I am never in church "on sundays" but I know I love the feeling going into one, when I was in Singapore, in litte india and I went by a place out of wich there came chanting I looked in and a older man wellcomed me into what I think was a smaller ramakrishna temple.
they were doing an evening Aarti there wich was very powerfull and filled me with positive feelings,
and when I was [just 1,5days] in Rishikesh, tired, jetlagged, mentally a bit off & not really in the mood of travelling and also the cold weather in the low himalays..
that evening the Parmart Ashram did their mighty aarti wich for me then felt almost like a sekt ting, almost scary actually ha ha, but! very powerful and spiritual feeling and many people there attending.. cool in a interesting way the way I felt right then.

also during my stay in the ashram this winter in Kerala I really liked the Aarti they did there, very simple but still with a lovely, passionate spiritual feeling, probably many felt it was boring and for sure not to many where attending them in the late evening after the late satsang..
I bought a CD with the different chantings they mostly used at the ashram, and I have realized that mainly I've been listening to the aarti,
and each time I daydream away and get this feeling of getting neregized but at the same time calm.. he he well I like it and it might sound strange but hey..
  

so what is my deal, is it the spirituality?
I actually wish I was religous, probably a quit nice feeling to be that..
but for me it is to strange "to be true" with gods & miracles etc.
maybe I am to westernized in that way so that things that cant really be proven and also when many things are disputed etc so I cant belive it then?
I mean somewhere all religions have the same foundation, and it is for sure not the way we live right now around the world..

quit strange maybe how I have a hard time with religions, and still doing yoga and believe in prana flow etc. but then maybe if I would practice some religion and feel things perhaps I would be a beliver? he he
maybe I am a beliver of the force/ cosmos/ brahman / universla energies etc. but not really realizing it..

jaya jaya aarti vighnavinayaka

1 - ..getting the new teas to our tea bar at buddha spa,
we decided to finally let go of our espresso machine [we served eco coffe beans though], and going for more tea variations instead, and it feels totally right..
I mean we are still a small place and it is not a café or anything, it is more of a service towards the lovely people that have found our small place.
I think when it arrives we are gonna have about 6 sorts of herbal teas and of course the great white tea wich the flowering teas are made of[wich is actually from the same plant as black tea but more like green tea, but at least no black tea at our place] that are all exclusive to us, our own blends/variations of tea. plus the 3 forms of Cretan [Greece] herbal teas we have some of aswell : )
sure probably someone else have the same or very similar since the world is huge ha ha but still very nice to be able to offer something different.

2 - hopefully getting an answer about this curse I am interesting to take later on this spring. gonna send them an e-mail again now I think since they are not the best in getting back ha ha.

3 - the "yoga holiday" I am arranging for the 3rd year in a row. it is the week after midsummer as usual, and already 4 out of 9 rooms are booked and paid a pre fee for, so if any one interested reading this, dont wait to long, last year i had to say no to some people sadly..

4 - getting started with my personal practice, I have not done anything since I came home since I became sick right away and still are not strong, but next week I will start to slowly build up and do light practice to get started, niiice!
I have some thoughts about doing a small meditation "corner" in my bedroom in the space I dont use at the moment.. reading/relax & meditation space or something..

5 - to go to bed since today was the first morning class this term, I went up early bird at 05.50am this morning, so a loooong day!

AUM tat sat

I want to write today about this email that I got from one of my yoga participants.. I got it a while ago and just want to share some with whom ever reads this : )

 it is some about destiny, it is some about feeling thankful, it is some about the effects of yoga and the experiences when doing yoga more regularly..

