Why we shouldn't be calling it "aerial yoga"

By Hannahsita Smyth, an aerial teacher at Trilogy Sanctuary

WHY would I say this, when I am a certified yoga and an aerial yoga teacher of 10 years in the community and a lover of both practices?

AERIAL has developed into something completely different to me that separates itself from YOGA.  

Let me explain.

By calling it AERIAL YOGA, you are using the fabric as a prop for YOGA. Fundamentally, using the fabric to deepen traditional yoga stretching, poses and postures.To give due credit, this is a beautiful flow and style all of its own. It is how most AERIAL YOGA classes are taught and instructed today, and in no way, is this wrong.

AERIAL is not a prop. It is a movement practice all on its own. AERIAL MOVEMENT is where we expand and explore.   Where flow is your goal.

The key factor about AERIAL is that once you are in the fabric, you are in motion, flowing in an open flight pattern. It is literally open space. That is WHY it should not be controlled by a grounded, structured practice. If you come to my classes, you will not be disappointed, because this is how I flow. AERIAL stands for MOTION IN FLIGHT.

In order to FLY, you must release, let go mentally, in order to let yourself find AERIAL movement gains.

Beyond learning new skills of position and posture, AERIAL teaches you to fly into a open space where you have to explore, becoming creative again, laugh and giggle, and ultimately expand into something new. AERIAL itself is therapeutic, healing and transforms you at a cellular level.

SO what should we call it ?

I say DON’T LABEL IT.  IT should be a practice so creative that your expression is the movement. FREE MOVEMENT TO BE YOU.

Want to practice aerial with Hannahsita? Find her class on our schedule 

Bryan Heil - Trilogy Sanctuary Yoga Teacher Highlight

Bryan is a Vinyasa Teacher at Trilogy Sanctuary, we asked him some questions so we can get to know him better:

What quote inspires your life and practice?

The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours - it is an amazing journey - and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins.

-Bob Moawad

Apart from yoga, what are some of your passions?

I am a huge music enthusiast, love playing guitar, taking photographs, writing poetry, and attending local art and music shows.

Who inspires you and why?

I find inspiration in so many different forms. People inspire me. Nature inspires me. Sounds inspired. They all inspire me because they are always changing.

What words do you have to offer for new yogis?

Every time you walk onto a yoga mat, let your practice space be a canvas to express your life. Your entire body is the brush, and your imagination the colors. The picture you paint within that space is like no other. Strive to create a different work of art every time. Do not be afraid to go outside the lines.

What is your biggest dream or aspiration?

To be a songwriter.

Bryan's Yoga Bio

Bryan fell in love with yoga in 2013 and has since fully committed to developing his practice. For him it is the ultimate form of individual expression. A journey inwards where physical awareness and spiritual enlightenment come together. Complete balance achieved through patience, discipline, focused breathing, concentration, and mindful movement. “The most important part of my practice is not the postures, but the intention I approach each one with. I want to give back to my students what my instructors have given to me; a safe environment to challenge themselves and to take their practice to the edge.

Practice with Bryan Friday mornings at 7am in our Infrared studio

See more of Trilogy Sanctuary's teachers HERE

Benefits of Inversion Therapy

What Is Inversion Therapy?

Inversion is the pose in which you hold your heart higher than your head. Inversion therapy helps your body to recover from the compressive effects of gravity and daily activities. Scientifically, it has been proven to be quite advantageous for cardiovascular, lymphatic, endocrine and nervous systems. In fact, inversion is a perfect exercise for the body as a whole.

What Are The Health Benefits of Inversion Therapy?

Inversions are so effective that the US Army is planning to include it in its physical training. You can achieve a lot of benefits by inverting 3-5 mins every day. One of the most shocking facts about inversion is that bats and sloths are the only creatures on earth who will never suffer from osteoarthritis. This is because inversion is in their natural habitat. So, if you have a family history of osteoarthritis, then make sure you start inverting from today.

Relieves Spinal Pain

One of the basic advantages of inversions is that it relieves spinal pain to a great extent. It enables a person to have a better posture. Since the spinal cord is the most important part of the body, which affects how the person sits and stands; inversion can help improve the outlook of a person.

Improves Blood Circulation

Inversions increase the blood flow to the brain, giving it more oxygen and nutrients and making the brain function faster and better. This improves concentration, memory, observation and boosts clear thinking. Standing inverted actually makes the brain work better. According to Dr. Robert Martin, the author of ‘The Gravity Guiding System, Turning the Aging Process Upside Down,’ the brain operates 14% more accurately when the brain is operating on an inverted, inclined plane. Inversion also helps move the stagnant blood in the body because you are standing against gravity when you are inverting. It forces the blood to move which would not do so standing in a straight position.

