winter yoga
My yoga practice is grounded in my experiences with teachers inspired by Vanda Scaravellis explorations of yoga asanas…
Vanda was a student of Iyengar and Desikachar, yet she found her own way of approaching asana, when she practiced by herself. It was never her intention to found a new yoga style, as she believed practice was a continual discovery without the limitations of a premeditated structure or meaning.
Yoga in this way offers the challenge of un-doing, of freeing the body from habitual tension, so that the original intelligent inner connections can be discovered again.
I am fascinated by practicing with such freedom, yet deep concentration, a sense of humor, a lot of creativity in expressing what practice can reveal, and I love the importance of touch in helping students to re-fined their bodies. In Zoom times this had to be reinvented and altered, but luckily it does work too, in a slightly limited way….
A class, virtual or in a room together, is about exploring asanas by watching, trying them out, by feeling deep into the body guided by suggestions. It is about discovering the pull of gravity, and how the inner body responds to it. There is now need for stretching and pulling the body apart, it is much more about finding helpful connections between the bones, muscles, ligaments, and the spaces in between. Essentially this yoga is about freeing the spine and finding a lightness and strength, so we can move with grace again on this Earth, as we might all long for.
It is much more than a movement practice to me…. the freedom I long for is in the way this is taught and developed. Freedom here comes with the responsibility and curiosity, I am interested in in life too. This yoga is an expression of well lived life for me….. not easy, hard diligent work, confusing, often seemingly contradictory, but free and ever changing. With great love for the beauty of the body and the soul…
Often I find teaching this way challenging, but I love when students get what I try to relate, and it is blissful and encouraging to see how they too feel how much we serve our body and soul, moving with the inspiration of a few simple guidelines, that have the potential to take us deep.
The guided rest every practice concludes in, is often spontaneously arising in me in energetic conversation with the group and the practice we had together.
The more I discover Tantric meditation and breathing, heart centred and encouraging the inner energetic aliveness of the body and a peaceful mind, the more my experiences find their way into my teaching and the way I guide the rest at the end.
This practice is open to all ‘levels’ of experience, it is more about the openess to exploring and being surprised, than a certain strength or flexibility. There is always a way, for everybody….
Please find out for yourself if you feel a spark of curiosity for the way I offer this practice…. YOU ARE VERY WELCOME