17th week - the body, the body...

Something happened this week... After a year of travelling and moving to and getting settled in Copenhagen and meeting new people and basically starting a whole new life abroad AND letting go of so many places, people and things (and again, basically a whole life) in Vienna, I felt the desperate need to be stuck. In ONE place!

This week I LOVED yoga, because it brought me back to that ONE place, that will never ever go away as long as I live - my body! :-)
Oftentimes, we perceive our bodies as problematic - they don't look the way, they should look; they get sick; they get old - and in the end, let's face it, they even die and vanish!
And oh, the joy we would have, if only our bodies would be thinner, fitter, healthier, have better hair, thighs, eyes, whatever... And at some point in the future, when we will be perfectly happy with our bodies, THAT'S going to be the time, when we can be truly happy...

This week, I realised two things:
Firstly, there's ALWAYS going to be something! So, we better learn to love our bodies the way they are! (And studies show, that yoga helps with this ;-)!)
Secondly, the body is our link to the world! No body, no experiences! And when I say no, I mean NONE AT ALL! So, whatever happens, we wouldn't experience it without our body! And that's brilliant!! It means that ALL the things that happen are gifts, that our bodies give us - the happy moments, the sad moments, the joyfull moments, the desparate moments,... everything! Don't you start loving your body on a totally different scale?! :-) ;-)

Picturewise, I'll go for the "begging for pitty"-version of my day of yoga on the beach in Denmark ;-)

getting ready

Cobra

Downward-facing Dog

Standing Backbend

16th week - pain and freedom...

I remember once, when I walked into a yoga class there was this girl practicing for the European Yoga Asana Championship. She was practicing deep deep backbends - and she was sweating and looked exhausted. At one point her teacher would tell her to get into yet another deep backbend, and she said "I don't want to anymore!" 

The teacher then said: "When you don't want to, that's when you really need to do it!" I immediately thought, "What a prick!" (and he was such a tough-love-guy too!...)

Now, I still think, friendliness helps in deep backbends, but that's not my point. My point is, that in life as in yoga there are situations we want to run from, though situations we really really don't want to be in. And maybe the though-love-guy was right in the sense of it's important to STAY in these situations to really make a change.

I have to say, I really really like to run. But you can't run from your own body - and mine is teaching me to keep working on my very tight right hip at the moment and work through the pain. That's what yoga is for - you go through the pain into the freedom. And that's what life is for as well! :-) <3

15th week - to eat meat or to not eat meat, that's the question...

There was a time in fall when I did much more yoga than nowadays, hard, sweaty yoga - and I had SO MUCH fun with it! :-D I really really loved to be so strong and healthy - plus I loooooved to see the effects all the yoga had on my body! ;-)
I always wanted to get back to that strength, but somehow, the strength and power were gone missing... And then I got sick a lot too (we're talking about weeks here!...)! And that started to REALLY bother me at some point! I was feeling weak all the time! It was SO annoying! Something had to be done!!!

So, my thoughts took me through all kind of aspects of life - and ended up circling around food. I realised, I didn't take in a lot of proteins, which is why I started to eat meat again. I'm not a full-on vegetarian, I just happen to not eat a lot of meat, because it's a dead body and that just creeps me out at times! And I really do admire vegans for their big contribution to a healthy planet, but I just can't be that consequent with food anymore (I have a lot of intolerances, which keep me kind of busy in that area...).

But... I really like meat and it's nourishing for me right now! And my chinese doctor always tell me to eat beef!

What are your oppinions? Or experiences? I'd really love to read about that! Thank you! <3

And here's this and last weeks new yoga poses:

 Salamba Sirsasana

Makarasana

 Dhandurasana

Bhujangasana I

 Supta Konasana

Parsva Halasana

 Mahamudra

Janu Sirsasana

 Dandasana

Paschimottanasana

14th week - God and yoga and all that...

My flatmate recently asked me a very stunning question, which she asks herself every evening: When did you feel connected to the divine today? Just that day I had taken on a new job as yoga-teacher and had been really worked up and nervous beforehand.

But the first class went really really well and my favourite moment - which is also the moment when I felt connected to the divine - was when everybody was lying in Savasana. I knew, I had done a good job and I was happy and grateful. Someone once said, God works through you as you - and that's how I felt! It was brilliant!

I also feel this connection to the divine when I do yoga - it is after all a spiritual practice! To me, yoga is a way of praying with my entire being. A way of being involved with myself, others and God.

