Welcome to all things Health and Abundance podcast. This is a podcast where we discuss different health and abundance related issues and come with real tips and advice. And today we're going to talk about forrest. Yoga is a healing modality that extends off the mat. So what is forrest yoga and how is this type of yoga different from other types? What does a forest yoga class look like? Did one heal through forest yoga? And how does one go about achieving that? This and much more is what we'll be discussing today. Today with me is my good friend and colleague Ilias Kousis. Ilias has a master's in theology from the University of Oslo. He also started his PhD, but he did not complete it as he decided to change his path and immerse himself into yoga. He has 200 hours in yoga from the Himalayan Yoga Institute in India, but what is most important is that he is a level five Forrest Yoga guardian, which is the highest honor within the system, handpicked by Jose Colaco and Ana Forest, creators of the system. So he is now growing in depth into energy medicine, soon to be a graduate of Four Winds Society. Light. Body, soul. I am really happy to have you here with us. Have myself tried different types of yoga, including forest yoga, and I feel that forest yoga is quite different. So I'm really excited to be talking about this today with you,Ilias

Ilias 1:58

Wow. Thank you. It's it's a pleasure. It's my first podcast as well.

Oh. Is it.

Yes. And I'm looking forward to, to share more about forest yoga and in fact to, to kind of portray why forest guys, not just a typical yoga style that is only contained on the mat and how it helps people to find insights also off the mat.

Ada 2:22

Yeah, I'm looking forward to talking about this. And that's also the reason why you are my first yoga teacher on this podcast, because I really wanted to talk about forest yoga and how that promotes healing.

Ilias 2:35

Oh, wow. It's an honor. It's an honor.

Ada 2:39

So, yes. How did you come across forrest yoga?

Ilias 2:44

First time I heard about forest yoga was when I was first time in Norway to do my master's degree in geology, and I was on a jogging trip with a friend of mine at the time, and she told me about yoga because I was complaining to her that I cannot breathe and I need to yawn in order to breathe. And I'm very stressed and I don't sleep well. I overthink, and she talked about forest yoga, and she said at that time, we don't have forest yoga in Oslo, but for now, try regular yoga and you try for a year ago when you come to Athens, where I live, and there I can take you to a studio. And that's basically how I got introduced to yoga generally. And I started already feeling a very good effect, even from regular yoga, vinyasa yoga and other types of yoga did. But when I first did forest yoga after have been hooked with vinyasa and loved it and everything I hated for a shock. Guys like what is that? People are doing things very differently and it's so difficult and I sweat and there are many things I cannot do. Oh my God, fuck that shit. 1s And yeah, after that it took, it took at least half a year again, where I went to New York City for some business as a as a geologist. And then I did a yoga safari with a friend of mine. I had already done my first yoga teacher training in India for a month and everything, and I knew something was missing. I was not completely satisfied with that experience. It was just something was lacking. And out of many different styles I did in New York City and tried forest yoga was the most captivating one, the one that I breathe in a way that I hadn't breathed before. It's like the instructor said at the time, inhale and spread your ribs outwards. And then I felt that space, that connection that I had never felt before. Although I was practicing yoga for a long time and had good experiences, but nothing like that, that was like the deepest one. And the rest is history, basically, because I just started practicing with a forest online. She also has some online classes, but they're not free. And after that I signed up for the training. And before the training I remember I was very lost in my life. I was doing my PhD, I loved science, I still love geology, and I love science, and I think it's one of the best things we can ever have in our lives. But the group I was working for and the circle was kind of surrounded by that. It was very toxic. That group I was working for. They were interested only having publications and inflating their ego by kind of trying to lie in the papers and how they phrase things. And that, for me, was like a big turnoff and actually very immoral. I was drifting more and more away from that. And I was remember, I was in my room at the time. I was living with other people and had my own private room in that flat. Even though I was living among people, I was feeling lonely, I was feeling disconnected, and I was almost crying in my room being depressed, like, what am I doing in this life? And after I took the teacher training in forest, Dana and Jose, it was like, wow, wow, your life. It changed my life because it showed me that I actually matter. I actually matter as a person, which was the complete opposite experience I had based on those supervisors had that they were just draining life out of me and they were treating me as trash just because they were triggered themselves. And I was so identified with that position because I go all in. If it is geology, if it is yoga, I go all in. And then I realized, wow, I'm so much more than that. I have so many beautiful things to offer and all that. Because of all these processes we did in forest yoga, I was crazy and I basically reclaimed my life back and I reclaimed my voice. I reclaimed my happiness and my connectedness, and I was no longer worried about what other people think. And I was not worried about even dumping that path that was investing so much towards too. That was poisoning me. After a year or so, I managed to be really strong and have confidence that, you know what, I'm going to just finish and that career and I'm going to go full time into yoga. Wow. And that was the best decision I ever made in my life. And that also led me to to be able to change country again and to finally move back to Norway, where it felt like home and find love also, because now I was ready, I was ready, I was ready to take a person by my side and really connect and be authentic and be willing to also open up for love and receive it. That I was worthy of love. Yeah. So I wouldn't have managed all those things in the way that I feel now that I'm. I have no regrets. Hadn't been for for training. Wow. So it's it's a mind blowing experience. It's a life transformational experience. As long as you're willing to put the effort and you're willing to answer the call. I could have chickened out. I could have been a coward and say it's very safe with my PhD salary. It's very safe with being a geologist. I'm going to have a 9 to 5 job and that's it. I didn't know when I, when I went to just quit that thing. I didn't know if I would be able to earn money. Yeah. No idea, but it all worked out perfectly.