 I always try to explain to the participants that are truly interested in practicing yoga that it is importent they try to do it regularly, then the effects will be experienced more clearly. and if doing this more then once a week of cours even more clearly and "faster". of course it can never be given a timeline when some things might hapend or not, I think if we search to much we might not find it, we might instead be more stressed up with not getting what we want and then loose faith and quit..
regularity is eve more importent for thoose who would like to find the benefits of meditation..

 my dear freinds, there are no shortcuts..

 also we all are looking for different things in our yoga practice, and what I really like about the yogic journey is that this will also change during it. we start maybe for examble with doing asana practice because we feel stiff, then after a while suddenly we are longing more for the part where we just lie still an breath, and when having a break from yoga for what ever reason we also realize that we actually are feeling a bit more mentally unstable when not doing our yoga practice etc.
many effects are subtle and "grows" in us slowly and "changes us" for the better, often we dont even realize it until we dont do our practice he he.

anyway, one of my yoga participants [lets call this person "ॐ"] have had what I understand a rough period recently, and lately been almost hyper active in the mind.. and decided to see if yoga could be a good way get balanced.

 so.. ॐ went to a yogic festival, wich is quit a step if not that experienced in the yogic world, there ॐ met a girl and they talked and this girl recommended me as a teacher.
I have seen the progress of ॐ during this time, and it is only been maybe 6 months, for me it is clearly the mental bit that is most obviously changed. ॐ has been one of my most regular participants during this term, 2-3 times a week [mostly 3times].
I am sure ॐ also does some things at home, like trying to meditate and maybe some breating excersize or so.

I know also that the calming effect of natural breath and full yogic breath is something that ॐ has really enjoyed, it something so easy but if doing it regularly and consious it makes such a difference, but "everyone" thinks that everything that is gonna give results has to be so difficult and advanced, but the fact is easy does it, if doing it regularly..it is so clearly that everything is connected and I think that most of the time we need to start with the mental issues, then the rest will come..

so.. ॐ wrote me this e-mail and explained to me that with yoga ॐ has goten to understand what relaxation really is both mentally and physically.. also ॐ have had a quit strong psychological respons [and ॐ has talked to people with knowledge about theese things].. as a better sleep wich was a big factor for ॐ that the sleep was terrible, but also quit interesting ॐ has started to process a lot while dreaming, things that was earlier maybe mentally blocked with the instinctively defense we have when things are to hard for us to deal with.
and then when ॐ mentally started to open up, also the physical body is starting to respond and "rince out",

so.. ॐ then ended with saying "thank you" and how happy ॐ was about taking the desicion to go to the yogic festival from there find me & my yoga thru a recommendation, and also to find "the small oasis" buddha spa [my studio].

my point with this blog is for you to understand, if practice regularly with an open mind & patience the effects will come, in many levels depending on your mental & physical status.

I just love to hear when participants tell me what effects yoga has given them, it doesn't have to be enourmous changes, but..
for some when practice patiently it can actually give you a whole new way of looking at things and a new way of how you approach things both in your mind and in your physical life. 

sometimes you realize the difference, sometimes your friends sees the difference more clearly ; )

so thank you ॐ for your e-mail, and for sharing..

so a short one in swedish about the "try yoga week" I am gonna have..

mellan 8-13 februari kommr jag ha lite "prövo vecka" på mina yogklasser,
ja kommer ha reducerat pris för den som vill komma & testa, även för dig som varit med innan med mig eller annan lärare som nu känner att du behöver komma tillbaka till yogans värld.  

 1ggn - 80kr [ord. 150kr]
2ggr - 100kr [ord 300kr, båda dock med samma person som kommer

 för de som under februari bestämmer sig för att köpa ngt kort kommer jag dra av den summan du betalat under prövoveckan destuom.

välkommen att boka in dig om du vill komma..

today is tuesday, I've been working this last weekend at this huge NIKE convention.. this year it was about 1250 participants who came from all over to be inspired by all theese instructors in various kinds of training like spinning, yoga, kettlebells, aerobics, dance, martial art, step up, ragga, street dance, functional training, core, body pump etc etc.

some of my collegues at the fitness gym where I teach once a week was among the instructors that was invited to teach there.
there is a blend of the Nike team instructors, some new upcomming ones and a whole bunch of international "stars" teaching there.
for Jessica Clarén [picture] it was her first as a presenter at Nike and it went really well, so I am happy for her. I like whenpeople who are pssionat about their thing gets a break and can at least sometimes get some credd for the work they do.

