7 News Belize

What Is Yoga Dance?
posted (August 13, 2014)

Ashanti Garcia a 24 year old yoga instructor, is hoping to break barriers and bring something new to Belize with her 1st annual Airbender Yoga Dance Show. The show is scheduled for the end of August, and Ashanti is making a call to performers to join the Yoga Dance Show. Now, if you don't know what yoga dance is – neither did we(!) and so we sent out intern Robin Schaffer to find out what it's all about.

Ashanti Garcia – Owner, Airbender Yoga

"We have this evolution of meditation which is called moving meditation and that is also slow but then you have other styles of yoga like ashtanga and vinyasa and this is constant movement going from one pose to the next with the breathe moving, moving, moving. So you choose which style suits you best and the you bring that to the table for performance."

All that seems impressive enough, but Ashanti has had 4 years of practice. How can a novice hope to cope? Well, she showed me some basic techniques and it really is much easier with a motivated instructor:

Ashanti Garcia

"I did it with a teacher she really gave me this specific guidance to merge and become one myself. And this is what inspires me, just the feeling that yoga gives and a lot of people forget about the feeling. They think it's all about the poses but that is just at a really superficial level, so what inspires me is the fact that yoga is an art, you do have traditional poses but then you can come up with your own variation that suites you and make it more unique. For example I've choreographed an interesting routine with the kids which merges dance with ballet with hoola-hoops because they have their natural talent in hoola-hooping. So you can see ballet being merged with yoga, you can see contemporary dance merged with yoga and I think as as you follow you own inspiration then you can easily merge it."

Dancers who sign up will receive free training, but as Ashanti points out, it is more than just a physical exercise, it is the complete package:

"In terms of mental benefits, you can learn to concentrate, you can learn to calm yourself and in terms of spiritual benefits you get to connect with that deeper aspect of yourself which you usually can't find that stuff in the gym, so yoga is a complete package and that's why you should get involved."

If you would like to join the show Ashanti can be reached at 6204239.

Dancers who agree to join will be given free lessons from Ashanti Garcia and Joseph Stamp Romero.

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