Controlling Indigestion

Inversions are the yogic approach to control indigestion. Indigestion, which may cause anxiety and skin disorders, is considerably improved when one practices inversions.

Decreasing Mood Swings

Standing upside down can actually make you feel better! When blood circulation gets fine, this releases neurotransmitters, balances the hormones which make a person feel light hearted and more happy than usual. So, if you are really sad, try doing inversions! It might make you feel a lot better! This is said to control depression, premenstrual symptoms and mood swings.

Enhancing Immunity

Inversions increase the ability of a person’s body to fight with diseases. Since it cleans the blood, an overall healthy feeling is maintained.

Countering Insomnia

Inversions also help to decrease insomnia. When your mind is all relaxed and in high spirits because of the healthy blood flow, a person will be able to sleep better. When inverting, muscle tension decreases by 35%. This is one of the reasons why a person can sleep better after inverting.

Look Beautiful and Feel Beautiful

This is an amazing benefit of inversions. Inversions can actually make you beautiful. When a person’s posture is improved through inversion, it shows grace, poise and sophistication. Good circulation will automatically bring brightness to the skin making the person look younger than he/she originally is. Acne and other skin conditions will also tend to decrease with performing inversions.

Flexibility

Inversion makes the body flexible and adaptable to changes. A flexible body remains healthy and strong even when it reaches old age.

Maintaining Proper Posture

For athletes or workers who perform lots of physical work, inversion is the best to keep the spine in proper posture. It will also reduce tardiness and will gain back your strength after a workout. Inversion therapy works wonders for the lower back pain caused by this physical work. It also helps reduce muscle pain.

Stress Therapy

Inversion is an amazing therapy to counter stress. When a person is under a lot of stress, his body tends to revolt by back pains, headaches and joint muscle pains. Physiotherapist LJ Nosse did a study titled ‘Inverted Spinal Traction’ published in Arch Phys. Medical Rehab 59: 367-370, Aug 78. The study confirmed that inverting decreased muscle tension by over 35% within the first 10 sec! When muscle pain is gone, stress reduces. As a result, the person feels lighter and happier, ready to face the challenges in life. Inversions carry immense benefits. Even when you do it the first time, the psychological feeling of turning your body against its natural position will be enough to lift you up both physically and mentally.

Maintaining Height

A lot of people will shrink over time as their old age approaches. Inversion can help stop that and retain your original height.

Strengthening Bones

Inversion helps to make ligaments strong which are one of the basic elements of your bones. Ligaments hold your bones together. When they’re strong, you will often be saved from a bone breaking accident.

Join us at Trilogy Sanctuary for our Aerial Yoga classes - plenty of opportunities to practice your inversion therapy!!! 

15 Easy ways to be more Environmentally Friendly

What is Being Environmentally Friendly?

There are a surprising amount of people, businesses and communities that would like to do more to conserve and protect our natural resources, but they don’t know where to begin with becoming more environmentally friendly.Understanding what makes each of these aspects of our world part of the process of changing and conserving our resources; and learning how to get started making a difference is the first thing you have to learn.

“Environmentally friendly, environment-friendly, eco-friendly, nature-friendly, and green are marketing claims referring to goods and services, laws, guidelines and policies that inflict reduced, minimal, or no harm at all, upon ecosystems or the environment.”

Being environmentally friendly simply means having a lifestyle that are better for the environment. Its all about taking small steps towards mother earth so as to make this planet a better place for our communities and generations to come.A good way would be to start with conserving water, driving less and walking more, consuming less energy, buying recycled products, eating locally grown vegetables, joining environmental groups to combat air pollution, creating less waste, planting more trees and many more.

Why it’s Important to Become Environmentally Friendly

You can’t just point towards one business or practice and blame them for all of our environmental woes, everything fits together like a puzzle. The more that we all do our part – the faster we will create an entire ecology of living that promotes sustainability. The first step is to begin to understand the basics of what each part of life can do to become more environmentally friendly. The next step is to begin to learn to make different choices on a personal level that start to change your awareness, and consumption of resources. The changes are surprisingly easy to make, there are more ways than you can imagine to begin to practice conservation.

15 Easy Ways to Become More Environmentally Friendly

Learning to be more environmentally friendly is easier than you think. You don’t have to jump in by changing everything, start small to make the changes more sustainable and a part of your normal life. Here are 5 ways you can begin to become more environmentally friendly.

1. Become More Aware of Resources: Start by living with a greater awareness of the resources that you use in your daily life. Pay attention to how you choose to heat, to travel, to use water and use products that were made by manufacturing practices. Awareness is what will allow you to then begin to make environmentally friendly choices.

2. Practice Conservation: With your new awareness of how natural resources are used in your life start to practice conservation. This can be as simple as turning off the lights as you leave a room and as complex as making different choices when it comes to building your home. Learn here more about 15 green home building techniques.