Ada 7:58

Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that, I think, I don't know, I have this feeling that someone listening to this will be in a similar situation you were at the time. I believe this will be helpful. Thank you so much for sharing.

Ilias 8:14

Thank you and there's so much more. But we can have another discussion about all those things.

Ada 8:20

Can you explain in simple terms what forest yoga is and how it's different from other types of yoga?

Ilias 8:27

Forest yoga. First of all, I know that people's minds, especially if they have not seen it written, it goes to forest like trees and everything and vegetation. Yeah, that's

Ada 8:37

what I thought about in the beginning as well, before you actually explained it to me, before I got to know you. And you explain that it's not vegetation,

Ilias 8:45

I know, but that's absolutely normal for people to expect that. So yeah, it is spelled with two R, and that is because it comes from an A forest. So it's it's the name of the creator. In a way. Forest is an intense system that Ana has been creating since about 45 years ago, and it's mostly hatha based. So you can say that we are holding the poses for a long time, for at least five breaths per pose, five long breaths, that is. And the purpose of this is to begin challenging the body while we are staying still with the mind, so that emotions begin to come up and become cleansed. The other interesting aspect about for Soga, and that's why it's very different than other styles, is that it also has lots of elements from Native American culture, because Ana has a past that is strongly associated with Native Americans, indigenous people. She was even adopted and by one of the Native American medicine women. And she has also the title of pipe carrier. I think Ana has incorporated those shamanistic elements, if you like, of summoning elements from Native American cultures and also weave them into forest yoga. That's one aspect of it. Another aspect of it is that Ana herself has gone through many traumatic experiences in life, and all the tools that she used, all the tools that she developed on, on her way to towards healing, she has put them into forest yoga and incorporated them there. To be more precise. For example, Anna has been through sexual abuse. She's very open about that and how she coped with that. She has been through bulimia, which is an eating disorder. You eat a lot, you eat it, eat you a little bit mindless and then you puke it all out. She's open about that too, and has healed that completely. She has also been through alcohol addiction as well as healed her epilepsy. So. And also at some point of your life, she fell through like the floor underneath the chair where she was sitting on at the restaurant or something just collapsed and she fell through that floor. Wow. And she was almost left paralyzed. So oh my God, she's been through a lot. And imagine that she has healed everything. All of those things. She has overcome them. And all those gems of wisdom weaved into forest yoga. Wow. So this is why it's very difficult to give like one sentence definition about what forest is. And this also reflects why forest yoga can be a little bit overwhelming, a little bit difficult to digest if somebody practices it for the first time. It can feel very difficult to understand because it brings up triggers, because it goes in a it goes in depth so that we can cleanse from the root of our issues. So they're not coming back again, just to put a little bit comparison so that people understand that, let's say that most of the yoga styles out there, not all of them, but many of them, at least the majority, unfortunately, they're more training orientated, like more fitness orientated. So although they do give benefits, they are short lasting. That is the issue. It's like you feel good maybe for in the time of the class or shortly after, but then your issues come back.

