Name: Nora Gonzales
Profession: Healing therapies ( Reiki, Chakra healing, thetahealing)
Other interests: Alternative healing, cooking, travels, children, and education.
IG Handle: @tali_glezar
How long have you been practising yoga?
8 years now
What classes at Nilaya House do you attend?
Primarily Iyengar yoga
Why do you practice yoga? What benefits does it bring?
I started practising yoga just as a form of exercise and then it turned into a practice where I challenged myself. When experiencing this challenge, I would start feeling upset as there would be many yoga asanas that were impossible for me to reach (as I never did any sort of exercise in my life before yoga).
This was the moment where I learned how the ego can take control, if we allow it. Trying to understand this, I kept reading about yoga and pushed my abilities to go beyond my mind’s limitations without allowing my ego to take control. I just wanted to learn more tools that would help me experience my practice to the fullest. I opened myself to experience different techniques, teachers and ways of practice. I did my first teacher’s training in 2015 just to deepen my yoga philosophy studies and then undertook an online teacher’s training in 2020.
What is your favourite posture and why?
Ustrasana (Camel Pose) is my favorite yoga asana. It’s a yoga pose pretty much accessible to everyone but still challenging as well. It opens our heart to the fullest, and with this expansion I have experienced on a couple of occasions, my feelings projecting through my body at their fullest.I have emotionally cried twice in this pose, getting in contact with emotions that were probably stuck somewhere inside me and feeling the liberation of them afterwards.
What’s your advice for people wanting to start yoga?
I would say that the teacher’s energy at the beginning is really important. As we go through different stages of life, some schoold of yoga or teachers may not feel as the right ones for us. If you try yoga for the first time and you don’t like it; try again and again until you find the teacher and the style that will resonate with you.
