Bouke Bouman Fyresdal, Norway

Bouke is one of the great examples that yogaSOMATICS & Somatic Bodywork is for all HUMANS (not only women!) . . . he is a yogaSOMATICS Teacher - yogaSOMATICS RESTORATIVE Teacher and Somatic Bodyworker.

FROM NETHERLANDS TO NORWAY

Hi, my name is Bouke Bouman and I’m born and grew up in the South of the Netherlands. We lived in a big house with a big garden and a small forest just around the corner. I was always playing outside; building huts, digging pits, making fires, looking at insects, looking at flowers and all the other things there was to see. 

In my teenage years I discovered that I liked camping and hiking and over a period of many years this developed to be my main hobby and I really didn’t do anything else my spare time while I studied to become a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering. 

In mid-twenties I met the woman who is now my wife, and fortunately she also wanted to spend as much time in nature as possible. Together, we started to practice Hatha yoga, for relaxation of the joints and muscles. 

In 2002 a possibility emerged to move to Norway, and we happily grabbed this opportunity; so, in the beginning of 2003 we moved from the crowded and flat Netherlands to the uninhabited and mountainous Norway. After about 5 years of moving around and working here and there in Norway, we found  a small farm in the South of Norway in 2007

And then YOGA came more into my LIFE

In 2012, yoga made her reappearance into our lives in a more prominent way. My wife had educated herself to become a certified yoga teacher, with lines into Iyengar and Hatha Yoga and started to give some classes in our small village. 

In 2013, a yoga friend introduced us to the Oslo Yoga Festival.  It is here we met Ateeka for the first time, when we joined her Somatic Bodywork / ConsciousTouch Workshop. This was a totally new approach to yoga and bodywork, which was far away from my normal view of yoga, but my body accepted it fully. 

It was even so inspiring that we joined another Somatic Bodywork /Conscious Touch Workshop at the Oslo Yoga Festival in 2014 and in March, the same year, we travelled with Ateeka to BUDAPEST for a deeper dive into this practice . . . in a weekend Somatic Bodywork and Aq ua-Yoga-Soma immersion. It was here that we experienced Aqua-Yoga-Soma and Watsu in the warm waters one of Budapests many public thermal baths. An unforgettable experience!!

A TRANSFORMATIONAL MOMENT in 2015

2015 was the year that my life started to transform, and is often the case with transformations . . . life  first turns itself inward to a very dark place. 

It started in February of that year when I let my dogs out on an icy Saturday night; a night where the snow had melted during the day and turned to a thin layer of ice in the evening. One of the dogs was an energetic mixture of Border Collie and Norwegian Moose Dog and she wanted to investigate some places which I hadn’t anticipated. So, in her enthusiasm so run a head of me and I was dragged backwards off my feet and landed, head first, on the ice. 

This was the beginning of a very troublesome year. I developed Tinnitus the first night and that didn’t go away; I started to get headaches after a few hours of working; walking was not fun anymore, since every step felt as if someone stabbed a something into my head; I generally was not enjoying life anymore more, since everything I did resulted in feeling my body in a way I never had felt. The visits to a physiotherapist and a chiropractor didn’t really help in the long run. And so life continued, until… 

And so life continued… until the end of 2015. I got an email from Ateeka about a Restorative Yoga teacher training in Oslo over 5 days. This email really resonated with me in a certain way, and I knew that I had to join this training.

So, I joined the training in the beginning of 2016. And, I really can’t say anything else than that this was a life changer!! 

I was introduced to exercises that really relaxed my nervous system and I could for the first time relax my body and it was just amazing. After these 5 days, of literally “doing nothing”, all my health issues were gone for a few months. No Tinnitus and Headaches anymore. I really hadn’t expected that this training would resonate so deeply in me, and I wanted to explore more of this approach to yoga. So, this training paved the road to join the yogaSOMATICS Teacher Training in Copenhagen in 2017. 

It was so inspiring meeting so many different people, with so many different backgrounds, all being attracted to this approach of yoga, I was such a great journey. After finishing the yogaSOMATICS Teacher training in 2018 the step to start with the Somatic Bodywork Practitioner Training was obvious. So, my wife and I decided to join this training in Århus starting in June 2019. 

