It’s been 5 years since I first met and interviewed Anna Ashby for the Yogamatters weblog on the triyoga studio in Camden. It’s superb how a lot our lives – and certainly the world – have modified since then! In Dialog: With Anna Ashby (LINK – https://weblog.yogamatters.com/anna-ashby/) offered Anna as Dancer, Yogi, Instructor, Human and Voice and left me desirous to know extra –
“We have to speak to Anna once more. We have to go deeper. You get the sensation there may be a lot extra to find about Anna Ashby. This superb lady lives and breathes her yoga in a strikingly genuine means. There’s a captivating integrity about her. She’s on a lifelong journey – an trustworthy, actual life, soul-searching journey. And we’d like to know extra.”
I did get the chance to meet up with her once more the next yr, however it’s a nice pleasure now to have been invited 5 years on to interview Anna once more about the place she is now on her lifelong journey, together with her new e-book scheduled for launch in March 2022 and the brand new chapter of her life that she is now embarking upon.
We picked up effortlessly the place we left off with the continued relationship between yoga and dance in Anna’s follow. Although the bodily aspect has been such a powerful strand from Anna’s dance background, yoga has all the time been excess of merely a bodily follow, as she explains, “For me, the yoga follow has all the time been a method to show inwards and really feel and join and search to know being alive, who and what I’m. I consider myself as a dancer beneath all of it by way of the power of who I’m. The yoga is the investigation. I really feel like I’m now coming again spherical full circle and my motion sample in postural follow has grow to be far more fluid, a fluidity that comes from deeply feeling what’s happening inside and expression that comes from a spot of fullness.”
Now Anna has entered her 50s and as she says, “That’s an enormous time of change for ladies”. Not least of all, the physique itself modifications over time. She finds herself at a crossroads, the place she needs to reside in a means that’s aligned together with her values at this stage of life. And so sure, in a means, her yoga follow has modified and but essentially it has not – “Yoga has, and all the time might be an investigation into who and what I’m – extra of an enquiry than a certainty.”
After I ask Anna to touch upon what else is occurring on the market within the yoga world, she seems a bit of bewildered. There’s a mode of yoga on the market that she admits she doesn’t actually get, that’s loud and fast-paced and social media oriented with loopy poses. That is alien to the expertise of stillness and silence and area that she values and all of it feels an excessive amount of like leisure. Is that this yoga? “ I’m not saying it’s incorrect”, she replies, “It’s simply not for me. Perhaps for some, that is the way in which in to a deeper understanding.”
Coming from a disciplined background of studying postural follow via the teachings of the nice Indian academics like BKS Iyengar and drawing from their custom, which fits her means of studying, Anna observes with some unhappiness that there seems to be an actual lack of examine and immersion within the historical past of yoga and its custom that then offers the trainer a basis to innovate. Her deep want is “to see extra of the respect for the custom in order that we innovate from a foundation of understanding and information and respect.”
It’s this ardour for examine and understanding that Anna takes into her trainer coaching at triyoga, each the Basis and Superior Programmes, as she elaborates, “You possibly can’t simply say one thing that has no foundation in analysis or authority of supply. So from the very starting of all of the trainings, we attempt to encourage folks to suppose and query, planting seeds of inviting folks to suppose for themselves, examine, analysis, examine, discover, really feel for themselves. That may be a massive shift that’s occurring.” There’s additionally a shift in the way in which a trainer interacts with their college students, shifting away from the 20th century vertical means of the guru/disciple relationship to a extra horizontal relationship within the 21st century, the place the alternate of information is 2 means and the trainer can not say I do know greater than you. That is Anna’s method to educating: “Each one that comes into a category is a valued member of the human race who holds information of the reality which is the educating. Each being is an expression of divinity.”
Anna’s additionally embraced a extra somatic consciousness of yoga, which she describes because the anatomical facet of yoga that the West has contributed to the custom and follow. Working inside one’s personal expertise and felt sense, alignment may be seen as shifting right into a state of coherence. This leads our dialog onto restorative yoga, the topic of her new e-book Restorative Yoga: A Information for Yoga Lecturers and Trainees to be launched in March 2022.
