How I Teach Yoga
The Foundations Of My Teaching
Many people ask about the kind of yoga that I teach. It’s actually a very difficult question to answer because for me Yoga is more experiential. Words don’t really do it justice. I don’t teach any one particular style since I have drawn my inspirations from so many sources.
I have been greatly inspired by the work of Vanda Scaravelli and the “non-tradition” that is being transmitted by her students.
You can read about who my teachers are and how they have influenced me in the “About Solveig” section of the website.
On this page I will lay down a few of the major principles and foundations that I use in my own personal practice and what I try and convey when I teach yoga to my own students.
In a stressful western life, we often have the tendency to “hold ourselves up”. An unconscious way of pulling yourself together, to “make it”. When we instead let go, and trust the ground to carry us – when we really allow the feet to meet the ground, then we will discover that a natural lightness and lift comes into the body.
Just like when you throw a tennis ball on the ground, the more it goes down, the more it can bounce up. The same principles apply to us, and these we practice during class. Without doing, without effort.
I invite your feet to melt into the ground and open up to the earth. To discover your connection and sense within your body.
Being mindful is being aware of what is. Registering without reacting. Neutral like a camera taking a picture. The camera does not like or dislike the picture. What is there, is being registered. Without like or dislike.
Accepting what is in this moment. Maybe you like it – don’t cling to it, it will change for sure. Maybe it’s not how you would like it to be, or had imagined it to be, but this is how it is. And also this will change for sure.
Learning to accept, without wanting to change anything, brings peace to the mind.
If you cannot accept what is right now, then can you maybe accept, that right now, you cannot accept what is? Even this small step brings more peace to the mind.
Through yoga we look at this constantly. We look at the nature of the mind, and how it shapes our lives. Our practice gives us a lens to view ourselves through.
Allowing the breath. Not doing the breath.
If yoga is the vehicle, the breath is the driver, and you are sitting way back in the bus, watching. Be a laughing Buddha. Look at him. Let the belly take the space it takes. Do you want a fast way, to poor health and poor wellbeing? Then hold your belly in, to make it look fancy and flat. Or start to let your belly be how it is. Beautiful! And healthy.
Breathing in a natural way, which means without restricting our breath, is essential for our wellbeing. By every breath, the organs, the heart, the spine is gently massaged and kept supple. The body stagnates and gets rigid, when we do not allow the breathing.
What is the purpose of pulling the body apart trying to archive a certain yoga pose? As I see it, the body and our whole being benefits much more from working as a whole. So we always work with the whole body, we have our awareness in the whole body.
Our society and cultural conditioning has the tendency to fragment us. Yoga unifies and brings us together. If… we practice in a wholesome way.
If you main goal is to be good at doing acrobatics, being super flexible, developing extreme stamina. Then this is maybe not the place for you.
If you want to develop awareness, both about your body, mind and feelings, if you want to undo tension in your body, learn to use your body and whole being in a healthy way, then this is the place for you.
Being flexible is not the same as being open.
We do sometimes challenge ourselves, we might go and explore muscles we don’t normally use much, we balance, we stretch, so we don’t always stay in our comfort zone. But all of this, NOT coming from the outside, trying to reach a specific pose. No. Instead we work from the inside out. Watching, letting poses unfold moment by moment, without knowing what the result is, without an end goal.
Every breath happening is the goal. This is also called being in the now. This is also called mindfulness. But whatever it’s called -Whatever are the most fashionable words to describe it these days, it CANNOT be understood through the head – not by reading about it, nor by thinking about it. It IS experimental.
Being present, mindful, in the now, does of course not have to involve a practice of the body, but the body is for many people a good “entrance door” to understanding and experiencing what just “being” is.
