Vegan skin care products are becoming increasingly popular around the world and in South Africa, as consumers are becoming aware that what goes on the body is as important as what goes into it. Vegan products contain no animal products and are not tested on animals, so are cruelty-free as well.  However, even if you are not particularly concerned about the use of animal products such as beeswax, lanolin, or milk, it is worth knowing that vegan products will also be organic, or free of chemical additives and containing only pesticide-free plant materials

Even if we are not strictly vegan, many of us are conscientious about our diet and spend time reading labels in the supermarket to check for additives, preservatives, and other chemical ingredients. But, are we also doing this with our cosmetic and skin care products? “More and more people are and should be,” says Kate Townshend, owner and founder of Harmless House, an online shop for premium vegan, organic, natural and cruelty-free products.  This is because the substances we put on our bodies, hair, and teeth (products like body lotion, shampoo, and toothpaste), can and do get absorbed through our skin and into our bloodstream. Research is now showing that many of the chemicals in our mainstream skincare and body products can cause dangerous hormone imbalances and, in the long run, can increase the likelihood of cancer. Add this grim fact to the reality of animal testing, and many of the “old faithfuls” we have been buying for years start to look unappealing and potentially dangerous. Time for a re-think, we think!

Dangers of Parabens and Other Chemicals
One of the most common cosmetic ingredients is parabens, an ingredient which has come into the spotlight in the last few years, as research reveals its dangers. Parabens are preservatives used to extend the shelf life of products by prohibiting the growth of mold and bacteria. They fall under many names, but the most common ones are: Methylparaben, Butylparaben, Propylparaben, Ethylparaben and Isobutylparaben. Approximately 75 to 90% of products use parabens.

“But it’s only going on your skin- right? It’s not like we are eating it!” Wrong. The chemicals in the food we eat are filtered through our kidneys and liver, and most end of being excreted from the body. Substances applied to the skin, however, are absorbed straight into the blood stream: this is how and why nicotine patches and birth control/hormone therapy patches work. Chemicals from the daily products we happily rub all over our skin are often deposited and stored in fat around the body. In the case of parabens, research is suggesting that these particular chemicals often accumulate in breast tissue, and are less likely to be flushed from our system. Parabens mimic oestrogen, which is one of the factors in the development of breast cancer. Research is starting to show a frightening link between cancer and the products we use. Recent research published in the Journal of Applied Toxicology in January 2012 found parabens present in 99% of breast cancer tissues tested. In addition, oestrogen mimickers cause our body to produce less of its own natural hormones, which can also lead to fertility problems for both men and women, premature puberty in young girls (early menstruation is linked to a higher chance of breast cancer in later life), and possibly premature menopause. In men, the excess oestrogen can cause abnormally large breasts.

Townshend says, “The reason these ingredients feature in almost all our cosmetic products is that the cosmetic industry is among the least regulated. So many synthetic ingredients are still used in products today because they are the cheapest available option and manufacturers are more concerned with their bottom line than they are with the consumers’ safety.”

Anti-Cruelty Products
In addition to protecting ourselves from harmful chemicals, we should also be aware of how some companies do animal testing with their products. Beauty Without Cruelty (www.bwcsa.co.za) is an animal rights organisation whose primary objective is to educate and inform about the exploitation and abuse of animals. They provide information on animal testing for cosmetics, and advice on what to buy and what not to.  They also have their own cosmetics range.

What Can We do?
A bit of knowledge can go a long way, and almost everything you need to know is on the back of the bottle, including ingredients and certifications. Along with learning what to avoid and watch out for, also learn which ingredients are good. Avoiding parabens is a good first step, but there are many other ingredients to look out for too. A product that says it is “natural” means very little actually, and holds no weight legally.  An organic certification is an excellent way to know that your product contains not only natural ingredients, but organic ingredients too. Anti cruelty certifications, like the one offered by Choose Cruelty Free, will also ensure that animals were not harmed when developing the product.

Some recommended vegan, natural, certified organic and cruelty-free products:

Sanctum Body Balm provides deeply penetrating moisture, which makes it ideal for winter. The scent is subtle and comforting

Eco-Dent Cinnamon Tooth Powder is a natural alternative to conventional toothpastes, which can contain harmful synthetic ingredients.