3. Plant Trees: Trees are necessary for us to survive. They give oxygen, fruits, clean the air, provide shelter to wildlife, prevent soil erosion. A shady landscape around your home can help you to reduce consumption of energy and keep your home cool even during summers. Plant small trees around your home, don’t cut them unless it’s necessary, work with local environmental groups to plant more trees and educate others about the positive aspects of it.

4. Conserve Water: Water needs to be conserved as lot of energy is required to pump water from rivers or lakes into your home. Conserving water reduces the amount of energy that is needed to filter it. Few ways to conserve water are – take short showers, fix leaking pipes, keep the running tap close while you brush your teeth, recycle water in your home, use water saving appliances, collect rainwater in a rain barrel to water your lawn.

5. Change Your Travel Habits: Driving and flying are two areas where you can make a real impact with environmentally friendly practices. Choose fuel efficient travel options, travel less and try to pick more direct routes to save on fuel. If your office is near your home, try to ride a bicycle instead of a car.

6. Use Less Fossil Fuel Based Products: Find out what products and consumables you use that are made using fossil fuel based products and processes and use them less or replace them in your life.

7. Buy Locally Grown Products: An easy way to reduce your carbon footprint is to buy locally grown products. When you shop locally instead of buying products that were shipped from far away, you are actually supporting local dairies and farms. Apart from this, you can follow organic farming practices and can grow food on your own backyard and can sell surplus to your friends.

8. Reduce Use of Harmful Chemicals: Hazardous chemicals like paint, oil, ammonia and other chemical solutions when disposed openly, can cause pollution in the air and water as these chemicals can seep into the groundwater.The polluted air and water can have serious consequences on human health.They should be disposed off to a toxic waste site for safe disposal.

9. Composting: Composting is an easy process that takes remains of plants and kitchen waste and converts it into rich nutrient food for your plants that helps them grow. It reduces the amount of garbage that goes to the landfillswhich pollutes the air. This way it proves safe for the environment.

10. 3 R’s of Waste Hierarchy: The 3 R’s (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) waste hierarchy is the order of priority of actions to be taken to reduce the amount of waste generated and to improve overall waste management processes and programs. Reduce simply means reducing what is produced and what is consumed. Reuse items for a different purpose instead of sending them to landfills.To recycle something means that it will be transformed again into a raw material that can be shaped into a new item.

11. Bur Recycled Products: When you go out for shopping, try to buy products from market that are made up of recycled materials with minimal packaging i.e. the product should be environment friendly. Look into manufacturing processes to check if it was made from recycled materials or the use of plastics or chemicals was involved in its production.

12. Join Environment Groups: You may find different environmental groups in your city with whom you can join hands to protect mother earth and make the environment clean. A quick Google search can help you in finding such groups.You can also pull your friends and relatives and ask them for a helping hand.

13. Stop Littering: One of the common sight that we see everyday on streets is seeing people littering on roads. One of the ways to keep the environment and surrounding clean around you is to stop people from littering on roads. Instead, educate them to put trash and garbage in dustbins. The pile of garbage on road hampers the beauty of city and also pollutes the air.

14. Protect Wildlife: Human activity is leading to extinction of endangered species and habitats. Protect places like beaches and forests that are habitats for animals. Join hands with local forest department to protect animal habitat.

15. Educate Others: Educate others about the importance of living an environmentally friendly life. The more people share an awareness of the importance of the environment, the more we can do together to conserve it.

SEE ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE

Trilogy's Moon Room Evolution

The moon is a feminine symbol, universally representing the rhythm of time as it embodies the cycle. The phases of the moon symbolize immortality and eternity, enlightenment or the dark side of Nature herself. It might reflect inner knowledge, or the phases of man's condition on earth, since it controls the tides, the rains, the waters, and the seasons. It is the middle ground between the light of the sun and the darkness of night, and thus often represents the realm between the conscious and the unconscious. In astrology, the moon is a symbol of the soul, and in the horoscope it determines the subject's capacity for reflection and adaptation. It also provides analogy for the stages of human development: the new moon is infancy, the crescent is youth and adolescence, the full moon is maturity and pregnancy, and the waning moon represents the decline of life, sleep. 

Jason Silva's Existential Bummer

"Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever" 
-Ernest Becker

Tell us what you think! Take the survey: http://testtube.com/shotsofawe/survey More on HuffPost Good News: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/14/jason-silva-shots-of-awe-existential-bummer_n_4269849.html RYOT: http://www.ryot.org/video-jason-silvas-existential-bummer-video-will-turn-your-despair-into-inspiration/470433 Dazed Magazine: http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/17731/1/jason-silva Watch Jason speak more on Existential Bummer on CBS This Morning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wP6XsRt57k "Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever" -Ernest Becker.

The Purpose of Life is not to Transcend the body, but to Embody the Transcendent.