Letters

Dear friends, Welcome to my new website, yogashraddha.org. It is a very small step for mankind, indeed, but a biggish one for me. Let me share with you how it came about: On the Mussoorie Express night train from Old Delhi railway station to Dehradun, I was lucky to share the sleeping compartment with Swati…

For the past month I’ve been teaching yoga to more or less the same group of girls at the refugee centre of Fedasil for non-accompanied minors outside Brussels. The majority in this group is from French-speaking Africa, and some are from the Middle East. Some are veiled, some are bareheaded with impressive braided hairdos flooding…

According to yoga philosophy there are three gunas, characteristics or qualities, that inhabit everything around us, both living creatures and objects. For humans, the trick is to find a balance between the three, for a harmonious coexistence in Nature and with ourselves. The gunas often need to be recalibrated, in order to retain this balance.…

Once when I was little, my father brought home a doll from a business trip. It was a Russian doll, the wooden kind that is divided in the middle across the abdomen, and painted. The doll is hollow and contains another, smaller doll, which contains a yet smaller one, and so on, until you reach…

I spent this past weekend with the Indian yogi Suryans Thakur, who was teaching a workshop in Brussels. Sandra Hasson, a yoga teacher with whom I have trained, opened her beautiful studio Yama Yoga for the event. Suryans teaches in the Iyengar tradition, which I like, with full use of props and detailed alignment, but…

When the moon is full here in Provence, it’s brimming. She (I think of it as a female planet) illuminates our east-facing house from behind the ridge on the other side of the valley.  The treetops on the ridge are backlit like the bristle of a black wolf. When I take the dogs out for…

The other day, seeing a not-very-appealing version of my self-image on the screen, my first reaction was not: ”Oh, the beauty of imperfection”. It was rather very un-yogic: ”colour your hair, lose a few kilos!” Then I read an article about a Japanese ceramic artist, (very skinny he was, too) and his Kintsugi repair work…

I remember it as a reprimand in return for some outrageous thing that I had just uttered, but just like “Pull yourself together!”, it has a deeper meaning, which is now dawning on me.  The capacity to listen to yourself is a strong step towards a meditative state. Listen to yourself when you are sitting…

Good sleep after a certain age is not a given for many of us. It requires work and good tools. They’re not all in your medicine cabinet and believe me, I’m no stranger to the occasional pill, especially ahead of a long journey. However, since I’ve developed a more profound yogic breathing practice, pranayama, I know…

Coming back from a long trip requires adjustment. I spent three November weeks in India, feeling quite lonely sometimes between the practices and lessons. They were not at all geared towards teacher training but more a matter of personal development at the Iyengar centre called Yog Ganga in northern India, in the state of Uttarakhand,…

”The longest journey is the journey inwards.” This quote by Swedish UN secretary general, Dag Hammarskjöld, 1905-1961, rings true most days, but not on the cusp of leaving for India. As I pack my bag with coal tablets and mysterious ointments, notebooks and drawing pad, I am more acutely aware of a long outwards trip…

Some of you may not know who Bruce Lee is. I haven’t been a big fan of the fighting movies he starred in, but let’s say that Bruce Lee was a ferocious beast on screen. He died aged 33 in 1973. Apparently, he’s still known to today’s teenagers half a century after his death. The…

In world literature, the idea that we are our own worst enemy is prevalent. Two examples come to mind: In the Indian epic Mahabharata, Krishna reminds one warrior that his worst enemy is still alive, and he is alive inside him. Nietsche says in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “But the worst enemy you can meet will…

Today I met my heroine! It was 15-20 years since we last met in the forest. Her hair has thinned. She no longer wears it in a long grey plaid down her back, but it looks a bit bushy around her hoodied jacket and her step is slightly less agile, but she was accompanied by…

Thank you for the response to my last letter. The subject apparently hit a raw nerve, just like Pain does. Some wrote back describing their history of dealing with pain. One of the most devious forms for pain is the preemptive one, which is based on a memory of an accident, surgery, or illness. Think…

No person goes through life without any sensation of pain. Dealing with pain is one of Yoga’s foremost duties. A sound practice often helps us alleviate the physical pain, but also gives us tools with which we meet the pain in our minds. When I was in my twenties, I broke my ankle badly (I’ll…

After four weeks of practice by the fjord in Norway, I finally masterd the bowline knot. No, it’s not a complicated asana with intricate twists and turns of the limbs around the body but a rope knot you can use to tie a boat or a flag, for example. Every summer I’ve tried to no…

Allow me to share with you some thoughts as Pål and I are preparing to leave for Norway for the month of June. I assure you that Scott’s and Amundsen’s race to the South Pole 110 years ago was a mere walk in the park compared to our migration. First, the paperwork, proving that we…

It’s a big word, but I do claim yoga can bring us freedom. It helps us to break out of that negative feeling of the body as a prison. The ultimate imprisonment is of course to become immobile, bound to a wheelchair. In a documentary film called Debout, the French filmmaker Stephane Haskell tells his…

There is an expression we use when cross-country skiing in Norway: flat light. That’s when the sun doesn’t pierce the sky, the landscape and the sky blend together into a colourless oneness. You can still see the trail a few meters ahead and if you keep to the trail, you’ll be fine, but there is…