Somatic Bodywork is the most sacred and genuine practice I have joined. It’s so deeply connected to the most elementary gestures humans have and in the most natural way to be with each other. It is in this practice that I can find myself, again and again. 

HOW I PRACTICE TODAY

My yoga practice today . . . while the rhythm of a daily practice changes from period to period, I do find  that many of the nervous resets are part of my daily life, such as: Baby Cartoon Mouth, the Nomadic Rock, relaxing of the eye muscles etc. These have become a piece of my daily life.

AND OTHER THINGS THAT YOU LOVE and ENJOY?

Other things I love… enjoying nature is still a big part of my life. Spending a night or two in the mountains after paddling a few hours with our canoe is still the most enjoyable way of recharging our batteries. Further I’m still a practical person, so I really like building things, both inside and outside. Last winter the bathroom got a total makeover, where I did a lot of the work. Just love it. 

Further I am an active member of the Red Cross in our village and spending some time every year in participating.

HOW CAN WE FIND YOU and YOUR OFFERINGS?

Possibility for ordering Somatic Bodywork and joining yogaSomatics Classes are found on the following Facebook site of Merleyn: https://www.facebook.com/GalleriogYogaskole 

Anne Marie Torheim

“I peacefully paddle my kayak on the fjord and feel the stillness touch of the water .  .  . and feel its natural waves . . . and the sea life so close to me, it is a worship of LIFE and my own body and being in close contact with nature.  This is what yogaSOMATICS feels like to me too.”

I grew up in Nordfjordeid in Western Norway with 3 siblings and loving parents.

As an active teenage, I enjoyed  jazz ballet,  handball, gymnastics and loved sports in general.  Lucky to live in a beautiful mountain area, staying out in nature was a part of my upbringing . . . with skiing in the winter and all kinds of sea and mountain activities year round.

Then, I found my first Yoga book!  As a curious teenage, I  tried out the asanas and felt joy and inspiration. 

Adolescence gave way to adulthood . . . and my attention moved to studying for my future and eventually dedication to my career as a school teacher.    I also became a mother and the joys and trials of raising a family of my own in magical Aurland deep in Sognfjord, Norways longest fjord. I have been a school teacher for much of my life here in this small special little village.

And then yoga came back into view

Years went by . . .  my three children grew up and one day, a local young girl  asked me:

Do you want to study yoga together with me? 

Why not, I thought? 

At that moment, I had inherited a little money from my parents and I felt the time had come for me to start a new way for myself to grow into yoga again. 

My first step back into yoga was enrolling into a multi-style Yoga Teacher Training program at Axelson´s in Oslo.    This gave the on-going opportunity to deepen my knowledge and find the approaches to yoga that resonate with me.

and then I discovered yogaSOMATICS . . .

It was in this 200 hour yoga teacher training that I met Ateeka.  She came for a one day seminar to our training to share a little bit of yogaSOMATICS with us.   From that seminar, I knew that yogaSOMATICS was something that I wished to deepen into.

I have completed the  200 hour multi-style yoga teacher training and then decided to further my studies with Ateeka in both her 35 hour yogaSOMATICS RESTORATIVE and 250 hour yogaSOMATICS Teacher Training.   

It has been exciting to get to know myself better from the outside to the inside, the felt-sense and the experiences of floating into something new and un-formed.  It has been a personal journey for me. 

It is freedom, not to stay in a certain form, but in my own form or no form at all! Together with a mindfulness practice,  this has become my way into more flow inwards.

In my daily life, I do mindfulness meditation and often a yogaSOMATICS flow in the morning before work. It starts my day in a soft way, bringing me into more calmness and balance. I run a little company called www.fjordyoga.com where I teach yoga classes to the local people in my small village.  

yogaSOMATICS “crawls” more and more into my classes and is so appreciated by many of my followers now in this little village where I live. The more I feel the effects in my body, the more it feels as a gift to pass on to others. It is kind of magical to share yogaSOMATICS within my “Anne Marie Yoga”   I share yoga with others . . .  from where I am, moving in my way . . . into myself.  

I can describe it as an inner-felt experience in waves, in expansion and involution. 

To stay with one self.

One of my favorite past-times is kayaking on the beautiful deep waters of the fjord that lies at my doorstep. I peacefully paddle my kayak on the fjord and feel the stillness touch of the water .  .  . and feel its natural waves . . . and the sea life so close to me, it is a worship of LIFE and my own body and being in close contact with nature.  This is what yogaSOMATICS feels like to me too.

any inspirations to share?

