Yoga Report

I have recently started to teach yoga and that made me think about my philosophy and who I am. I was in my twenties when I discovered yoga and I have been doing the asanas and pranayamas for 11 years now. In the beginning I was eating in Indian restaurants in Sweden and I went to Hare Krishna sometimes to take part in their dancing and singing as well as my daily asana program. I went to longer residential courses in Sweden were the teachers were dressing in orange and it felt like they were trying to recreate an Indian ashram in Sweden. The singing was in a language I did not understand and the whole thing about changing your name to an Indian one felt a bit strange.  I think there was a reason why I was born in Sweden and in the yoga teaching seminar I participated in recently it all came clear to me. I should only teach the techniques I have a long experience with. So what I teach is pranayama and asanas since that is what I do pretty regularly and have had good experiences from.

For a period I did yoga only and I was a vegan. Now I am back to a state where I eat meat once in a while, I do training with weights in the gym and I run on the beach. I listen to trance music and dance spontaneously when I feel like it. I like to read about technology and science as well as yoga books. Nothing has to exclude the other. I have come to more accept the person I am and in the same way I hope I can accept my students. I want to teach asana and pranayama because I felt a great help from this in my life. I went through my last year of university study with the help of yoga. I think without it I would not have been able to handle all the situations that came up in my life during that time.

I have great respect for people who chant regularly and live as strict vegetarians and I understand why people  wear orange clothes and change their name but at the same time I do not live like this and it would be fake from me to teach about it. If you want to go more in depth in one of this areas I am happy to provide you with addresses to ashrams who teach this for example.

When I teach I have my normal clothes on and that could be everything from a strict shirt to jumper of a random colour. For practical reasons I want the yoga room to be clean and have fresh air. I want my student to wear loose and not so tight fitting clothes so they can move with out problems when doing the asanas. Realistic goals from my students is to sleep better at night, to have a relief in their back-pain, to be able deal with their everyday with awareness and clarity. I would like to teach people in their homes or at their work place because I see yoga as a natural part of life. If a whole office department learn yoga techniques and do it together for 10 minutes before lunch that becomes something natural.  At the same if you get the routine of doing yoga for a short period at home each day you will clearly have benefits  but the risk of going for a long course far away from home is that you feel alienated when you get back home. If your husband/wife see you doing yoga a short time at home there is nothing strange about it. If one person in a relationship goes on a long course the other person maybe feels left out and have all kinds of strange ideas of what a yoga course is.

The benefit of starting with a short program in your natural surrounding is that you gradually feel more aware and there is no risk of going to fast and getting very strong experiences when you are not ready for it.

I think there are some myths about yoga. I am not a doctor and I will always recommend people to see a doctor first if they have some serious illness. It has been proven that the immune system can become stronger with yoga and that can help in cure of cancer but I will never give the advice to trust yoga only. Yoga will not make you a superman and rather it will make you aware of your weakness as well as what your strength is and you will see reality for what it is.

The natural state of our life is relaxation and activity. yoga is focused on the relaxation part as I see it and I do not think I need to teach you how to stress and work more But like with yin and yang , black and white, good and evil. They all need each other to exist and in the same way it is essential with relaxation for your body to be able to handle the 100 hour work week as an investment banker. Sure you can work all the time for a limited time but the big risk is that the body will tell you to relax in a very abrupt way by presenting you with a total burn out where you can not work even if you need to. Please reply with questions if there is something you wonder about