BWC Creamy Eye Makeup Remover contains gentle organic herbal extracts and rich emollients to remove all types of makeup without irritation.

These products are all available from www.harmlesshouse.co.za

On this meditative compact disc, Dr. Virtue, a clairvoyant and doctor of Psychology who works with the angelic and elemental realms, guides you through spirit release and angelic healing therapy. This clears your energy chakra centres and activates your inborn healing and psychic power. The CD starts with a morning meditation designed to begin your day with a bright, positive energy frequency and surround you with healing light.  The relaxing evening meditation that follows clears away energy that you may have absorbed during the day, and invites angels to enter your dreams to deliver divine messages.

The 7 chakras or energy centres of the human body and personality are familiar to anyone working with healing or spiritual awareness. But this paradigm of how our consciousness evolves, is essentially incomplete. It is the universal heart of the 8th chakra that can offer us the missing key to remembering who we truly are, and to allow us to become the conscious embodiment of the very evolution of the universe.

Scientist, healer, and mystic Jude Currivan, Ph.D., reveals a revolutionary new perception of the cosmos, reconciling leading-edge science with spirit and the perennial wisdom of all ages into a universal model of consciousness. She also explains how the energies of the 8th chakra offer us a path to spiritual mastery.

This groundbreaking work is a practical and empowering guide to our personal and collective spiritual wholeness and shows us how we can:

• Understand and integrate the principles of cosmic consciousness
• Reconcile science and spirit to show not only how the physical world is as it is, but why
• Directly access and embody newly available cosmic energies and higher levels of transpersonal awareness
• Manifest our soul purpose on earth

This beautiful and inspirational guidebook from Glennie Kindred teaches us how to work with the natural cycles of the year. Comprehensive and accessible, it is an invaluable source of information for anyone wanting to learn more about tree lore, Celtic festivals, the five elements, moon energies or simply how to make a deeper connection with the earth. Our relationship to the earth has changed. We have become more aware of how our actions can affect the balance of nature. “Earth Wisdom” is a potent reminder to appreciate the natural vitality, unity and intelligence of all life. It includes imaginative ways to experience the seasonal cycles and ways to heal and develop our relationship with the earth, the trees and the plants through practical and heart-centred interaction. This book inspires us to restore our own connections to the earth, encouraging us to follow our own personal spirituality and intuitive wisdom. In so doing, it increases our potential for creating positive change in our lives and in the world.

In this incredible audio book, Sylvia Browne brings you a heart-felt meditation for each week of the year. Read by the author, and based on the tenets of her church, the Society of Novus Spiritus, these meditations will serve to inspire you, help you relax, and allow you to see the divine nature that exists within you at all times. As Sylvia says, “The possibilities and the benefits of meditation are limitless, so relax and enjoy!”

These students, however, are supported by a special hammock or “sling” hanging from the ceiling, made of tissu, the super-strong nylon fabric used by Cirque du Soleil acrobats. Unnata Aerial Yoga, a new form of yoga developed by circus aerial acrobat Michelle Dortignac in the USA, has come to South Africa, and is being taught by Carly Bowden and Julie Swart, who travelled to New York to train and qualify under Dortignac. Unnata is the Sanskrit word for “elevated,” meaning both elevated in spirit and physically elevated.

Aerial Yoga is a fun, challenging, dynamic yoga practice incorporating traditional yogic philosophy and teachings, as well as aspects of Pilates, Aerial Arts and Strength Training. It is specifically designed to increase strength, mobility and flexibility. Aerial yoga classes consist of floor work and aerial exercises, stretches and relaxation. The class focuses around the low-lying soft fabric sling suspended from the ceiling to hip height.

Aerial Yoga makes use of the fabric sling to distribute the body’s weight between the floor and the sling, allowing a variety of strength-building, flexibility and core strength movements and poses. The sling assists in particular with challenging yoga poses, supporting the body’s weight during those poses, allowing the body to lengthen as it holds a pose. It allows the practitioner to focus on alignment, and uses gravity to deepen the stretch.

The sling supports the body during inverted poses, allowing the spine to lengthen as it bends, resulting in reduced spinal compression during the pose. This decompression of the spine and joints leaves the body feeling stretched and taller. The sling allows deep stretching without the impact that gravity can often inflict.