In addition to yoga, I love reading books:  yoga books, books about Mindfulness, the breath and healing and body.  I am so interested and excited about this beautiful body and how it is to be a human to be nature. and to be a woman.  "Kvinner som løper med ulver", (Women Who Run with the Wolves) is my favorite reading these days.

Thich Naht Hahn &  Echart Tolle are both great inspirations for me in their videos and books. Viggo Johansen was the first teacher bringing Mindfulness based on Buddhism into my life.  More and more, this way of  “being” is beginning to be more natural and I recognise that within me.

you can read more about Anne Marie’s wonderful offerings in yoga & nature at her website:

www.fjordyoga.com

and on instagram

@fjordyoga

Jenny ammilon

Jenny Ammilon

Teacher - Student - Creator

YogaSomatics has helped me to trust my feeling sense and also to re-appreciate my rational, analytical mind and the dance between the different aspects of human-ness

My favourite thing to do when I was little was to build houses. Tree houses. Houses from sticks, from blankets, from pillows. Turning the attic into a Spy head office. Making doll houses out of cardboard boxes. On it goes.

When I moved to a small countryside village on the west coast of Sweden, me and my man got to build on a full size little house where I now live and love.

I also built a consulting company, a yoga studio, a yoga festival, and then...

… I got tired.

I had put my heart into building spaces where I could relax, restore and play. Where I would feel safe and happy and free to be myself. But no matter how creative the solutions, how nice the designs, or how cozy the ambience – I just never felt quite at HOME!

Lo and behold – you know what I’m going to say – That place I wanted to create I found inside me!!!

WHERE HAS YOUR YOGA PRACTICE LED YOU?

For some years now, my attention has in many ways shifted. From outer to inner. From doing to listening. And to the process of learning to allow my inner environment to be as roomy, beautiful and joyous as I possibly can.

My yoga and somatics practice has taken me on a journey within my own tissue, my mind and my nervous system. I’ve fallen in love with the experience of expansion through softness. As I’m discovering new layers of embodied awareness within, again and again I wonder at the resonance of this new-found inner spaciousness in my outer life.

The voyage from doingness to beingness isn’t all blissful though. Not for me.

The well-grounded identity of doer/achiever/builder is crumbling. I miss her. Releasing muscular tension allows hidden mental stuff to be seen and felt. Patterns of behavior (that I kind of like) get outdated, and the growth I know is possible challenges my patience.

Yet I sense, in my bones, that the freer version of true expression I’m longing for is opening its fresh petals, slowly but surely. No rush, I tell myself. Listen, feel, allow. Ungrip.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT yogaSOMATICS?

The YogaSomatics of Ateeka is a resting place for me. I love, love, love the free organic movement, the psychological metaphors, the inspiration for inquiry, and the deep connection to femininity. The practice is the perfect complement to my more disciplined practice of YogaMonks - another body intelligence modality that also works with gravity, soft body fluidity, and natural connection through ungripping.

YogaSomatics has helped me to trust my feeling sense and also to re-appreciate my rational, analytical mind and the dance between the different aspects of human-ness. The work is resting so solidly in non-judgemental that it blows my mind. Pun intended.

On an energetic level my inner universe of dark, wet, and tangled get to hang out with the brightness of light and clarity. Through YogaSomatics and my YogaMonks practice, I am now having a felt sense of yin and yang in my own system. It is SO cool!

I was initially drawn to Ateeka's sensuality, humor, honesty, and openness. Over the years of studying with her, I am more and more intrigued by the magical way she can shapeshift time and energy in a room. Under Ateekas guidance I can go deeper into my inner realms and I feel safe all the way. I am ever grateful for all the inspiration and support - in my personal as well as my teaching development - she provides so generously.

HOW DO YOU SHARE yogaSOMATICS NOW?

I share what I’ve learned so far within somatics and yoga in private sessions and courses, through my own company “Himmel och Jord”. I am dedicated to helping people who are ready to let go of some old blockages find ease and mobility.

