Journey to the Core
For two solid hours, Ana Forrest kept us diving deep into the core of our bodies—and of our beings.
Gently but relentlessly, she reminded our packed class to focus our attention inside, using the breath to feed our energy. "Don't look at the ceiling," she'd say; "There aren't any answers for you there." Or she'd remind us that it's mighty hard to turn your attention to your interior experience when you're busy checking out what the person on the next mat is doing. Whenever the difficulty of the poses threatened to pull us out of our core, she knew just how to draw us back inside.
So despite a challenging session that included lots of supine work for the body's core musculature, handstands, forearm stands, Sun Salutations, and a long, intense standing sequence—and despite practicing mat-to-mat in a room of perhaps 80 other students—I walked out of class feeling deeply quiet and centered. I'd been in such a timeless state of attention to each moment that it was hard to believe we'd been practicing for two hours.
Ana focuses energy on the core in so many ways. The details of her instruction wake up often sleepy, deep, or obscure parts of the body. After our initial abdominal work, she said she hoped it had awaked our abs. "After all, yoga is about waking up." She reminds students to constantly use the breath to see what areas we can bring into awareness, to encourage that awareness to expand, and to direct life and energy throughout the body. And she seems to know just how and when the mind is likely to distract us from the core of our experience, and how instead to keep diving deeper inside. During the most intense part of the standing sequence, she cautioned us: "If you're thinking about this, if you're listening to the chatter of your mind, you're going to get tired. Just pay attention to your breath and let it nourish you." It seemed to be just what we all needed to hear, because as soon as she said it the energy of the room became sweeter, clearer, and more profound as we all dropped even more deeply into the core of our experience.