About EYT | InvermereYoga

I believe that while our practices can reconnect mind and body – and this is valuable, I would argue it’s even radical in our current society – they can do so much more…reconnect us with Earth, with Nature, and in doing so, help us remember our inner-Nature.

Most Yoga is Anthropocentric – even Egocentric…which is ironic because what we really crave is union, connection, belonging…a sense of home – in ourselves, our bodies, within our families, our cultures, and within Earth.

I believe that our practices would do well to shift to an Ecocentric and Kin-centric way of being. (I think it's really interesting to note here that the word eco comes from the greek word home)

I believe we need to remember how to just be with ourselves, with each other, and with Nature without trying to make things into something else…we need to remember how to form and practice relationships.

I believe that we need to stop thinking of Earth only as our Mother, step out of being the proverbial spoiled child that demands and takes, and grow into a relationship where we become lovers of Earth and start to take care of her.

Back to a time when we saw ourselves in Nature, and Nature in ourselves.

To me, being peaceful and connected is a natural state. It’s like a bed at a party that’s covered in 7000 coats. The bed is there you just can’t see it…but once you start to put the coats away, the bed emerges. Our society likes to coat us with so many layers that our deepest parts, the aspects that know how to be peaceful, connected, and whole can’t be felt or seen…some of us simply have a vague feeling that there’s something under all that.

Nature has a voice, there are things to communicate – they just aren’t articulated in English, Spanish, French, Russian. Nature uses the same language that our bodies use.

When we stop hearing Nature, we stop hearing our bodies. We can hear Nature through our bodies, and our bodies through Nature.

So our practice is about coming home to our body, our being, our Nature…home to Earth.

I believe many of us come to Yoga searching or longing for something. At first it may be connection with body, mind, emotion, self…a calming arises and then a bridge emerges and we begin to see others through this…and then life.

We can’t teach the experience of Yoga, but we can help others to understand and gain skill in the yogic tools (asana, pranayama); kind of like a map, it helps point the way but the journey must be made by the individual.

Every practice is unique, we each will weave together different approaches and use a variety of tools in unique ways that will help us to dissolve and quiet the patterns of thinking and fluctuations of the mind…helping us to build the space that union requires to be remembered in.

There is a lot of Yoga that is about domination and force: force the body into these postures instead of taking the time to commune, understand, explore, communicate, with our bodies.

Just because we aren’t practicing with other humans doesn’t mean we are practicing alone…in fact this non-human centric practice is very healing.

To me our inner-Nature is the same “thing” as Nature.

I’m Natt Forrest – I know, a great last name for someone who loves Nature!

I’ve been “teaching” Yoga for over two decades…but you can’t teach someone an experience. I prefer to phrase it as facilitating space within to help people realize and remember the already existing deep connection to their bodies, this moment, and to Nature…something that is not lost, but is definitely buried and sometimes forgotten. Through reengaging with Nature we can remember our own inner-Nature.

When I first started out in an Official Yoga Practice I knew that my practice outside with Nature moved me in ways that an indoor practice just never did.

It was so much more work to feel connection in a studio.

I craved – I wanted to KNOW in my being what connection and union felt like…to live it, breathe it...

I spent YEARS digging through books, taking courses, reading, asking questions, trying to understand exactly what Yoga was (and wasn’t)...and what Nature had to do with Yoga. I even got my Ph.D in Applied EcoPsychology, writing two papers on the connection of Yoga and Nature, and a book on it.

It was when I was having my own personal direct experience under the full moon one night that I really understood.

It took me a long time to acknowledge Nature’s role in my practice and even longer to get the clarity of what to do about it.

But when I did find that understanding, those words and that experience, it changed my practice significantly...and now I help other Yoga practitioners realize Nature's importance to their practice and experience of Yoga.

IS THIS WORK FOR YOU?

Those who love this work often:

Feel deeply impacted by what we humans are doing to Nature, and may experience eco-grief
Love Yoga
Love Nature
Love contemplating and feeling deeply so they may better understand
Looking for understanding and compassion, not necessarily the one big Truth
Want to directly experience connection, belonging and peace
Long for a simpler society that holds Land and Nature as intrinsically valuable
Love dyading
Are open to seeing and feeling things in a new way (and in fact, love that)

EcoYogaTherapy(tm) arose organically when the parallels between Yoga and Applied EcoPsychology became apparent to me. I was helping yoga practitioners understand and language their eco-psychology, and in doing so, we found that their practices deepened and rooted in a way that was delightfully unexpected.

What arose was a deeper sense of connection, peace. What dissolved was a desire to overcome the body but rather to listen to the communications and whispers. The word used most often was a sense of relief and of coming HOME.

It's also a way forward for those of us who are heartbroken about what's happening to Nature. EcoYogaTherapy uses Yoga and Nature to heal the pain and disconnect to create a deeper sense of peace, place and connection.

We do this through contemplation, awareness, yogic techniques and applied eco-psychology activities…and by having the conversations that begin the healing of our perusal and societal, mental and emotional disconnect to Nature, Earth AND to ourselves.

EcoYogaTherapy(tm) arose out of years of helping yoga students understand Nature's language, working through the distrustful stories about our senses being something to “turn off” and how forcing our bodies is somehow “spiritual”.

EcoYogaTherapy(tm) is a calling back, a remembering of what it's like to listen to the subtler in-the-moment communication that Nature and our inner-Nature are expressing.

It's a honouring of our innate connection to Earth, ourselves as part of Nature, and our own internal spaces.

EcoYogaTherapy(tm) is a series of online (individual or group) courses that helps Yoga practitioners have an “in the bones”, deep in the body experience of Oneness and belonging.