Why is it so? Because we don't hold the postures, usually for a long time. For example, in Vinyasa we are just flowing from one posture to the other. Is that the reason?

It's not only that because flow is not a bad thing, so flowing from pose to pose can be very good. But what it needs and what is usually absent, is the foundation of feeling like the person feeling themselves fully and being in control of every part of their body on a sufficient level so that they can move as a union, like a complete union. The body, not just body parts moving around and having no coherence whatsoever. And this is usually what is lacking in in vinyasa, because the teachers are very good at what they're teaching themselves because it's their practice, so their foundation is taken for granted. Whereas most of the students, they don't have the same the same movement culture, the same movement background and experiences they have, and they find it very hard to keep up usually. It's not only that, it's not only the type of yoga and the style of practice. Course yoga can also be a little bit more fluid parts. The thing is that forest yoga also, let's say somebody takes the training, the first yoga teacher training, the 200 hours, which is one month training. We take our students, our trainees, through intense emotional and physical transformation. We work a lot with their emotions and how their traumas or their their belief system reflects upon how they're moving their body. So we're using their movement on the mat and how they behave on the mat if they're being kind to their body or not, to figure out what are the emotional blockages that they need to work on, how to work on with their ego so that they can do whatever they do sustainably and not hurt themselves. And the trainees that manage to do that, and they really put their dedication and motivation and courage to evolve, then they become teachers that they can actually reflect that. Wow. And to my experience, most of the yoga teacher trainings, they don't bring that arena into the play. They don't bring that emotional shamanic healing that our teachers need in order to be that authentic and not just go around and advertise their egos and using their students in order to inflate their egos.

So you're not just a teacher when you're teaching for a student, but you're also an instructor of presence.

You are. That and basically what you're doing is you have worked with your issues and of course in evidence you still keep working with your issues. And this is where you draw your inspiration from. You're not performing. So the big difference is that you are not performing. You are not trying to be a persona, a yoga teacher that needs to know everything, that needs to be above everybody. But you are there, and you're trying to share what you've learned through your own experience that is authentic, not what may be Instagram usually wants so that you become trendy, or what TikTok wants so that you become trendy.

Okay, so you hold space while they are healing, but at the same time, there is some kind of healing happening inside of you as well.

In a way, yes, you can use that as any kind of teacher or instructor. It doesn't need to be yoga instructor. It can be anything. You can be a leader. You can be a manager in any kind of company or group. You need to really see the people you are working with or the people that are students, so that you also learn from how they are transforming. And maybe this is a good mirror so that you can transform parts of yourself while doing that. A very short example, for example, that I bumped into yesterday. I was out for for a coffee in the sun one of the last sunny days, probably before autumn comes. And I'm this type of person that is always kind of worrying and trying to do his best to provide foundations for organizing the events and everything and be very professional and everything falls into place. And yesterday what I was sitting there and enjoying the coffee and the sun and the stillness. I saw two old women walking with support, with thought, and they were going slowly, slowly, step after step. And then I'm like, Elias, you are worrying too much. See here the stillness, the silence and that wow. That person, although has some difficulty to move, moves in a way of grace. It's like it's another type of grace rather than just moving forward all the time and quickly. It's like, watch the art, the art of just being embodied and meet yourself at the level you are at. And this is another amazing thing about for that is basically that that it teaches us meet your students at their level. Don't go there. Blind yoga robot teacher practicing from your mat and just doing your own thing. It's like watch them and be willing to change and adapt according to what they need. Let let nature unfold in front of your eyes instead of having expectations. Wow. Instead of trying to be like, oh, today you know what? I had an amazing practice at home, did handstands or did Scorpion or whatever. I'm going to do that with my students and they all going to do it.

Oh my God. When you say that at least five examples of yoga teacher time came to my mind immediately.