Recently, I attended an Aerial Yoga class taught by Julie Swart, and I now have a whole new respect for the idea of “elevated consciousness.” Luckily, her classes are designed for most levels of fitness, with modifications offered for different levels of strength and flexibility. Doing yoga poses hanging from or being supported by the cloth hammock allowed me to deepen the pose more than I could have on a mat and added a rigorous element of stretch and strengthening that surprised my muscles and gave me a new mind-body awareness. For example, in a few short steps, we were in Baddha Konasana (Butterfly Pose), but suspended in the air. The aerial version of this pose offered an intense stretch into the inner thigh muscles and a profound opening of the hips. In addition, the feet are pressed together so intensely from the binding of the fabric around the ankles that I’m certain there must be some pressure point benefits as well!Floating quietly in this pose with hands in prayer position, I perceived the “effortless effort” of yoga more profoundly than ever before.

We then continued with a series of Warrior poses, with the front leg elevated and supported by the hammock, forcing me to put all my weight onto my back legs, again intensifying the strengthening and stretch. Even Downward Dog has an aerial version, bending over the hammock, which is situated under the hips, giving you a sense of hanging and suspension, as well as the pushing and stretching of the leg and back muscles. The pose that intrigued me the most, however, was the Headstand. By hanging straight with your legs wrapped securely around the fabric sling, one can attain an advanced inverted pose without neck and spinal compression. Students appear like large bats hanging ever so quietly and peacefully in their day slumber! Gravity is reversed and a profound elongation and lengthening of the spine occurs, allowing spinal fluid to fill and lubricate the discs between vertebrae. Students feel taller, and possibly may be slightly taller after doing this pose.

I was able to do most of the poses in the class despite not being super-fit or a trained acrobat, for that matter.  However, I did have to really listen to my body, as some of the poses are very intense. Julie Swart is a former pole-dancing champion, so her strength and flexibility are quite impressive. She was very good about offering various levels of challenge when it came to certain poses. There are, however, some medical conditions that will restrict some yogis from doing the intense inversions of Aerial Yoga. These include high or low blood pressure, glaucoma, pregnancy, neck injuries, heart conditions, epilepsy or eye problems.

My favourite part of the class was the relaxation at the end, when we spread out our hammocks and laid quietly inside them, cocooned and cradled, just floating and rocking gently.

When asked about how Aerial Yoga is being received in South Africa, Carly Bowden reports that classes are fully booked on weekends, which so far is the only time they are offered. Her goal is to offer more classes in more areas, and to begin to train more teachers in Aerial Yoga. She and Julie Swart are running their first teachers training programme starting at the end of May. They do require, however, a yoga teachers training certificate in order to enroll. The training runs over 10 weekends.

It seems that Aerial Yoga is here to stay, and is growing.It is a great complement to one’s traditional yoga practice as it allows a yoga practitioner to attain some of the poses that are out or reach in a floor practice. There are very few of us who can hold a handstand for minutes at a time, even fewer who can achieve challenging poses such as the Scorpion, but with the aid of the hammock, these now become accessible to any level of fitness and flexibility. As founder, Michelle Dortignac, describes it, ”I always relate hammock work to a vitamin supplement: I wouldn’t want to live off it, but it really helps push you further, faster.” I was impressed with how Aerial Yoga aims to stay true to the traditional yogic principles and teachings of harmonising the right and left sides of the body and bringing the physical and energetic bodies into union with the mind. It is a great way to explore your yoga practice further.

By Debbie Banda

For more information on Aerial Yoga, contact Carly Bowden at carly@aerialyoga.co.za, or go to www.aerialyoga.co.za.

Tomato & Ravioli soup

Serves 4
Preparation 5 minutes
Cooking 20 minutes

Method
Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large saucepan on medium. Sauté 1 chopped onion, 1 sliced celery stalk and 2 crushed garlic cloves for 3 – 4 minutes until vegetables are tender. Stir in 700g bottle passata, 4 cups water and 2 teaspoons sugar. Bring to the boil on high. Reduce to low and simmer, covered, for 8 – 10 minutes. Add ravioli and simmer, uncovered, for 4 – 5 minutes until tender. Serve topped with basil leaves and cracked black pepper.

