Hi! I am Emma from Gothenburg, Sweden.

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.

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_

Emma Johannson: Shake Your Spirit