Teacher Feature: Farah Naz Gokturk

What was your initial experience with yoga?

It was a time of immense disappointment and heartbreak when I came to yoga. I ached for an anchor in the plethora of feelings and emotions that I felt I could not escape. There was a yoga studio near my neighborhood I would visit from time to time. Over the few years prior to this period, I had gotten to know the owner – she knew me by name, and would have a warm smile for me on my visits. Having this small bit of a rapport made me feel seen at a time where the best word to describe my feeling in community was “invisible”. I couldn’t afford yoga classes on a regular basis, so I jumped on the opportunity when I found out the studio had a work-study program and a spot became available. Wanting to avoid a forty five minute subway commute to the next neighborhood over, I would walk twenty-five minutes instead. I still remember those walks and I walked a lot growing up in New York City. This walk in particular though, back and forth, felt like my own meditation, my own little pilgrimage. I would take class, and then clean three studio floors in an old Queens walk-up converted yoga studio. The experience was cathartic, and the class was only part of it. In classes, I felt I could give myself permission to really feel what I was feeling, and channel it in a way, through movement, through sound, through prayer, where those feelings could finally be set free. And that was just the beginning.

Teaching comes with an immense sense of responsibility, an inherent call to continue to learn and grow, and an ongoing practice in compassion and loving kindness. There is nothing like sharing space with other human beings, who are all experiencing, in one way or another, what it is like to be alive on the planet, moving and breathing together in an intentional, and heart-centered way.

What do you find most rewarding about teaching/sharing yoga?

Teaching and sharing yoga is an integral part of my personal yoga practice. Not everyone needs to teach and share yoga in order to practice yoga. After years of teaching yoga, it’s become a discipline, and in some ways has informed how I understand myself and the world around me. Just like parenthood for me was a huge, life-altering threshold that I crossed when my son came into the world, becoming a teacher was also another great crossing. It comes with an immense sense of responsibility, an inherent call to continue to learn and grow, and an ongoing practice in compassion and loving kindness. There is nothing like sharing space with other human beings, who are all experiencing, in one way or another, what it is like to be alive on the planet, moving and breathing together in an intentional, and heart-centered way.

Do you have a favorite yoga pose?

I have many favorite yoga poses. The one that I am most present to during the course of my day is tadasana.

Opportunities to Practice with Farah

Weekly Classes

Mindful Flow | Fridays, 8:30 – 9:45 am

Farah Naz has been teaching yoga since 2009. As a young child born and raised in a Turkish-Armenian immigrant family in New York City, her personal experience was deeply inspired and defined by exploring balance and the place “the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other, Doesn’t make any sense.” (Rumi). The city’s rhythm was a rich and omnipresent one. If untended, it could easily overshadow one’s own. She was eager to cultivate an ability to tap into her inner guidance system while meeting life’s changes, shifts, and turns with compassion, strength, sensitivity and grace. It was along this journey that she discovered yoga, a discipline and practice that provided the spirituality, creativity, movement, and philosophy for life-long study in action.

Her classes integrate elements of meditation, yoga asana, and dynamic movement with an additional focus exploring personal breath and rhythm patterns, self-massage, music, readings and poetry. Farah is passionate about her family & motherhood, nature, homemaking, urban homesteading, slow-living and environmental sustainability. She is a Registered Yoga Teacher (E-RYT-200, YACEP), Health Coach, and American Red Cross Water Safety Instructor & Lifeguard.

The post Teacher Feature: Farah Naz Gokturk appeared first on Asheville Yoga Center.