Tip: Tortellini can be used in place of ravioli. A few sliced black olives and a little shaved parmesan are a delicious addition too.

Scrumptiously superb soup

Serves 4
Preparation 30 minutes
Cooking 45 minutes

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 onions, finely chopped
1 leek, trimmed, washed, finely chopped
2 carrots, peeled, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, crushed
2 small red chillies, finely chopped
1 ½ litres vegetable stock
400g can crushed tomatoes
1 cup lentils, rinsed
2 tablespoons chopped marjoram
1 tablespoon chopped oregano
100g button mushrooms, finely chopped
toasted rye bread, to serve

1. Heat oil in a large saucepan on medium. Sauté onion, leek, carrots, celery and garlic for 8 – 10 minutes until softened.
2. Add chilli. Cook, stirring for 5 minutes. Blend in stock, tomatoes, lentils and herbs.
3. Bring mixture to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 25 – 30 minutes. Stir mushrooms through. Season to taste. Serve with bread.

Pea, mint & crème fraiche soup

Serves 4 – 6
Preparation 15 minutes
Cooking 30 minutes

Method
Melt 50g butter in a large saucepan on high. Saute 1 trimmed, washed leek and 2 garlic cloves for 4 – 5 minutes until softened. Add 2 peeled and chopped potatoes, 4 cups stock and 2 cups water. Bring to the boil. Reduce heat to medium and simmer, covered, for 20 minutes until potatoes are very tender. Stir in 2 cups frozen peas and 1/2 cup mint leaves. Simmer for a further 4 - 5 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in ½ cup crème fraiche. Using a hand blender or food processor, process until smooth. Season to taste. Reheat and serve topped with extra crème fraiche, rocket leaves and shaved parmesan. Accompany with lemon wedges. 

Text and Images acpsyndication.com

Camel Pose is a gentle backbend asana and is important as it prepares the body (and mind) for more difficult backbends. It is best to enter this pose from either Child pose or Hero pose. Camel Pose opens the chest, working deep into the Heart Chakra, stretches the shoulders and abdomen and provides increased flexibility to the lower back.

Camel Pose is further very stimulating for the nervous system. It improves flexibility of the neck and spine, relieves backache and helps degenerative spinal problems such as kyphoscoliotic deformities and cervical spondylosis. By stretching the abdominal organs, Camel Pose helps constipation, and it also stretches the throat and thyroid and parathyroid
glands.

Ustrasana – Step by Step

1. Come up onto your knees. Take padding under your knees if they are sensitive. Place your hands onto your hips and lift the torso from the base of the spine and pelvis so as to open the chest. Tuck your tailbone under and lengthen the thighs, lifting the collarbone higher and arch your back.

2. Reach your hands back one at a time to grasp your heels, slowly dropping back and reaching for the heels. Eventually, the palms can be placed on the soles of the feet. Roll the shoulders further back and lift the ribs, arching deep into the back while pressing the hips forward. Drop the head and neck back, without straining, and lift the chin. Stay in this pose anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute.

3. Tighten your knees and inhale deeply as you release the hands and bring the body gently back up to the knees, lifting the pelvis with the strength of the thigh and buttock muscles. Rest back down into either Child or Hero Pose.

Model Penny Anstey
Photograph Brett Rubin

Vegan for Life

Plant-based only diets may be daunting to many, but Vegan for Life is a mythbusting powerhouse of comprehensive nutritional advice for anyone seeking to embark upon a vegan diet, and an absolute essential go-to guide for anyone already on the path. With such conflicting advice regarding soy, raw foods, fat, calcium, fish oil and protein, the illuminated authors answer all the key questions and debunk the most persistent myths. With easy-to-use food charts, tasty meat substitutions, sample menus and extensive additional reading resources, it really is an essential read for both vegans and vegetarians alike. With interesting chapters on pregnancy and veganism, raising your vegan children and teens, benefits for controlling specific ailments and diseases, it is required reading for those wishing to maximise on their plant-based diets.

Complete Yoga had the wonderful opportunity to get up close and personal with Ana Forrest, the legend behind the phenomenon that is Forrest Yoga, while on her workshop and book signing tour in South Africa late last year.  More remarkable than the fierce, physical and breakthrough healing yoga practices that Ana trains and teaches, is the indomitable strength and spirit of her personal story and her passion for doing the work that she undoubtedly was born to do.