In February 2020, simply earlier than any of us realised the devastating impression the pandemic would have, Anna Ashby awakened one morning and there was this very sturdy feeling of ‘Write a e-book on restorative yoga’ – “I don’t have these sort of issues occur usually. It was simply such a powerful impulse.” After which lockdown occurred and he or she all of a sudden had the time to put in writing it, plus she had the necessity for a depth of restorative follow herself on account of her excessive nervousness concerning the scenario. On high of that, she discovered herself caring for her associate who received lengthy COVID. She was actually residing each phrase of this e-book as she wrote it.
Proper from the beginning, Anna was clear in her goal to put in writing a e-book on restorative yoga targeted on academics who don’t actually know what restorative yoga is. She factors out to me how restorative and Yin yoga are very completely different practices, from completely different branches of the yoga tree, regardless of being usually conflated. Utilizing props is a particular attribute of restorative yoga that Anna traces again to Mr Iyengar, because it circles again round and connects with the custom.
Restorative yoga slows issues proper down. Anna finds that tremendously thrilling. You possibly can see it in her eyes. Creating the area to recognise once we are out of stability and doing what we have to do to revive that stability creates the situations for deep enquiry into the character of self being. That is an alchemical course of like no different, a needed a part of human being. It’s an incredible solution to empower folks to self-practise and perceive how the nervous system works. There’s a self-discipline concerned too, the self-discipline that’s tapping into the wellspring of deep investigation and studying, assimilation and illumination, because the nervous system is downshifting and tapping into essence.
When Anna strikes on to explaining how restorative yoga is primarily designed for nervous system well being, I ask “How essential is it to know the science of the nervous system in practising restorative yoga?” science will not be my factor. Anna’s reply reassures me – That is rising science, ever unfolding. You don’t must be an professional. However it’s one thing everybody needs to be taught – nervous system 101. Everyone seems to be completely different and responds to emphasize in several methods. Merely perceive the fundamentals and apply that by way of subjective expertise.”
After which, proper there, she’s main me via a easy alignment, adjusting up via the bottom of the cranium begins to create area – “You possibly can really feel instantly the distinction – do it now….really feel the distinction of the tone of that….”. She’s proper. I can.
For Anna, it actually may be very easy – “There are postures that convey you again into the now, and also you breathe. That’s it. Typically that’s all it takes to reset, come again to a grounded and centred state with a view to then have the ability to go forth and be what it’s essential to be in your world.”
That is what’s wanted on the planet proper now with the depth of the occasions we’re residing in. I’ve a sense that Anna’s e-book goes to grow to be a useful handbook for yoga academics of numerous faculties and traditions as we navigate this ever-changing world.
As Anna seems in the direction of the longer term, she is aware of that the pandemic triggered a shift in the way in which yoga is taught, as the main target is not on a yoga studio and academics discover on-line platforms for his or her lessons. Though Anna recognises that this has been onerous for a lot of yoga academics and studio homeowners, she additionally finds it an thrilling time, saying “We’re on the cusp of seeing one thing new rising. We’re seeing the collapse of the way in which issues have been, we’re within the chaos and we is likely to be in that for a short time after which there’s an emergence of a brand new construction, a brand new order coming that’s but to be identified.”
Actually on a private degree, that is undoubtedly true for Anna Ashby. After 15 years of residing a really complicated and chaotic lifetime of toing and froing between Leicestershire and London, Anna is pulling again from weekly educating in London to create more room in her life and extra headspace to really feel what must be subsequent. She sums it up like this: “I don’t need to fill issues up an excessive amount of. I need to step again and have a look at new potentialities. I really feel very artistic and need to faucet into that creativity.”
The excellent news for all of us is that Anna might be educating the final Yogamatters On-line Group Class of the yr on Tuesday, twenty first December together with her scholar, good friend, and mannequin for her e-book Yvonne O’Garro. The connection between them is robust and Anna describes Yvonne as “very clear and calm, probably the most optimistic individual I’ve ever met. I’m very honoured that she requested me.”
I’ll be there. Simply by speaking with Anna Ashby, she’s impressed me to discover restorative yoga in additional depth for myself. I can’t wait to learn her e-book!