I mostly work with people over a longer period of time, finding joy and meaning in supporting individuals to build a personal practice of movement, breathwork and meditation. Furthermore, I enjoy creating workshops around special themes and offering these workshops in a variety of settings. I also work with Clinical Somatics, a form of somatic education that builds on the work of Thomas Hanna and Moshe Feldenkrais that I find is very accessible and helpful for people in our times. And I am inspired by dancing and contact work, particularly as a means of exploring relation.

The different schools of movement and awareness I have immersed myself in complement each other beautifully in my own practice. With my private students I go mostly on intuition, drawing out whatever practices and nuggets of wisdom I sense are useful for a person in that moment. In a workshop or course teaching situation, one method would be the conductor, and the others behave like improvisational rascals that I allow in now and then to spice up the original composition.

Teaching what I’m studying means the offerings and ways of transmission change quite a bit from time to time. Meditation is an important part of my own practice and that too influences the whats and whys of my teaching.

WHAT OTHER THINGS DO YOU LOVE 💗 OUTSIDE OF YOUR YOGA LIFE?

My personal life is a lot about appreciation of food, music, nature, family and philosophy. I love to dance, watch movies, write, cook, and just be around the house with my man, daughter, our two cats and a young dog.

In my dreams I get to be in larger community, travel into the wild and find new ways to express myself through movement, voice and who knows… The spiritual journey here on earth continues.

AND HOW CAN WE FIND YOU and YOUR CLASSES JENNY?

www.himmelochjord.com

Facebook: Jenny Ammilon and Himmel och Jord

Studio Space: Himmel och Jord - Varberg, Sweden

Mariagrazia Pradal: A journey into the fluid

Buongiorno from Vento, Italia - I am Mariagrazia!

I was born in a small town in the North-Eastern part of Italy, half way between the beautiful Dolomites Mountains and the magical Venice, in a traditional middle class family of five members. I still leave in the area, in the Veneto region.

As the only daughter arrived after two older brothers, I had to stand up a lot for making myself heard! I was a very independent child, I loved singing and dancing. I remember myself standing on the sofa or on a chair entertaining family's friends with songs that I liked. Classical ballet was my main after school activity up to the age of 19. It taught me the importance of perseverance and dedication, of moving the body with precision and at the same time gracefulness and harmony, it taught me the magic of classical music. 

TELL US ABOUT YOUR BACKGROUND

My background is in languages, my official profession tour guide, a fascinating job that I have been doing for 25 years. Dealing with people of different origins, needs and demands taught me the art of patience and tolerance. And it gave me the possibility of seeing places I would have never visited on my own.

HOW DID YOU FIRST DISCOVER YOGA?

In the years, parallel to my professional life, I have been cultivating and deepening my personal research, from the world of natural cures as an alternative to chemical medications, to the world of Osho, to the Buddist practice of Nichiren Daishonin....always longing for well being, harmony and balance. When in 2003 I first met yoga...I was ready. After a trip to India, it flowed as a river into my heart. I felt at home, landed, in peace. Since then I never stop practicing. I started with Satyananda Integral yoga. A structured and precise practice, a combination of alignment based asanas, pranayama, singing mantras and yoga Nidra. Always with a soft eye kept on the body and on the respect of its “limits”. It was the perfect practice for me in those years: it helped me recovering from neck and back pains caused by past car accidents. The Sanskrit mantras satisfied my love for singing, healing my spirit through its powerful vibrations. The precision of the asanas reminded me the precision requested by classical ballet ....everything in harmony...perfection and constant dedication...

HOW DID YOU FIRST MEET yogaSOMATICS?

Then, something changed. I started feeling constrained in the rigidity of the form, in the seriousness of the practice. I needed more flow, more softness...more lightness. That's when Ateeka and YogaSOMATICS appeared on my path in 2010. It was love at first sight. I was captured by the softness and fluidity of the movements, by the feeling of freedom and space emerging from them. I felt in love with this more feminine, intuitive approach to yoga, more connected to the heart and to the sense of gratitude. No perfection required...finally. My practice started changing, gradually. The integration took time. Leaving the rigidity of the form and patterns of movement to a more free way of practising is to me a never ending and continuous journey, and it has not been always easy. I experienced inner conflicts, doubts, sometimes feeling lost in the wide open space of movements, missing the “safety” of precise alignment and sequences.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR YOGA PRACTICE TODAY?