I have been there working for I dont know how many years ha ha, and I allways say "this is my last one" especially last year when I got really sich in flu afterwards. but this year felt like one of the easiest ones so far strangely..
my job there is to be somekind of assistent to the girl from NIKE who runs the whole convention, so ot can be everything. we are like co-ordinators of the staf, make sure all things if anything happends will be corrected & fixed. we mainly make sure all is under controll so nothing can happend.
it all starts with building up the whole thing ha ha the day before..
it is a huge thing, I dont think people realize how much work is behind this..
so anyway, long days, not to much sleep, indoors and outdoors, eating poorly, some stress and on top of that 1300 persons running around with their bacterias and are sweaty etc.. I've been sick afterwards at least the 2 last years ha ha.
but this year I just slept A LOT yesterday and felt totally beaten up, but I am not feeling ill so I am very happy!

so now after my south east asia journey, beeing sick when comming home and then this event/convention, I now today feel like I am more ready to put all my focus again on what I truly love, the world of yoga & teaching yoga classes..
it has been rather calm so far, so I hope it will come some more participants so I at least can afford my rent etc.
I am aware of the fact that this lifestyle is almost giving me inner stress about financial dilemmas, but I still prefer doing what I love to do, and feel blessed being able to be where I am.

so now I am longing for this term to get going..

peace..

my yogic journey started about 10-11 years I think with trying "poweryoga" at the trendy gym I was some kind of manager for.
I think for me at that time I was to a point interested in alternative things but I was not inte new age stuff and thought as so many others that they were hippies [wich I thought was cool in a way]..
I had some minor problems with my lower back due to tight hip flexors and gluteus [ass muscles] from both my youth playing a lot of soccer, but mainly from teaching spinning classes and using clips on the pedals pulling the leg up, and of course not to much stretching..

I dont remember exactly what I felt after the first yoga class but I am sure I liked it since I am now where I am.
Even poweryoga was something mysterious at that time for all people and I think for me mostly in the beginning it was a challenge and it felt very good being a bit more flexible, I do remember how it so clearly was a love/hate thing to do yoga ha ha.
..but quit soon when starting to find the yogic breath or in this case a form of ujjay breath I started to long more after theese classes.
Ulrica who was my teacher and collegue at this place encouraged me also and I think I asked her quit some amount of questions ha ha.

I had som really cool experiences, I remember especially when during one asana sudenly something "popped" in my lower back, like when you twist sometimes and your "spine make noices".. I felt a great warm sensation in my whole lower back, and I felt like my energy drained, but in such a nice way. probably something that was stuck deep inside "unlocked" and as a counter effect some tensions released etc.
I rested for a while in childspose [wich was more like a hare pose with arms forward] and felt strange in a lovely way.
at this point in my yoga journey I had became quit strong and did jumps from forward bend to plank and down to chaturanga...
but now I couldn't even come up to a easy cat pose or for sure not to a as we called it down dog without arms shaking and body felt super heavy [but soft].
after some tries and a lot of resting I decided to leave the class, I couldn't continue. afterwards I stayed to let the teacher know what has happend so she didn't think I left in a rude way.

so to develope my own knowledge I took a short 3 day course at a gym, they call it teacher training but really.. hm..
anyway after this course since that period mostly girls did yoga, and there were not to many male teachers out there I started to get offers about maybe teaching? and poweryoga was strongly on a forward march then!
I didn't do my course to teach and I didn't at all feel ready to teach even with my earlier teaching experiences and the amount of yoga practice I had.
I decided finally to go a bit longer course with Ulrica, she was if not the one at least one of the first bringing this type of yoga to Sweden.
I think also since having her as my teacher from the start I felt like I needed to go there if I am gonna teach since the other course was sadly not near in quality [but still I learned some for my personal yoga practice].