Yeah. It's like give your students the freedom to be who they are and provide them with a safe arena where they can play with versions of the pose that they are helping them to build towards the pose in case they cannot achieve it. It's like see people for who they are. See the tree that is a tree and see the fish that is a fish. And they have different functions. So forest yoga is amazing in that. And that is an amazing skill that you don't only need for yoga teaching, but for whatever teacher or mentor you are. Let's say you you are a parent. If you are a parent, you have even greater responsibility than a yoga teacher. You know you're responsible for these young lives, that they are being shaped and molded, and you need to be your utmost authentic self, not somebody that gets triggered all the time and puts the triggers on the on the baby. And it's like, yeah, stay connected. So forest yoga in a way teaches connection. Teaches connection so that you can be vulnerable. You can be who you are and you don't need to inflate your ego.

I love that you know what came to mind? I was in one of your classes and as always, like usually, at least in yoga, we start with the right side of the body. So in your class you said, and now the left foot ahead. And I remember it so well that I put my right foot ahead because I was on autopilot. Like, I remember you telling me, like, even you are not here in this moment. I remember that so well. And yeah, I understand what you mean, that it's all about being there.

Yeah, that is very well said.

Is it the flow, strength, flexibility? What? What is it focused on?

That is another very good question and it has pretty much everything. So if you would say between flow, strength and flexibility, I would say flow is the last part of it. It's like the less dominant and it's mostly strength and flexibility, physical, emotional and spiritual. You can use it the way you want it, and that's also why I love it. So you can use it as your main fitness routine. If you just want to have fitness, you can still use it for fitness. Because we do handstands, we do forearm balances. We do all the good stuff that you need to strengthen your arms. We do lots of abdominal work, abdominal exercises to strengthen your core and stabilize it in a good, healthy way. We also do a lot of leg work because we're holding the poses for a long time, and we do some very challenging lunges and warriors and all those beautiful poses, so you can use it as your main fitness element, but you can also use it as something that helps you maintain your most predominant activity, regardless if you are football soccer player. If you are a dancer, it can help you to hone your asymmetries. So if you have a mild scoliosis or unevenness in the pelvis or unevenness in the shoulders, it helps you hone those and make them milder so you can keep doing what you're doing, dancing or playing sports, or being even competitive in a professional level in a way that you will always be doing that without injuries, in a way that you will always be evolving without having those abrupt fluctuations that most people usually get in sports, it's like having some really good years and then disappearing completely because you have just fucked up your body, so it will give you endurance for this yoga. I like making this this comparison of being an endurance sport. Yeah, it's like Ironman, you know, you keep going, you keep going, and you keep listening to the body all the way. It's an unbroken span of attention where you're constantly present, and it teaches you how to respect your boundaries and teach them and stretch them in a way that they can take it. It's like when you have a rubber band and you pull it, you pull it, you pull it, but you don't pull it up to the point where it breaks. You always go and you are on the highest and like most intense point and most exciting point of growth, but you don't break yourself. This is what first teaches. So this is why it's great. Also has a part time occupation which will help you to be sustainable in whatever else you do with your body.

Makes sense. So does this mean that you don't assist physically the students into getting into a posture that their body is not ready for? Like there are some yoga styles that do that a lot, that the student is pushed into a posture in order for the body to learn that posture with force. And I mean, it works, but does this mean that you don't do this?

No, we we don't do that in forest yoga. We, we love touching our students all the time, but touching them with the purpose of love and support and holding space for them. Here's what I mean. For example, I've seen some classes that the students in the photo band like sitting on their butt leg straight forward, and then they have to bend their chest over the legs. And I've seen instructors going above them and push them even lower.

I know what you're talking about. I've been in those classes for many years. Yeah.