I would describe my practice today as a sort of “union of the differences”, where elements of a more classical yoga find their place without contradiction in the open sea of free movements and spirals of YogaSOMATICS, in total respect of the body, acceptance of its natural rhythms and cycles. YogaSOMATICS is the practice of my heart, a self care practice. It's movement turned into poetry. When I teach I am transmitting with gratitude to my students the importance of what I learnt from Ateeka: trusting the body, being in the body, finding pleasure and freedom in the movements, abandoning goals and desires of perfection. Being gentle to ourselves, grateful to our bodies. Respect and contact with Mother Earth. My classes are soft, with a continuous awareness to the breath. They include nervous system resets, inner excercises, unwinding, easy asanas, sounds, and lead to a final relaxation or Yoga Nidra. Sometimes I play some music, mainly during integration times or unwinding: Gayatri Mantra or Moola Mantra by Deva Premal, Healing Music at 432 Hz by Ella and Shantam, Seed by Klaus Wiese. 

Parallel to yoga I have been refining my body perception through the practice of Byodinamic Craniosacral becoming an officially certified operator. Tuning into the world of fluids was a fascinating discovery, a gift received from the practice of YogaSOMATICS. Giving session is to me a nourishing way to deepen my presence in the here and now and at the same time to be of benefit to others. The two practices, YogaSOMATICS and Craniosacral are very similar and complementary to each other, they both awaken the Natural Intelligence focusing on health and to the ability of the body to heal itself.

Besides the holistic practices of yoga and craniosacral, I love swimming in the sea. I'm a summer person and the perfect environment for me to regenerate is by the waters. I love riding a bicycle on flat surfaces, it makes me feel on holiday. I also love slow walking on the hills or in the forest, dancing, singing, eating healthy and organic food.

I feel lucky to have opened the door to yoga into my life years ago. I am grateful to my present teacher, Ateeka, that has introduced me to YogaSOMATICS and has been supporting me over the years with her experience, encouraging me to develop trust in my body and my “inner sciamanella”. I'm grateful to my past teachers and all the guides I met on the path. I am grateful to Life.

Mariagrazia Yoga Somatics

acia.acia20@gmail.com

Rachana Wolff

Rachana Wolff

In-Soma® Institut

Massage-Yoga-Meditation 

Hi Rachana! Tell us a little about yourself. . .

I was born in Lima, Peru . . . a big city were I learned to stay flexible and survive within the chaos. My Father was a textile engineer at that time, and my mother, a model and then a fashion designer. I grew up with two brothers and that was very wild and adventurous! Amidst the adventure and chaos, I was a quiet child. I guess I brought a bit of balance in the family through my being still.

At the age of 8, I started dancing which was a wonderful way of connecting with my body and my feelings. I could dive in another dimension and feel free in dancing

And how did you discover yoga and the movement arts?

Dancing and the passion to be connected with my feelings while dancing brought me to discover many different ways of body awareness techniques. During my dance professional course of studies, my family supported me to travel to Europe.

I was 17 years old when I arrived to Germany. That was the time when I discovered how different the German culture was compared to the Latin culture I grew up in.

It was a hard time for me to adapt to this different and new culture. . . a new language and different mentality. I was very confronted with being in a new world.

I had an eating disorder that I tried to cover up, but at some point it was not possible to hide anymore . . . and that was when I discovered therapy and meditation which really helped me to acknowledge that I needed to change.

I started learning massage, shiatsu, conscious touch, tai chi and yoga.

In this way, I started healing my inner body and all that was stored inside.

This healing journey has become my passion and my profession.

Tell us why you were initially attracted towards yogaSOMATICS

Since 1991, my profession has been massage, shiatsu and conscious touch. The connection to the body has being my anchor, my ground and my healing path. I have completed an education in Lomi-Lomi Massage, Ayurveda and Rebalancing.

After that I studied Watsu (Water Shiatsu) and that’s when I first met Ateeka in Mexico in 2008.

We met and I was fascinated by the way she introduced Continuum Movement and that stayed with me as a healing practice. Something clicked inside me. I felt I had found a puzzle piece that was missing.

Tell us about how you integrate yogaSOMATICS into your life - your personal practice and/or your work.

For me, YogaSOMATICS has become a guidance of deeper understanding of how energy moves and how the body responds when it is not pushed, forced, manipulated or changed.

