Interview with Beth Borowsky

About you..  Beth, training, mission etc….

Not sure where to start! It’s a 32 year journey of practicing yoga and 13 years of teaching both in the kids and adult space, leading teacher trainings, yoga retreats and growing a kids yoga business that takes yoga into preschoool across Sydney and trains teachers to bring yoga, deep breathing and mindfulness into their classrooms.

I guess the turning point in my adult yoga journey happened in 2013 when I attended a 2 hour workshop with Ana Forrest at the Yoga Journal Conference in New York City.

It was one of the most powerful turning points of my life. I was simultaneously in heaven and hell. My body was screaming as if it knew nothing about yoga. I thought I was strong, yet I was being moved into parts of my body that were yelling for help. That was the hell part. But, at the same time, I found myself captivated by Ana’s every word, as she guided me, with such precision and intelligence, into spaces in my body that I had never felt before. When an assistant came over to support me, it was like receiving an hour-long massage in 30 seconds. That was the heaven part.  After 24 years, with hundreds of teacher training hours behind me, I had finally found my teacher.

Forrest Yoga is yoga for the 21st Century body. With deep respect to ancient wisdom and traditions, we are not skinny Indian men working the fields; our people sit for hours on end, day in and day out and live with unhealthy tension and deeply rooted bad habits, not to mention excessive stress and trauma. The four pillars of Forrest Yoga: breath, strength, integrity and spirit, create the opportunity for people to live a life free from pain – emotional, physical and energetic - and to reconnect with their spirit, and ultimately their beauty.

Forrest yoga encourages you to create a curious breath, one that will fedd into every nook and cranny of your body and deep into your cell tissue. Unconscious breath merely keeps us alive. But curious and conscious breath welcomes us into places in our body that may be holding pain and trauma. As you bathe these spaces in deep breath, the inner landscape starts to shift, the stories from the past lose their power and the healing begins. This is the medicine of Forrest Yoga. People who resonate with Forrest Yoga are ready to use the physical elements of the practice as a gateway to exploring their emotional and energetic narratives. Forrest Yoga forces you to slow down, breathe deeply and to get really curious. As Ana Forrest says, "If you're bored you're not going deep enough!”

So yes, I was instantly hooked and on a mission to bring Ana Forrest and Forrest Yoga to Australia.

Which I did! To cut a long story short, Ana is now married to a former student of mine, Jose Calarco and together they travel the globe changing people's lives through Ceremony and Forrest Yoga. I have completed my Level 2 certification, one of very few in Australia, and assist both Ana and her Guardians in teacher trainings both in Australia and internationally.

And it continues to be my mission…not just Ana, but her Forrest Yoga Guardians who, I absolutely believe without a shadow of a doubt, are some of the most brilliant and highly skilled yoga teachers/practitioners and teacher trainers wandering the yoga planet today.

Having been a part of the yoga world for quite some time now, and watched how the seduction of social media has created a wave of yoga teachers and styles that are often more focused on looking good and becoming Instagram famous, than learning to teach with integrity and humility, I'm deeply grateful for the courage that Forrest Yoga has given me to stay honest with myself about how I want to teach and what is really important to me, both on and off the mat. And at 52, I’m also the strongest I’ve ever been and injury free. I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that this is because of Forrest Yoga intelligence.

Brian and Jambo - how will they blow my mind?

Well, in short imagine: brilliant, funny, generous, loving and skilled beyond belief in the areas of yoga, sequencing, bodywork, myo-fascial release, touch, breath … the list is endless. These guys travel the world creating magic with whoever they teach, touch and train. I wish that every yoga teacher and every yoga student - no matter what style of yoga they teach or practice - gifts themselves with an experience with these two Magik Makers. They encourage you to heal from the inside out and make you feel like everything you do and everything you are, is enough! December can’t come soon enough!