Tom Nowakowski
A graduate of the Poznań University of Physical Education, Faculty of Tourism and Recreation.
He’s spent the last 30 years studying and developing methods of natural health cultivation, promoting health education, and practicing Tai Chi and Primal Tao.
Originally born in Poland, at the age of 16 he began to practice the Korean martial art of Taekwondo. When in college, his interests slowly shifted towards what the Chinese refer to as the “soft martial arts,” such as Bagua, Xing Yi, and Tai Chi.
While studying in Poznan, Poland, he started practicing the Yang style of Tai Chi. In the following years, he had the privilege of studying Tai Chi with many representatives of a lineage of master Cheng Man-Ching.
Tom is a traveler and an experienced tour guide specializing in the Mojave and Sonoran desert areas.
Passionate about ultralight long-distance hiking and backpacking, he walked the Appalachian Trail (2200 miles) three times. On the west coast, he walked from Mexico to Canada the entire length of the Pacific Crest Trail, as well as John Muir Trail in the Sierras, Colorado Trail in the Rocky Mountains, Pyrenees, Bulgarian Balkans, Swiss Alps, treks in the Himalayas, different versions of the Camino de Compostella in Spain and many shorter hikes.
He studied yoga while living in India
In Nepal, he got initiated into Vipassana meditation.
In Hawaii, he worked at a cancer retreat center (Kokolulu Farm and Cancer Retreat) where qigong was one of the methods practiced by the center’s guests. It was there where he met Zhineng qigong master Liu Jianshe and as a result, he went to southern China where he studied in Zhineng Qigong Center on the Hainan island.
He organized a tai chi/qigong school in Southern California where he taught for six years.
He advocates a healthy, active but slow lifestyle that returns to Nature and Nature-inspired health practices.
Together with his wife, he teaches workshops and retreats, promoting the natural health cultivation approach (Primal Tao) that emphasizes the use of ancient knowledge as well as new scientific discoveries and the importance of practice and balance in all aspects of our lives.
Anastasia Nowakowska
Anastasia started her yoga practice in 2005 in the yoga center of Andrey Lappa, one of the most renowned yoga teachers in Ukraine, Russia, and other post-Soviet countries. After a few years of practicing universal and hatha yoga in Ukraine, she went to India to study this ancient discipline of mind mastering from the source. Since that time, Rishikesh, the small town famous around the globe as the world yoga capital, is her second home.
In Rishikesh, Anastasia studied with such masters as Surinder Singh (hatha yoga + Iyengar yoga), Usha Devi (senior Iyengar yoga teacher), Ashish Sharma (hatha yoga + Iyengar), Yogi Vishvaketu (Akhand Yoga, Kundalini, Sukshma Vyayama, and Hatha) and 105-year old yogi Swami Yogananda Ji (Himalayan yoga and Sukshma vyayama). Within years of studies with these outstanding Indian teachers, Anastasia has developed her own approach to yoga practice, focused on using correct alignment and attention to asana not just as an instrument of physical development, but as tools of deepening energetic practice and facilitating mental practices of yoga. Her experience and regular practice of Buddhist Vipassana meditation have even deepened her approach to viewing all physical techniques of yoga practice as tools of working with one’s mind, developing awareness, focus, strengthening attention and willpower, cultivating mind states that are conducive to a happy, content, and creative living.
In 2012 Anastasia founded Himalayan Yoga Academy, a yoga school in Rishikesh that gathered a team of prominent teachers around the goal of creating a comprehensive educational program for yoga teachers. In the school, Anastasia taught the theory of teaching yoga, yogic anatomy and philosophy, alignment master classes.
Her own health challenges (Lyme disease etc.) forced her to completely revolutionize her approach to health practices and caused a profound revision of the narratives that dominate the subject today. Many questions and self-experiments later, for the first time in her life, Anastasia began to experience a level of health she had never known before. The result of these investigations is a very broad and very individual approach, taking into account many aspects of our life, the denaturalization of our food, the modern lack of understanding of the value of animal food (especially for women), hormonal balance, and its disturbances, the need for intensive strength training and appropriate time for regeneration. All these elements are expressed in the practices of Primal Tao, which she and her husband promote.