a while after doing this course I startet to teach som class at a gym/fitness place, I think this was about 2002/3 and later on I did the second step in her teacher course in 2004 also.
already at this point I realized I had a good base of knowledge and experience. ans also I started to get more inquiries about teaching poweryoga. I had this as my hobby and slowly built up my experience in teaching but at the same time worked and studied as anyone else : )

along the way I had more classes and also startet to teach at companies and some private group etc, and from there startet slowly to cut back some at working and having yoga as a semi income, that felt really exciting,
also during this period [I guess I was quit lost into the world of yoga already then ha ha] I started my yoga web shop "namaste.se" wich started with selling some PVC sticky yogamats. this was already in 2003/2004 so I was probably one of the first selling yogamats etc,
and mine where really good already then ha ha.
actually one of my early prime years when more studios and gyms started to have poweryoga I sold about 800 yogamats in one year ha ha.
now with all competition around and the fact yoga is so trendy I am not even close to that amount, but I run my shop mainly because I LOVE it, not to much profit really.

anyway, Ulrica is still a main yoga figure of course here in Sweden, and she has a beautiful studio here in Stockholm aswell, it is a much bigger and "professional" studio then the small one we have : )
Even though I am not anymore in this style I feel that I have her to thank somehow that my ife is where it is right now, it all has to start somewhere..
"Om Yoga" her studio is called if any one is interested.

on this yogic journey of mine I did find myself being a bit different form my fellow collegues teaching, something made me have a slightly other approach, and as you might or might not know I ended up changing yogastyle totally about 3 years ago.. but already before that gliding towards this without really knowing or understanding it since I didn't really know much about "the other school", the more classical form of yoga..

I will write about that soon I think..

I have to tell you this short story, ok it is not much for the world but for me this is amazing he he

a while ago at my studio in Stockholm this women came to my collegue.
she asked if she could write somethng about our place and get some photos. she was a frilance writer and was doing a reportage for a yoga magazine in Netherlands about Stockholm.
of course she could, that is of course fun to perhaps be seen in a foregin yoga magazine : ).

anyway then we didn't hear any more of here, and we had hoped for her to send us a copy if she wrote something about is in the end, but then I guess it slipped out of our mind really.

so.. then for about 2 weeks ago maybe, in Thailand...
due to many different circumstances we ended up in some cosy bungalows almost at the end of the island of koh chang, I have actually been here at this "resort" once for many years ago.
here it is really quiet & calm and a good place to relax, feels almost like we are lonely here. 1 or 2 places furter down from this place was a more fancy place were we looked aswell on accomondation a nice bungalow but with tv and refridgerator etc, so we decided to take this slightly cheaper and much more "thai style" bungalow by the sea but amongst the trees. very nice!
anyway  went back to the fancier place just to tell them we had already booked another place, but said that we probably will come to them and eat anyway. she was "thai polite" and smiled and said yes your are very wellcome. that is an fact down here, more thai locals are getting much more rude etc if compare to the first times I visited this country, Iguess the tourism is slowly unfortunatly destroying the Thailand I fell in love with..

anyway, this place had a really chilled out area in their restaurant with hammoks and thai-triangle cushions, also they haf wifi so I could bring my laptop to see my e-mails etc.
so we decided to go there also to be kind to them, but mostly because it looked really nice and at the same time calm [we had been on a slightly less calm place the day before and moved right away, I am so old ha ha but I really dont enjoy bucket drinking kids and fire shows on the beach and a bit to loud music in chill out beach places]..

anyway 1 or 2 dys after this we decide to eat breakfast at the same place, I went there a bit before the others, and I talked to the staff there etc and looked around in the reception area, there was this magazine & book stand there in a corne, the one magazine on the top was about yoga so I picked it up to look at.

