’s where I am going with this:

Each time your focus goes on putting the responsibility on an external situation/person, you in fact avoid taking up the responsibility for your own healing. I am taking the responsibility to tell you that you won’t get injured in my class as long as you adhere to how I guide you. Now, it is your turn to take up responsibility to trust me and let me help you. By asking help when we need it, we shed the heavy burden of shame off our shoulders and feel connected, loved and that we belong. That is because we are not meant to walk alone in this life.

But now let’s talk about what you can get from my retreats.

First of all, you will get to immerse in sacred Ceremony before each physical class. This allows you to dive deeper into the second layer of attention and get in touch with your creativity. This is where you no longer think about answering your emails, doing the laundry or worrying about making dinner. It is where you plant seeds in the fertile soils of your consciousness and establish new habits, dream new dreams and visualise new goals. This is where you know no obstacles and everything is possible. Time turns from linear to circular and you can witness past, present and future at the same time. In short, this is where the Magic happens and your imagination is manifesting a bright future. A future which is more pain- and struggle-free and more full of contentment and passion for life.

This is something that is harder to achieve in regular yoga classes that you may be trying to squeeze desperately in your busy schedule, while simultaneously juggling lots of balls in the air like dealing with work, doing maintenance tasks for your household and spend quality time with your family. Our highly paced lifestyles are not sustainable and deprive us of energy up to the point that we suddenly crash because of running on empty after not wanting to admit this to yourselves for a long time. To add to that, many of our people don’t even live a high tempo that serves their life purpose and that makes their health deteriorate on all levels even more dramatically.

In my retreats, I combine the healing tools of both Forrest Yoga and Energy Medicine to help my students find integrity and be cohesive: body, mind and Spirit all agree and align to work towards a common direction and there is no more inner conflict. Example of inner conflict that is socially accepted by our cultures of the West is to physically be somewhere, like a job you hate or a social gathering you dislike and disassociate mentally so that you don’t feel that suffocation your body is signalling to you to wake the fuck up. Then, you begin to make comforting statements to yourself like “if I quit this job, I will starve or if I quit these friends that mock me, I won’t find anyone else to hang out with me and I will end up lonely”. Such attitudes are encouraged in our societies and sadly lead into alienation from our own bodies, minds and Spirits. They break the alliance of these holy three grand forces. We then end up making statements “if I had more money, I would do this and that” and we escape the present moment and waste time on ruminating. Some of us, even worse, give into addictions of any kind: sex, alcohol, food, drugs, you name it.

In my retreats, I teach my students on how to stay present in the moment, so that they can unlock a magical future. This is not rocket science, here’s what I do: I help you to stop indulging into your old patterns of distracting yourself and I help you feel your present state, your gifts, who you REALLY are beneath the labels you have put on yourself from influence of your parents, school, society and social network. You stand naked in your mind’s eye and because you are present in the moment, you can really see what you can become, what you genuinely wish to become without the presence of fear of not belonging with the rest of the robots around you wandering lifeless in our modern societies. This allows you to start taking different actions that quite frankly help you build up towards a bright future instead of sabotaging yourself and wasting your time in paralysis.

And people say: “But, Ilias this sounds simple, why do I need to come and spend so much money and time, isn’t there an easier way?”

And I say: If there was an easier way for you, why haven’t you done it? OF COURSE, there is an easier way, but for those that have done lots of spiritual work and good maintenance or have been blessed to be raised under the principles of reciprocity, love and compassion even before they were born, from the womb. And it DOES become easier with time. So, starting with an immersive retreat can help you connect to your Spirit through easier ways with time, as long as you stay on the path of sustaining your connection to the second layer of attention. This is also simple, it is like a muscle; the more often you exercise it, the more developed and nourished it will be.

So my friend, stop trying to find shortcuts to squeeze transformation into your “gravely serious and busy” lifestyle and come and take care of yourself. The higher number of people who work on developing a deeper connection to their Spirit, the happier the world will be around us. Change starts from us first and it ripples out. Come and learn how to move and explore your body in a pain-freeing way and how to discover to areas of your body and light up more parts of your brain. I will help you with physical practice, Ceremony, visualisations and body work. I will help you see how magnificent you are in your own unique way and assist you in finding your own way of contributing to the universe in a way that benefits not only you but all beings, too.

As always, I can go on for hours, but I will stop here. Please, feel free to share your feedback, thoughts and questions that may arise from this blog. Thank you genuinely for your engagement.

Yours with love,
Ilias

First blog! Forrest Yoga versus treatments.

I am not really sure what I am embarking on with this. What has driven me to start writing is the random epiphanies and connections that come to my head constantly like flashes of inspiration that I feel have a story to tell, but are left unexploited and dissolve in the empty vastness of the Universe. I have decided that this needs to stop and even if I don’t have a concrete plan, I will start writing. One must start from somewhere and keep going one step at a time. Sometimes big step, sometimes…small step.