Here’s what Ana had to say…

CY: Welcome to South Africa… you have arrived at last! Why Africa Ana, why are you here and why now? What have your first impressions been so far?
A: My first impressions have been very mixed. I am feeling the land and, yes, it feels very responsive. I came here because Africa has been calling me and it’s only been this year that I was able to make it… but I am delighted to be here. I have always felt that there is work I can do here and so I have come to plant seeds in this place. When I am working where I know I can help, there is this magnetic pulling and I feel it here. There is something really important for me to learn here – I just don’t know what it is yet! All I know is I’m thrilled to be with the “wild ones”.

CY: You travel the world a lot. Is there Forrest Yoga in many countries in the world as a result?
A: Yes, I try to make it to as many countries and places as I am able to. My vision and spirit pledge is to “mend the hoop of the people around the world”. How I do this is by training teachers and giving them very specific techniques, so they too know how to pass the energy. They learn how to do hands-on healing, learn how to use the yoga poses to treat people’s injuries, how to help people with their sadness or their unbalanced emotions. Forrest yoga is not a mystery – if you do it, it works. These gifts that I teach I have honed from my soul. I want to keep giving the good medicine to people long after I am gone.

CY: You mentioned “mending the hoop of the people” in your book, Fierce Medicine too – what does it mean?
A: My spirit pledge is a very important part of my work. Not too long ago there was a Native American medicine man that was watching the people of his tribe destroying themselves. He said, “the hoop of the people has been broken”. We have come into insane times and “mending the hoop of the people” is about finding a new way of building hoops, where people can learn to live together in a good way without torturing, killing and harming each other.

CY: You have been practising yoga now for over 40 years. Do you feel the consciousness of the world has changed since then with respect to its approach to yoga?
A: Yes, I have been in this field close to 40 years and I’ve seen huge changes. There are some people who get so annoyed and say “oh yoga’s gone so commercial”, but I think it’s good – more people are hearing about yoga, people aren’t so scared of it. There is no conflict with religion anymore, which was the prevalent thing back in the day. It’s no conflict to commune with your body and find out what is true. We don’t need another religious organisation – we need the tools that will help us connect to our own spirit and to our own spirituality. Whether it’s from doing a sitting practice or a Native American practice or an African practice or going to a church, I don’t think it matters but if you’re doing these things and not making a connection, then there is something wrong. There is a sickness, a kind of spiritual bereftness and emptiness that so many of us have that leads us onto really terrible places. It’s like people are trying to fill a gaping hole where their spirit should be living. The first time a lot of people start thinking about their spirit is when they are dying and that’s a little late! We need to learn how to live with our spirit intact.

CY: Do you find a lot of people who come to yoga are searching for happiness?
A: I certainly came to yoga searching for something bigger than myself. Happiness wasn’t what I initially was going after. It just didn’t occur to me until, much later, someone asked me “what about joy?” and that began a whole different investigation for me into what I call pleasure, joy, contentment and delight. We need to “feed ourselves” that as part of our daily diet. That’s part of what I write about in Fierce Medicine - making yoga a part of the daily diet for the evolving soul.

CY: Why and how did you create Forrest Yoga?
A:  Part of the reason why I created Forrest yoga is that I found traditional yoga practices were not helping me, they did something and there was value, but it didn’t touch the deep level anguish and misery that I was living in. Part of the beauty of turning my life around was that I created a yoga system – a system for anyone who wants to go on a quest, who wants to evolve and gain their vision for life. We need to choose to learn from what we are given, especially the difficult stuff.

CY: How is Forrest Yoga distinguishable from other types of yoga?
A: I have brought in the different tools that have made a difference in my life: therapy and ceremony tools that demand direct enquiry. I teach people how to think differently and how to feel intelligently. People think that we get all our knowledge from information, but that’s just one small part of it. Just feeling with our hands and feet is sometimes all that is required. I teach people to learn how to feel as part of their wisdom. I then teach them to bring the thinking and the feeling together and to take the conflict out of it.

