Phanganist works out with Vera, staying strong and healthy for the mind and body

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Phanganist's friend Vera has been dancing for nearly ten years now. You can read all about her here in her main interview, (The lovely Vera, Tribal Fire Fan Dancer).

For the last seven years she has been teaching choreography, stretch, dance and yoga. Vera combines many skills that she has learnt through all those years of experience including elements of belly dance and tantric exercises.

Ever since we first met Vera we have felt her good energy and spirit so felt she was the perfect choice of teacher for an early evening workout and stretching.

Rada who is also a fire performer and Phaganist's Em Bry0 joined in with Vera for their first class.

The three girls headed down to the beach near Phanganist HQ at around 5pm, of course this is a lovely time of day, especially to do some kind of fitness, training or even relaxing as it is not so hot and you can end with a sunset if you are lucky.
It was a beautiful day already, not too hot with some clouds in the sky.

Now if you are going into one of Vera's lessons, don't expect your normal yoga class. This is one strong and hard working lady, it is all about power but anyone of any level of fitness can join in.

We chose Vera especially as she has a warm heart. She is very approachable and friendly and not intimidating as an instructor. Vera tells you exactly what to do but lets you go at your own pace.

Vera uses a combination of movements that really focus on your thighs, this helps to give you strong inner muscles and promotes the health and rejuvination of the body.

Rather than holding yoga poses, vera teaches you to stretch and use a kind of pulsing movement at first which helps relax your muscles before going into some more intense moves. This is very beneficial as you wouldn't want to do the rest of the training without warming up and loosening the muscles which will be used. The girls were then taught floor exercises as well as the upright ones they did at the begininng.

Some of these floor exercises, and other positions included yoga elements but all with a lot of movement, for example yoy would go from a cat pose and flow it into something else, repeating this routine many times.
Vera made sure that through all of this, Rada and Em were still keeping there hips and legs strong at every point.

After some intense exercises, where the girls got rather sweaty and sandy, Vera then takes you back to the begininng exercises but doing them even more intense as by now the areas of the body have warmed up.

Part of the workout is using elements from her belly dance experience as well, moving the hips in figures of eight, moving just the hips though which is harder than you think!

Vera is very good at paying attention to your individual needs, she knew that Em's needs were different to Rada's and she addressed them both with instructions together and directed at one at the appropriate time.

At the end of their session which latest over an hour and would of gone on for longer if Em didn't have an appointment to go to Fishermans for dinner. They all warmed down, as the sun was setting, breathed in the lush evening air and lifted their heads in the last stretch to a beautiful sunset sky.