Through my dancing career, I was always trained to go over my limits. Deep inside me I felt that ys, could support a deeper healing process in my inner body.

This way of teaching Yoga gives me the possibility to share what I believe in and support people to feel more, explore and trust.

I have created a place in Munich, Germany: Treatmentroom Munich were I teach yoga classes and also work with my Massage treatments and conscious touch.

What is the most meaningful thing you have learned from yogaSOMATICS?

Through yogaSOMATICS, I have learned to trust and wait. To stay true to my self and to create new ways of support for healing.

One fascinating topic were my attention goes at the Moment is Yoga and Self-massage. I have already created a concept were I work along the meridians.I feel that all my experience in massage and bodywork come together in my yoga practice. That is wonderful.

Tell us about your other favorite hobbies, past-times, activities that you LOVE to do/enjoy.

My hobbies are walking in the mountains, being in nature, cooking and meditation.

Do you have a favorite book to tell us about?

I have two books that really moved me in the last while. Two books that support in me again my way of going deeper in my own journey.

The Choice von Edith Eger / The Gift von Edith Eger

And how can we find out more about your classes, workshops, treatments?

In-Soma® Institut
Rachana Wolff
Massage-Yoga-Meditation 
www.In-Soma.de
TREATMENTROOM MÜNCHEN
Braystr. 10 / 81677 München

Emma Johannson: Shake Your Spirit

Hi! I am Emma from Gothenburg, Sweden. 

foto: Najib Bardash

I always loved to move and move and move….either my body or my mind. With this love for movement,  also a habit was formed within me to “not feeling satisfied in just being in stillness.”  At some point, the love to move and need to move  became very hard for me to separate. 

I remember feeling a very strong longing for connection and could very easily feel it . . .  despite also feeling rootless. But, for some reason,  I thought that being in stillness was a wrong way to go.

In my home culture of Sweden, both school and home, the conditioning seems to be that it was better to not feel.   As a child, I was very sensitive and I felt so much.   It seemed there was not very much room or acceptance for my sensitivity and feeling - so for me at the time, it was better to run away from it.

That running was not all a bad thing - it was from this active nature that I came to engage in and really appreciate sports.   The appreciation for sports was a way for me to get in deeper contact with myself - through movement! 

So, as a child, I engaged in a lot of activities, horseback riding, running and dancing everyday, and a lot more activities on and off. 

Even with all this movement and activity, I still felt restless any time that I wasn’t engaged in doing something I liked (for example - school and studies). School felt very competitive and became an increasing pressure as I got older.   

My parents were very understanding and supportive for me to follow what I loved, but  there was always the pressure of “doing better and better:  from within myself.   

At a certain point in my teenage years,  I  just gave up and for a few years years, I didn’t engage in any of the things that I loved so much and instead entered into a somewhat turbulent and self-destructive period in my life.

WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH YOGA?

A couple of times I had tried yoga, as I had the feeling ”this must be my my thing”, but over and over again,  I just went out of the classes in frustration. 

It was not until I went to India to work and had long, free and somewhat boring afternoons, that I started to attend the yoga classes.

The classes there were quite strict and formal yoga and I was reminded of reminded of the ballet classes that I undertook as a child.  This memory - in body and mind - something started some new contact to grow within myself.

A longing for deeper contact with my body again awakened. I realized that in this body lives my soul; in my soul, my trust for life. So much love and curiosity waked up in me. 

When I came back home from India,  I did my first Hatha Yoga teacher training, and a lot of things started to happen with my life.  It seems that yoga sneaked itself in to my still messy life. And then, a big shift in my life happened thanks to yoga, free dance and meditation.

After that I luckily met Ateeka and yogaSOMATICS just in the right time to be able to ground and integrate my ”new” life. 

TELL US ABOUT HOW YOU DISCOVERED yogaSOMATICS?

When yogaSOMATICS came in to my life,  I really needed roots, more than ever. And I also had a longing to relearn this stillness,  I never was able to find as a child. So for me, it was a pretty overwhelming meeting and the first years I was moving between very grounding and yin-somatic inspired practice -  to experiences with so much stored energy released that I nearly wasn’t here to feel my body. 

These experiences were super scary, but I had so great support, both by Ateeka, the yogaSOMATICS training group and finally the practice itself. 