Oh my god. Yeah. These. This is a common adjustment in some of the most popular yoga styles right now. And that has a result sometimes for some people that it will just rupture their hamstring. You just hear a click that can actually happened. And then yeah that has happened. I've got many, many students that have come to me with those injuries and told me, oh, I practice this class. And then my hamstring snapped, wow, this is yeah, really fucked up things. So in first yoga, instead of pushing the person to go deeper so that don't know, they look cooler for a photo or whatever, I don't know what they're thinking. That's not what we do. We go, for example, and we grab from there softly from their side ribs and we we coach them to breathe while we move them. We don't just go there disregarding in what part of the process they are and just pulling them in towards weird directions without expecting them. We work with the students so they don't also need us until the rest of their lives so they can get something from us, learn and they can do it on their own. So what we do, let's say in the example of the four band, is we go, we grab the side ribs softly, and then we tune our breath with the students breath. If we are not sure how the breath looks like, because maybe it's a little bit shallow, then what we tell them is, you know, exhale everything out, we accept them and then we. Yeah. And then we inhale with them and we tell them now the inhale, lift your ribs up. And while other does that we're like, while you do this we pull you up while inhaling and then you feel that beautiful new space, your body is getting the length with fresh oxygen and fresh neurological connections from the brain. 1s So we give you space instead of push you in a shape that we think you should go. It's not about what we think as instructor is about what you need. U1

So that's oh my God, the ego down, huh?

Yeah, so we work a lot with hands on assist, but in the way of massaging neck, because usually our people's necks are fucked up, especially when they do specific poses in yoga. It's like the whole the entire body with their neck. This is anatomically wrong. Yeah. So we massage the neck. We sometimes do some body work in the shoulders, pulling shoulders a little bit down so that they can release the tension. We work in a, in a deeper way. So it's it's a combination of bringing body work in a yoga class and kind of physiotherapy in a yoga class. Many people come to me and they're like, oh, this is what my fear is. Your therapist told me to do. You know what you're doing? I'm like, yes. Thanks for acknowledging that.

Yeah. I remember when you mentioned that. I remember you telling me once, don't look up at your hand when you're doing, for example, the three asana, the triangle pose, because it's bad for your neck. And actually it makes sense, but in no other style I've been studying. I've actually heard that not even in hatha.

That's true. And I think now this is just my personal opinion. I think that most of the yoga styles, what has happened is that they have been successful when they got created, and that may have been sometimes hundreds of years ago. And just because they were successful, it's like, okay, this recipe works. It's from the from the grand, grand, grand grandmother me of mind. Right. And then they keep using it. But our lifestyle, the way we live has changed, has shifted completely. We no longer live in society where we hang from the trees whenever we want. We gaze at the sky. We reach for the apple from the tree. We do work in the fields all the time. We go to toilet. Well thank you. Position. We are not there anymore. So what I love about force yoga is that it says we are changing. I'm working with forest actually all the time. I'm a content manager at SheKnows, which is the company for yoga. And me and Ana, we're working on new poses. We're working on new sequences based on what we see is here from people, from our events. So we are updating it all the time. We're just not just getting stuck. And I'm like, okay, you know, I'm on a forest, I'm superstar. Now it's time to retire. You know, I'm just going around and pose around for people. That's not what she does. Still works intensely,

I did that. So that being said, what kind of people is usually attracted to your classes? What's your crowd?

Yes, I have a diverse crowd, but at the same time very unique crowd. Let me clarify what I mean. 1s Usually people that are attracted to forest yoga are the people that they acknowledge that they somehow are operating either on autopilot or are operating based on trauma and fear in their lives. It's the people that they have the courage to acknowledge that and do something about it. So typically it is people that they are experienced in yoga. They have practiced yoga for a long time and they have reached a plateau usually. And they come with injuries or they come with boredom and being fed up with yoga because it's just the same and boring for them. And they find that they get reborn there because their passion for yoga gets ignited again, and they move their bodies in different ways. 1s Then I also have many people that they just suffer from injuries, generally because from sedentary lifestyle or because of sports or anything, and they find great relief in forest yoga. And I've been blessed and at the same time surprised to hear from many of them that forest is the only actually thing that has worked for them, even if they have been to chiropractors, to physiotherapists, to doctors. So that touches me deeply when I hear that, and I see that what we do works as forest instructors. That's beautiful. Also get people that they can go deeper than their physical injury and understand that the physical injury is always, always connected to something emotional or spiritual. I get people that they get panic attacks. They suffer from all those emotional traumas and maybe PTSD, trauma disorder, those post-traumatic reactions that just happen after a very bad experience has happened to them, and they begin to improve their mental and emotional health very quickly through forest yoga, and they begin to change the way they're making decisions and thus the outcome that those bring in their life, their life just gets brighter, gets more hopeful. I've heard people that they have come to my retreat, for example, and they've told me, you know, I had no reason to live. I was contemplating thoughts about not wanting to live anymore, not having really a reason to live through and through the work we did with forest yoga tools and some other tools I give them as well. They have wow. They have reignited their passion for life and for seeing their own gifts that are always there, and they couldn't really recognize them.

