ANA FORREST: Tapping into Energy that Brightens You Inside

Ana comes to DC's Down Dog Yoga in December for a series of workshops. In anticipation of her arrival, the renown yogini spoke to us about obtaining contentment and exhilaration in a challenging yoga practice, finding and losing (and finding) your center, and more..........

Most people can depress themselves quickly with their internal dialog. But they don't know how to work the other end of the spectrum. "Can you get turned on? Can you get ecstatic? Can you get excited?

What I'm working to bring to people's attention is the habitual thinking that keeps them stuck in their pain; in their suffering; in their blindness; in their injuries and diseases; and in their lousy relationships to themselves and to others.  A lot of it is going on at a subterranean level.  There is so much energy that is used up by that stuff! Tuning inward and starting to get skillful at stopping it - it's kind of like plugging a leak.

Part of getting to the ecstatic realm is learning to work in an energy efficient way, not struggling. And it is 1,000 percent breath-related. I work with a really intense, deep breath. Staying connected to the feeling of the breathing is a big piece in shifting out of the old paradigm and into a newer one. We have to pour ourselves out of the ruts in our yoga practice in order to play on the ecstatic realm and on the breakthrough realm.

Accomplishing the poses - yeah, that's cool. But there's something else available entirely - using the pose to generate the energy necessary to heal an area. That's a total reframing. Or using the pose because it puts you on an uncomfortable edge and on that edge is some treasure that you can learn about yourself. But every pose also generates its own - I call them "pose nutrients" - exquisite and unique energies.

Read the full interview here!