After 7 years of practising Animal Flow

How it Started.

It must have been around 2014 while I was working at an all women’s club in Oakville for GoodfLife that I came across a video on YouTube that showed a very strange form of a workout.

At that time I greatly enjoyed exploring unconventional ways of working out for myself that could allow me to bring some golden nuggets to the conventional ways I used with my clients. And so it was in this manner that I started duplicating what I saw. 

I had so much fun and I thought I was really good at it. 

This is a video of me very excited about practising the movements I had learned from watching YouTube.

I could tell you that I cringe when I watch this, but in fact what I feel is an enormous amount of gratitude for this past version of myself who was naive enough to start learning by herself. Ultimately this is what led me to find a personal practise that has been not just a way to workout, but also a form of art, therapy and finding like minded individuals from all over the world! That’s right, I have friends from all over the world thanks to this discipline.

But 7 years is a long time…

Sometimes along the road, while I have continued to learn, improve my strength and flexibility, practised with some of the best from all over the world and added new movements to my inventory; sometimes I have forgotten what is that I personally like the most about Animal Flow and also how I like to practise it myself.

When you see a Flowist (this is what we call a person who is Certified in Animal Flow), if you pay close attention, you will see they excel at expressing a certain style characterized by a personal element such as: power, or speed, or super human flexibility, or style of way of flowing. 

One of the things that distinguishes me, as described by other practitioners is my ability to hold the eye on me, and make the movements reach out beyond me. 

Growing up I was a ballet dancer for 10 years and a choreographer as well. So I love to use Animal Flow as a form of self expression. What others are seeing is the artist and the dancer in me. 

And on this week’s homework:

This week on the Certified Instructors Private Facebook group, Master Instructor Alisha Smith gifted me with the chance to reconnect with how I like to flow.

The homework was to design a flow according to our degree of certification level, that would express the quality and movements that we most enjoy during the flow.

This is what I came up with:

Take Aways:

Here are some questions to spark your mind:

1. How do you like to move and why?
2. Do you have an activity you do that nurtures you?
3. What is the quality or fdeeling you get out of practising such activity? Strength, endurance, freedom, flow?