That's amazing.

Ilias 29: 52

Yeah. So in that sense, I got some specific categories of people coming up. But if you think about it, it's people from all ages, all types of professions. It's just this kind of people that they're warriors. They're really, you know what? There's something there for me to evolve. These are the people that typically hooked up with First yoga. Those that they have difficult time with. Forest yoga are the ones that they think they're perfect. Everything is going fine and they are numbing themselves by, I don't know, but just lying to them. Yeah, understand there are many of those tools that they get shocked the first time they do forest, because they begin to see sides of themselves that they've been pushing under the carpet. And these are the people that typically need up to six months or one year to really come back to forest and understand what they had been. Yeah. In that first Forest yoga class.

So actually the healing happens on all levels.

It happens in all levels, and the healing is always stemming from the spiritual aspect of who we are. I like using the metaphor of the iceberg when we talk about injuries or physical issues. I like talking about the iceberg metaphor. And for me, that is what you see above. The sea level in the iceberg is only 10%, and the rest of the 90% is what's below the sea surface. And basically, this is what everybody needs to understand, from corporations to professional sports people, that when people get injured, when people have pains and physical blockages or even autoimmune diseases, it's very often because of something spiritual that is off with them. There's something off there. So regardless how much people can perceive that or identify this or track this, it's always like that. It's just that most of us, we don't manage to work with that and really discern what is the spiritual lesson behind our injuries. We are not taught like this. We are taught like, you know, wait, your ankle hurts, wait a little bit. It's going to go over and then go back to business as usual. Whereas every second of your life is new. Business is seeing world with new eyes and fresh perspectives and evolving. So if we use the injuries and the pains we get and the setbacks we get, whatever setbacks they are. To understand that we're not in right relationship with spirit or with the sacred or whatever people believe in. It's not about the wording. Then we learn. We learn what we need to learn out of this. And it's not always the Western mentality of always growing in a capitalistic sense, always getting more money, always getting more fame, or always going for the next bigger team. If you're a player or whatever, it has deeper sense and we need to go on hunt for that. So this is why the healing happens from the spiritual root to the emotional to the physical, and then the body gets informed very nicely and very quickly when our mentality changes. Even doctors now begin to finally accept and even document in scientific papers that stress is a major player in, you know, irritable bowel syndrome and all those things. And sometimes autoimmune diseases. We begin to say that even the doctors, we just cannot quantify that's the problem. So people trying to only get hooked up with science and only believe science as a religion, they need to understand that their religious science is not there to be religion is there to just show you a few things, and sometimes you need to step over that. You don't need to wait until science quantifies something. To understand that, you need to make changes to understand.

And how do you go about creating this space for healing for your students? You said breath, presence, awareness, of course. Holding the postures. Is there anything else?

I didn't really talk so much about how much gravity we put in deep breathing in forest yoga. But basically that question allows me to talk about that to holding space for the students starts by holding space for yourself. It brings me back to what we talked about earlier in our discussion today about understand who you are, respect your vulnerable sides, and accept all sides of yours, at least the ones that you have, overview of the ones that you are aware of and teach and be present for your students from that place, that place of having acknowledged your wounded parts, your parts, that they are angry and by being authentic at all. Then immediately you begin to feel compassion. You feel compassion for others because you know what it feels like in your own skin. And then when you begin to develop that skill of seeing others for who they are, you also begin using that for your own healing and seeing how you can hold compassion for you. Also. So it goes both ways. So we hold space by being raw, authentic and open. Open to see people for who they are.

Amazing. Wow, I love that. I really love that because guilty as charged. I have also been in the place of teaching from. I need to show from my ego and I see that in most teachers, unfortunately, or in many, I cannot say most, maybe in many, in many teachers. So teaching like being in contact with your wounded part while you're healing with that and teach from that part, it's amazing, I love it. Then you're authentic.