It seems to be a strange concept for some, to "feel connected with the divine", but what f.ex. about the feeling of gratefulness? Did you have moments in your life, when you wanted to thank somebody, but there was no person to thank? That's when we instinctively feel, that there is something bigger than us.

How do you feel about yoga as being a form of prayer? I'd love to read your experiences! :-)

PS: pics to follow :-)

13th week - the gold-digger

After having been sick last week, I got sick again this week (I know, it's getting a little rediculous ;-)...), BUT was well enough at times to do yoga! And, Oh boy!, how wonderful it was!!!

Do you know the feeling, when you do something you love and every action in it feels like eating the best chocolatecake you've ever tasted? That's how my yoga practice felt this week! Just a big fat yummy! I just LOVED to move my body and bend it and strengthen it - and of course, I was thinking about how to recreate this feeling in yoga or any other situation in life. And also, what do I tell people, so they can experience yoga like this?

And here's what I've come up with:
In life or in yoga, when we savour something, our senses are in it. How does it feel, when I touch my hands to the yoga mat? What does this dish smell like? How does it make me feel inside, when I listen to that piece of music?
And I think, we have to be in a safe spot! Nobody can enjoy a great sunset, when feeling insecure or pressurised. Off the mat, my safe spot would be my home - you sure have yours, too! ;-) On the mat it's crucial to have a teacher whom we can trust! And as a yoga teacher, we want to create a safe environment for our students (clear language, everybody does everything at the same time, connect to each student,...) - so they can come to our class and go digging for their own yoga-gold! Or was it chocolate? ;-)

PS: Mr. Iyengar suggested for me to repeat the poses of week 11 - so no new pics! BUT there's going to be a lot of new poses next week - yay! :-)

12th week - life is what happens to you...

There is this quote by John Lennon "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans". Well, this week my plan was to have a daily yoga practice - and the life that happened to me was a flu that kept me in bed for the entire week. I managed to do yoga once before getting sick, but that's it.

So I was left with all those nice pictures of yoga poses in my head - and a body that tought me a serious lesson in patience and the rhythm of life! And I realised that sometimes life isn't spectacular, amazing or exciting - it just is! And that's wonderful too! We can tell, when we look around and see all the spectacular, amazing and exciting things life has created over millions of years!

And through some blessed human beings life brought yoga to us, too! :-)

And so life works within us and around us - as disease, as a flower or as this yoga pose that we couldn't do some years ago and that is now so normal to us. Life has it's own pace - even if we're busy making other plans! How good to know!

11th week - being in the pose...

A wonderful teacher of mine once said, when we make a pose for the first time, it's oftentimes hard to really BE in the pose. Not because of physical pain, but just because the body doesn't fully understand how the asana works. There are some poses in the last some weeks, that are very new for me - and I can feel my body AND my mind going "uhm, what??!", when I do them. (For deeper understanding please check my facial expression on the Parighasana-pic ;-) ...)

Still, as they say, it gets easier over time, for both mind and body, and I start to feel more and more at home in these poses. So repetition helps ;-) (even though I still catch myself rolling my eyes at Mr. Iyengar's weird ideas sometimes ;-) ...)

In life off the mat the "uhm, what??!"-feeling cought me last week after my final return from Istanbul. I could feel, that I was not BEING in my life for days, feeling foggy in the head and being very unproductive...

We all experience changes in life sometimes, that are so severe that our mind and body need time to settle in to them. Sometimes, we can just do what has to be done and not really be there for a while. What yoga teaches us here is, that with patience and repetition or daily routine we can grow back together with our life and find ourself again.

This week's poses are:
Utthita Trikonasana, Parivrtta Trikonasana, Utthta Parsvakonasana, Parivrtta Parsvakonasana, Virabhadrasana I, II and III, Ardha Chandrasana, Parsvottanasana, Prasarita Padottanasana I and II, Padangusthasana, Padahastasana, Uttanasana, Parighasana, Urdhva Prasarita Padasana, Paripoorna Navasana, Ardha Navasana, Salamba Sarvangasana, Halasana, Karnapidasana, Ekapada Sarvangasana, Jatara Parivartasana, Savasana;

Parivrtta Parsvakonasana

Virabhadrasana III

Ardha Chandrasana

Prasarita Padottanasana II

Padangusthasana

 Padahastasana

Uttanasana

Parighasana

Karnapidasana

Ekapada Sarvangasana