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Acro Yoga Workshop with Ananda Kula at Yoga Fest 2012

Last weekend I attended the 2nd Annual Yoga Fest at the Riverside Arts Market. What a BLAST! Last year, I participated with a huge crowd of yogi’s for a yoga practice that included 108 sun salutations. This year most of my energy and attention was focused on the acro-yoga workshop, which was being put on by Ananda Kula.

What I learned about Acro Yoga

Acro Yoga has 3 main elements of practice: Solar Acrobatic, Lunar Healing Arts, and Yogic.
The Solar portion is for building strength while performing inversions doing acrobatics with a partner and a spotter. This part requires an open mind to learning and trying different things, as well as a lot of trust between the base and flyer, and full attention from the spotter.

The Lunar portion is more therapeutic, as it includes inverted aerial massage and stretching with a partner. The base supports the flyer with their legs, and the flyer passively hangs and moves gracefully and carefully into stretches with the help of gravity to receive the maximum feeling of each pose.

The Yogic portion is the “glue” that solidifies the Solar and Lunar practices. This physical practice comes from your own individual strength, ability, breath, and confidence. Blend these 3 elements all together and you get a beautiful, fun, challenging, creative, and inspiring mix of yoga and workout that leave you feeling completely empowered and only wanting more. It also makes for incredible photos too!

I always enjoy attending Yoga Fest. There are tons of active, like-minded yogi friends who are positive, uplifting, happy, supportive and encouraging to one another, for the betterment of our health, self and individual practices. It is such a great feeling to be in the middle of people coming together from all sides of town, who have such different life stories and backgrounds, to share their talents with you, and make you feel included and welcome into the community, no matter if you’re new to yoga, or have been practicing different styles for years.

Categories: Exercise