Discovering myself through yoga

 

Benefits of yoga: better posture, strength, suppleness and peace of mind

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I discovered yoga in 1998, specifically Iyengar yoga. At the time I was an obsessive exerciser, so yoga seemed a little like doing nothing. However, I really enjoyed it. Although it was hard to let go of my thoughts, yoga classes still provided me with a moment away from my overactive and, at the time, rather self-destructive thoughts.  I suffered from (sometimes severe) depression and anorexia for 20 years. Since 1998, I continued to go to yoga classes, as well as do some self-practice, trying out many different yoga styles (e.g. flow, Ashtanga, yin, Bikram), loving the calming effect on my mind and the physical benefits such as good posture, strength and suppleness. However, it was not until 2012-2013, which was a time of searching for a better life for myself - that I really understood yoga.

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Yoga as a self-development practice

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Yoga is a Sanskrit word that means union. It means uniting the body-mind to who we really are deep down and learning to work with ourself rather against ourself. For me this meant, starting to love my body and respecting it. It meant getting in touch - reconnecting - with my feelings and emotions and discovering what I wanted and needed: finding out who I was. For me personally spirituality came with all this too in the sense of respecting myself as part of the universe rather than feeling seperate and unworthy. 

It still is a work in progress – human-beings are complicated – but with finding myself, I started to heal and as a side effect decided to change my entire life, following my heart rather than following others’ expectations. I left a job that I found stressful although it was for a good cause (helping governments make better decisions concerning the environment), in order to be a yoga teacher.

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Helping others reconnect with themselves

 

I hope that through my teaching I can help others reconnect  to themselves so that they can live life fully; I hope to help people improve physical, mental and emotional health to find holistic well-being.

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I have learnt that if we not listening to ourselves, our feelings and intuitions, but instead live shut off and shut down maybe following others or being ruled by fear and false beliefs, we do not truely live. We survive. We can honor ourselves for surviving (trauma and unresolved hurt are often the reason for shut off from ourselves) but maybe at some point we might want to truly live. To become fully embodied. I would like to help facilitate this process.

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In the end of the day, the best I hope is that others can understand that being themselves is what its all about.