I am highly encouraging you my friends to send me your feedback as well as inquires for topics you would like to read about and perhaps you are interested in my opinion for.

I am preparing you all that I may sound a bit eccentric with how I express, but bare with me and read my entire articles to understand where I come from. Don’t get stuck in specific words or sentences I use, but see the whole picture. And always, contact me if you feel that something is not well-clarified before you judge me. I will also make mistakes like all humans. 

This image shows the satisfaction on my face saying “finally, I wrote my first article ever!”

Without further ado, let’s get onto today’s topic: Forrest Yoga practice vs treatments, such as massages, physiotherapy, chiropractics etc. What is the difference, what are the pros and cons and what is most important to be part of your main self-care practice toolkit?

First, let me underline that I refer specifically to Forrest Yoga and not yoga in general, as not yoga is created equal and not all yoga styles aim at healing your body with therapeutic sequencing.

Here’s a quick word about what Forrest Yoga is in a nutshell:

What makes Forrest Yoga a unique and effective healing tool among other yoga styles is that it is designed to cover the needs of today’s people in our modern society, and on top of that it is constantly evolving, as both Ana Forrest & Jose Calarco as well as the Forrest Yoga Guardians, we all strive for observing our students and assess how we need to modify the practice to tailor it to their needs and alleviate their pain, injuries and help them bring clarity on their emotional issues. Our teachings vary greatly individually even in a group class, although we have some concrete “rules” within the Forrest Yoga system we teach.

In other words, Ana Forrest did not design a successful yoga system that stays stagnant and just keeps selling because it was successful after the patenting and that’s it. She is not a guru that goes around and preaches the same old stuff just to satisfy her ego and bank account. She constantly cares and works daily on her mat on her computer and notepad to keep refining her teachings according to new discoveries, breakthroughs and experiences she gets with working with people. It is never-ending job, without ever retiring and has been taken to an even more elevated level on the Ceremony part since Jose Calarco joined forces with her.

That being said, what IS the difference between the benefits you get from your Forrest Yoga practice and receiving any kind of private treatment, like massage, physiotherapy, chiropractics etc.? Let me give it to you, my friends: In Forrest Yoga we take you in such deep levels of awareness that enables you to do big part of the therapeutic work on your own. Yes, you are receiving assistance and guidance from us - Forrest Yoga teachers - but we don’t “do you”. You are not passive during your own healing. And this is crucial, because it minimises the risk of relapsing to your old patterns that cause your pain, injuries and dysfunctional behavioural patterns that are the root causes of your addictions, depression and anxiety because of your poor decision making in life.

On the contrary, when having a mindset that somebody will “do you” by giving you a massage or telling you to mindlessly do physical exercises without cultivating deep awareness and knowing the anatomical principles behind what you do, then this leads to the fact that you pass on the responsibility of your own healing solely to somebody else. You are basically asking them to fix something that you have been responsible for creating in the first place and you are acting like an upset child that just wants things to get done by his parents. Whereas this is okay when you are a child (and actually healthy to act like this occasionally so that parents work out their issues), that is not the case when you become adult. The “do me” attitude leads to numbness, apathy and stagnancy, and although you may experience some relief during these private treatments, the results will only be short-term if you don’t do the maintenance that is necessary, which stems from deep, aware understanding and not just pure discipline and beating up your mind for not making good decisions for you. You must understand that your autopilot patterns stem from a part of your brain that changes only when you attain access to deeper layers of attention. There, you can plant seeds for transformation that can result in long-term change of behavioural and thinking patterns. You literally need to change your neurological connections.

So, bottom line: I am saying a big YES to private treatments such as massages, physiotherapy, chiropractics etc, but always in addition to a regular Forrest Yoga practice so that you can really understand deeply WHY you are doing specific exercises and what they try to trigger in you, so that you begin to catch yourself when you are giving into your old patterns in your daily life movements and decision-making. Furthermore, make sure that the person you are working privately with is somebody who can elaborate with great detail on all your questions and that you feel convinced by. If for whatever reason, deep inside you don’t feel convinced, please to do your body and your bank account a favour and change your therapist. TRUST YOURSELF, you are always right. It is not worth working with somebody and paying them only because you think they are kind people with good intentions. This is not enough, and helps them also get a wake up call so that they can ponder on their own orientation in life and how to calibrate it so that they can offer their unique gifts to the world in a more effective way. This sounds to me like a win-win situation!

I hope you enjoyed reading. Please, give me your feedback and questions as I am navigating through my new hobby of expressing myself through writing! I am looking forward to learn a lot about myself in this wonderful journey. Thank you for your time.