CY: How does Forrest Yoga address meditation?
A: In every class I teach pranayama and setting an intention for practice. When you sit quietly in pranayama, you are building life force. When I teach people to sit, I am teaching them to do something in the sitting. I don’t bore the mind into shutting up, it doesn’t feel right for me. Learning how to fascinate the mind while doing the pose or doing the breathing, that is compelling.

CY: How would you describe the taste of yoga to people?
A: Every day is a different taste! It depends on what happened that day, I guess. The magic is that each day I do yoga I turn it into a learning experience and I will inevitably feel better after my practice. It’s amazing that we can shift and play with our energies and from there, move into a space of self-mastery. Some days I can wake up in pain and have a real shitty feeling, like so many do, but I know that when I get on the mat I can change it and that’s an amazing thing. I can reset a more true, honest place for myself instead of just being grounded “in my shit”. I can clear the smog. And sometimes I have to have a little tantrum anyways – then I say to myself, “I’ve got a few minutes to wallow in this space” and then I move on and change it.

CY: What is your personal yoga routine like?
A: It depends on my travel. My routine when I am teaching workshops is that every class is two and a half hours and my teaching team and I gather and we do the first class together ourselves. We set our intention so that our energy is full and so that we have a lot to give. Teaching by myself would be a burnout and it’s really easy to sacrifice my own practice for my mission and it’s one of the greatest challenges I’ve had to overcome. As I’ve become more in love with what I am doing, the lesson has been not to become “a sacrificial whore” for it. A lot of our teaching in our culture tells us that to sacrifice is a good thing but I think that is insane… literally. There is powerful way to give without being sacrificial. Feed yourself first and feed yourself during. When I teach people, I also teach them how to grow their energy in the process of teaching and not to spill it all out. You need to practice in a way that feeds you.

CY: Many people are familiar with the difficulties of your past. Have you healed from and transcended it and does it still define you?
A: I don’t use the word “transcending” as it implies that you’ve buried pain and built a platform on top of it. Yes, I have healed a tremendous amount but whenever I am faced with new challenges, my old stuff inevitably crops up. The part of ourselves that holds fearfulness is the part that we need to embrace.

CY: Do you teach people a lot about facing their fears?
A: I do, but more than that, I like to say, “don’t just face your fear… hunt it, go after it!” There are times when I still have nightmares from my past. But I’m not haunted by it as it’s not a daily part of my life anymore. Instead of beating myself up over it with the mentality that I’m supposed to be healed from it, “that I’m a teacher of teachers, blah, blah, blah”, which is a lie, if it comes up, I do something about it. Sometimes I still feel the scaring in my guts from my years of bulimia. A backbend will help me heal the scaring. I know that I have to continue to do my practice very consistently if I want to stay healed. When I discovered that I had a thyroid problem, I also discovered that I wasn’t really speaking – not about what was so important to me, the things that delighted my spirit or about love. I was a drug addict, an alcoholic and my mother sold me into prostitution when I was 12 – I could somehow say that stuff, but yet I wasn’t speaking about my love. I assumed that my actions would say it. I didn’t speak to my students about how much I loved them and so that was part of my healing – speaking that which was most precious to me.

CY: Yoga is obviously your passion and life’s work. What do you still hope to accomplish?
A: Yoga is one of the main places where I learn truth. I created Forrest yoga for very specific reasons – to address the spiritual bereftness, the stress levels, the back problems, neck injuries, brain problems, spinal, hamstring, knee injuries and immune system challenges. I am not afraid to feel other peoples’ pain, or the earth’s pain. I can’t solve all the world’s problems but there is something here I can contribute to. It’s better to ask, “What part of the world problems can I contribute to?” It makes it more workable and less disheartening. I lived through torture and while I need to monitor the amount of pain I take in, if I can help just one person connect to their spirit, then I feel I’ve made a difference. Teaching yoga is what I am here to do and that means training people to evolve. We have the capacity to destroy both ourselves and others (we have been doing a good job so far) and yet we also have this ability to “quantum leap”. I have this inherent belief that we can transform and evolve. There is true beauty, mystery and magic in this world!

By Angela Myers

Ana Forrest’s book Fierce Medicine is available for purchase from Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/Fierce-Medicine-Breakthrough-Practices-Ignite/dp/0061864242/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334059415&sr=1-1