That is exactly. And many people have different ways of connecting to those parts of themselves. Some of them is definitely self practice. You go to have that self practice, the physical practice where you connect and any other practice that is more spiritual. Maybe your visualizations going deeper and feeling feeling what's what if there are any spiritual holes within you, what are you trying to cover? What are you trying to avoid and compensate for with the way you're making decisions, or with the way you are reacting without thinking sometimes cuts yourself?

Amazing. Is there also for a certain meditation or the whole practice is actually like meditation, but is there something specific?

That was very well said, in fact. Yeah, forest yoga is like constant meditation. And how I like to explain that to people is that meditating is not just sitting down and trying to get into Nirvana from there. That's one type of meditation, which is amazing, but it's a it's advanced. Yeah, definitely it's advanced. And this is why, even in the most ancient yoga philosophies in the texts, this comes up last as the last step. First are the poses and other practices and being a decent human being. And that's the last one. Yeah. Enlightenment. So in forest yoga, the practice itself is a meditation because you constantly are called to observe, to observe and not analyze, to observe and not label. It's like, okay, I'm feeling that in the pose. And instead of trying to jump into conclusions or trying to look at your neighbor on the other mat, what they're doing and distract yourself, you're staying with that. This is this is the foundation of meditation. Yeah. Of being an observer, of course, until you're able to transcend into other states of awareness. But while we're in that a little bit shallower awareness, then that's it. It's about observing. And apart from that, apart from the regular physical practice that is meditation in a way. We do have lots of visualizations where we take our students and trainees through chakra process, for example, meditation, which takes them through the chakras, and how their chakras think and relate to a specific decision or issue they have in their life. So we consult the body and the energy field. We have other types of visualizations, including the wiser self, where we take our students into a vision quest to meet their wiser self in the future. We take them out of time. We step out of time, which is a beautiful shamanic way of doing things. And we also have death meditation, for example, which takes our students through a symbolical death where they begin to realize what is worth fighting for and what needs to be let go of what needs to die. It gives them a different clarity about life, different insights, and definitely ignites their passion for life. Yeah, we have many others too, but these are some of the ones we have.

Yeah. So there is for a certain meditation to see. I didn't know that.

Yeah. And it's class. Also, we set an intent. Sometimes it's like to choose a specific part of the body and focus on and observing and maybe changing the way we're moving. So we create change there. So it's a meditation. Everything about forest yoga and meditation and how you are in a meditative state when you write your emails, when you have a podcast, when you're you are out for a coffee with your friends, how can you stay aware and be an observer? So it's basically a 24 over seven meditation.

Wow. But if someone is totally new to for a serious, can they find something on YouTube to get started with? I understand that going to a class is the best way, especially since it's a different kind of class. But is there something on YouTube to kind of get familiar with it to get the feeling? Okay, maybe this is something I would like to try.

Totally, totally. I do have five classes on YouTube that are frankly 90 minute classes. Nice. I do, and I know that other colleagues of mine, other first year teachers also have free content on YouTube, so I would recommend people to just type something like Forest yoga class or anything like that on YouTube. And I'm pretty sure that something will come up amazing. As I said, forest yoga can be pretty intense, and especially if you don't have an instructor telling you how to do things, you may get a little bit triggered and frustrated if you try it for the first time. Be patient with yourself and try it for at least nine more times. It needs time to speak to you. First time I did forest yoga, I couldn't understand it. I was judging it all the time because it's so different, and it took me at least half a year to come back to it and really understand the value. Oh, so be smarter than I was.

Actually, I loved Forest Yoga with you from the first time I tried it, but maybe because my training is in hatha so I love holding the postures, I prefer that than flow. So actually love the classes with you. Totally recommended.

That can be and also can be that you were much more mature spiritually than I was when I tried first year ago. So. U1

Well, you know what? I'm taking that one.

Yeah, of course, because you do lots of spiritual work and you're very well developed on that sector. So for you, it's easy to kind of understand when something is good and deep quality.

I'm taking that one. I'm drawing with that one. If someone wants to become a forest yoga instructor, how do they do that and why forest yoga instead of something else?

