Today Yashendu, Ramona and me went to Melle to start the new Yoga Teacher Training there. We passed a lot of time in the train or carrying our heavy luggage from one platform to another.
Once arrived in Melle we got to know our new yoga students. In our sharing circle I explained them my basic idea about me, my work and my aim:
"I do not even remember when I started doing Yoga. I came to Germany the first time in 2001. In my first trip out of India I came to Germany, Spain and London. I visited many places, many yoga centers and met many people. Somehow I was always asked which tradition I came from and which kind of yoga I was doing. From these questions I was a little bit confused and normally I would not say that I am a confused person. However this question really confused me. In India I had never heard from any tradition. And then visiting different countries and different yoga centers people I hear people say 'I do this yoga, I do that yoga, I come from this tradition, I follow that tradition'. I heard this very often and I started wondering one thing: If Patanjali, who wrote the Yoga-Sutras 2600 years ago came to this world now and saw this he would be really shocked. I bet he never thought that there would be this many traditions and different ways of doing yoga.
If someone is doing yoga in India, he is doing yoga not the yoga-style of anyone. I believe this started here because people feel good if they feel that they belong to something, when they have a label. From my side I would like to let you know that I do not see myself coming from any tradition and I am not at all interested in starting a new tradition. I could come here and teach here and say this is 'Swami-style-yoga'. This is how traditions start. I feel that everybody is unique. Whatever Jutta, Yashendu or I will teach you or what you will teach to your students, it will always be unique. We all have our unique soul."
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This entry is very helpful. I’m from the US where Yoga has become very popular. I do not know how similar westernized styles of Yoga are to the Yoga you teach, but such a question is a focal point of many Yoga students. This perception misses the point of Yoga and is a reflection of the madness that Yoga can help to rid a person of.
I also didn’t realize there were different types of yoga until I went to India. Crazy!
It could be great if Yoga is only Yoga. Without any prefix names and styles and types.
Yoga changed my life, and I’ve learned many different yoga styles in my day, but now that I’ve been doing it for so long it is just a very personal thing to me. And I don’t get up in the morning and think “today I will do this type of yoga,or that type.” I just do the exercises my body needs and it is a whole realm to me now, not separate.