I learned that I could be my own support more and more in yogaSOMATICS. In the start. I were surprised that everytime I moved in to yogaSOMATICS or deep meditation, I felt wisdom from a source which  I think we often take for granted or are too busy to see and feel. 

It is still as a love story. The first years I felt I could never survive without this. I felt I couldn’t  survive without Ateeka, the practice, or the setting I were practicing in…. and  then, the love became more free and independent and really nourished my system in its own sweet way. 

In the first years,  I was very loyal and super faithful in all my yoga practice and yogaSOMATICS was the start and end of my day, everyday. I always, even my restlessness found it very easy to connect with meditation and sensing what I call “presence of the  source”  so bringing meditation to my life was just something of the most wonderful thing I could do, it was just pure love. 

foto: Najib Bardash

WHERE HAS YOUR YOGA PRACTICE LED YOU?

And I still keep to that and will do for the rest of my life. I have also learned a lot of inner work and meditations I have learned at Vaekstcenteret (Denmark) a meditation center that Ateeka suggested I might resonate with.  What I have learned at Vaekstcenter is integrated into my morning meditation. 

The rest of the day, I work full-time as a yoga teacher.   Everyday, I do some kind of movement, I still feel absolutely best when I give my body some kind of movement, whether it is  soft yogaSOMATICS, dancing, strong vinyasa or even go to the gym. The difference now is that I really integrate the awareness…. And the sense of ”nothing to fix.”   I’m already here, complete. 

WHAT ARE YOU INSPIRED TO SHARE WITH OTHERS?

This is also what I want to share with my students.  I so much want to share this feeling; that you are already here where you are supposed to be, in your pure fullness.  I also have a very strong and lovely feeling when I share yoga that part of my vision is to help my students  is to discover the perception of inner and outer world and how they respond to each of them, letting them become one (yoga…;))   How your nervous system today respond to itself by observing both environments, inner and outer.

HOW DO YOU SHARE YOGASOMATICS NOW?

I work in Gothenburg, Sweden at some different studios and Hagabadet Spa. I also started my own thing ”Shake your spirit” where soft to more dynamic yogaSOMATICS moves out into freedance (even here we keep the awareness off the experience to be in your body) and in to meditation.

I believe that moving and shaking freedom in to our bodies, makes us go beyond our beliefs and values of ourselves and then allow yourself to feel it in stillness and deep meditation one’s own essence or spirit will also be deeply touched. ( That’s how the name SHAKE YOUR SPIRIT came up :)

I also give Somatic Bodywork individual session after training with Ateeka in Norway. This has helped me to learn to listen, deeply listen to myself and environment around which is  powerful during classes and of course sessions themselves.  It is a very beautiful work that I love!

The most important thing I learned by yogaSOMATICS is how I can nourish myself, that I can simply do that by being home in my body. I learned a lot of my own nervous system and how I can, by my own sensibility,  touch in to what is happening inside me and BE, allow that energy to just BE until I decide how and if I want to transform it. 

WHAT OTHER THINGS DO YOU LOVE 💗 OUTSIDE OF YOUR YOGA LIFE?

Except from yoga, meditate and dance….I love to learn about these subjects, so I am quite a nerd about my job…. I also love to be in the kitchen, to bake and cook vegan creations :) I love to paint and have always liked to do. Then one of the most important things in my life, it to visit my other home, nature. Just be out to the forest, sea, fields, helps me to just realize that HERE is the connection I always miss if I feel lost. 

My partner, family and friends also are a very important part of my life that goes very well in to my interests of yoga, to meet another person is to meet oneself, which has been very difficult sometimes for me….(most people  I guess ;)) 

WHAT DO YOU LOVE TO LISTEN TO AND READ?

A listening Suggestion! I was listening to Shantaram this spring, surprisingly one of my favourite books so far! I also love Awakening Shakti and  Ekhart Tolle´s books (they always shift my perception, very good tool) and Harry Potter, ha. ha, my bookshelf is very mixed and mostly I listen to books.

AND HOW CAN WE FIND YOU and YOUR CLASSES EMMA?

Facebook:  Emma Yogi Johansson and Shake Your Spirit

Instagram: shake_your_spirit 

Instagram retreat page:  breathe_and_move_

www.shakeyourspirit.com

foto: Najib Bardash