Well, I actually encourage people to do what their soul and heart desires. But from what I can speak from experience personally, what I see around in people is that the first yoga teacher training equips you to be more ready than most of the yoga teacher trainings out there, so that you can feel actually ready to teach at once. It just gives you those tools that you get that confidence that of course it's going to be scary. It's a new experience, but you have some really good base that you can feel trust about yourself and self confidence that you can start teaching right away. And of course, it's a life transformational coaching program in a way, at the same time, and in a way, it's a leadership program. I must say that it's camouflaged a leadership program. That's what Forest Yoga is, because it teaches you how to use the voice in an authentic way, in a way that is profound and really influences people around you so they can hear you and you're not boring. So we definitely don't produce yoga robots. There's no, like, one specific forest yoga type of instructor that you can be, which is usually what I see from other kind of styles, that there is the only one way people are very similar when they're teaching is like the same say they say the same thing and blah blah blah. But in forest yoga, we see for we see you for who you are, and we help you develop your own unique gifts. And that's what you take out into the world

. And how can one start this training?

Well, you have a few choices here in Norway, in Oslo, where we are both based right now. We are. I'm leading the teacher trainings here in Forest Yoga. Me and my colleague Charlie, she flies in from France. She makes that honor for us. And we teach that together in two modules. 14 days, no, 11 and 11 days. That's one way of doing it. The other way of doing it is if you are willing to travel and maybe take it in one month in a row, not in two modules, but in one with Ana Forest, yourself and Jose Colaco. And four is the creator and Jose is your husband co-creator at the moment they are co-creating for yoga and they're offering the teacher training in different places in the world. Right now they're in Barcelona and they will be in Bali, I think next year or something.

Amazing. Okay. And where can someone practice forrest yoga? In Oslo at least?

I think there are some first year instructors outside of Oslo, but not very active, at least based on what I see. The only forest yoga I've really seen here now is in Oslo by me mostly. And now I got some graduate students that they have started taking, taking up classes and they get amazing feedback already. Amazing. So we are growing so mostly forest. You'll find in insights at the moment. You'll find it in such yoga, medicine, bridge and Karlsruhe. Okay. And sometimes it's not even labeled for yoga. So I would recommend that you contact me so I can direct you to the people that are teaching it. Because it's a new product. It's a very new product for Sad. So it's not always labeled sometimes label or something else.

Okay. I hope it spreads more and more to be honest.

We're doing our best. It actually spreads very rapidly, if you think about that. I moved to Norway like, you know, to settle down and with Corona and everything in between, it's amazing what we have achieved and how much, yeah, how much healing it has brought already to Norway. It's it's beautiful. For those of you, of course, people that are listening to the podcast and you can't come to Oslo, Norway. I do have online classes as well. Me and of course many other forces with teachers. You can go to my website and find out lots of information.

That was my question. How can people get in contact with you? Find you what? The website.

I recommend that they go to my website w w w dot Elias courses.com and they will find all the information there. And definitely Instagram. I don't use Instagram so much for spamming people. I use it for getting my events out, so I use it basically just to inform people. Yeah. So Instagram as well. And I think they can find the link for Instagram also in the website further down if they scroll down somewhere in small icon.

Do you have any last messages for people that are listening to us right now?

Thank you for giving me the chance to to be open and share those words with people so that everybody understands that they are meaningful, they have reason why they're alive, and they should just go about and discover the gifts and share them. There's no reason to live in fear. There is a way out. Even if they haven't found it, they're is a way out.

Thank you for this last encouraging and helpful words. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here with us. Thank you. It's a pleasure. And now it's your turn. Let me know what health and abundance subjects you want me to cover in the future. Do that by commenting on the post on Instagram. If you want to book a free healing and coaching for salvation with me, or if you want to be a guest on my podcast, feel free to contact me. You can find my contact information on my website at adakomani.no. thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much to Ilias for being here with us today. If you liked it, please leave a review at Pod chaser.com. Just search for the podcast and write a review. If you have questions, please do let me know on Instagram. In the next episode, we'll be talking about healing with Feng Shui And remember you are always creating your health and abundance what you choose to create today.