it was this yoga magazine from Netherlands...
in my head somewhere I was laughing and thought "what if this is the paper she might have written about us in".
I browsed thru the paper and there... at page 78 was a 2 page centerspread about "Yogastad Stockholm".
and right away amongs other pictures of placec I recognizedwas a picture of our place!!

ok, so it was a general reportage about yoga & eco frinedly places in Stockholm, but still we were amongs them in this magazine that I found here in "nowhere" on an island in thailand.
so I asked the staf there if by any chance they new who left the paper there, I am not ruse why but ha ha.
then a woman in the restaurant [and there was only here there ha ha] said "I did"..
then she said she bought at the airport on the way here, and she had wanted to find yoga on this island somewhere but no.
so I told her about the place we had done yoga the day before, wich actually I didn't recommend but still better then nothing. but then she said she was leaving that afternoon so now it was to late..

I had no idea what the text said since it was in dutch language.
so I asked here if she could translate some of the text about us.
I wont say all and I dont remember exactly all things, but this text about us was very positive.
I felt a bit warm actually [and remember I was already in the hot thailand wearing nothing but surfshorts, flip flops & t-shirt.].. ha ha

I think the first sentence was translated to something like
"an absolute recommendation is buddha spa".. I just tried to look at an online translator and something like that, but if anyone knows dutch here is the original phrase: "een echte aanrader is buddha spa", so let me know if means something else ha ha.
and the text underneeth the actual picture said something like "buddha spa offers all for body & mind" : )

anyway the point here is the fact that I found this yoga magazine from Netherlands in a small quiet resort on the other end of the world amost, and that the person who put it there was still present and had put it there only moments before, and she said that I could have the magazine aswell..
for me this is more then just a coincidence, what are the odds?
..destiny

AUM Shanti

since I stayed for 8 days, this the 8th part of this blog about my days in the ashram will be the last I think..

some things then to summarize my stay in southern India.

I am sure I will go again, perhaps I will go to one of their other ashrmas since this one is suppose to be the most "easy" one.
if or when I go again it will be for a longer period, but it is allways good to try first and feel like longing back then going for to long and dont wanna go back again I think.

I was expecting it to be more strict actually, but at the same time I really liked the way it was, and it is allways your choice what you do with your time when at the ashram.
a hard thing actually is all the hello's & good byes, when you get more used to that I think it is a chance to meet a lot of interesting people there. but actually I think they should make the minimum stay longer, or perhaps divide the dorms to 1 "long stay dorm" and one "short stay dorm", so that when you are stying for a bit longer you have a chance to get to know people more.. but at the same time, might be nice to be able to be kind of anonymous. I think the first time as with all first times in new places, there is a lot to take in, the next time you come it is not equally exciting and perhaps easier to quicker get into a more relaxed mood and get more out of the whole spiritual experience.

I actually in the end started to enjoy the long Satsangs more, I think for many reasons.
- the actual feeling of all chanting and the vibrations from so many people doing it simultaniously.
- you start to remember the chants and can easier follow without looking in the papers you get.
- physically you are more open and strong so sitting down on the floor is not as much of an issue anymore and you can enjoy everything else more, as with the meditation part before the chanting.
- you are more mentally calm also after a few days, and more ope to just join in with your singin, in the beginning it felt almost embarrasing ha ha.. someone told me that a real good statsang chanting becomes best when many not to good people chant/sing, then the all together sound becomes better and vibrations better aswell. and it is true, so many bad voices in there ended up in one collected beautiful chanting..

and actually chanting is consithered to be a spiritual devotional practice within the path of Bhakti Yoga.
and even if not relogoius you feel good after satsang.

one thing they talk about the really true yogis are that you should actually try to practice some of all paths of yoga, so you dont get fanatic about just one path wich is most common in our world, we have all or focus on Raja Yoga mostly..

ooh and I am not sure why bu I loved the Aarti we did every night wich ended each and everyday. and after Aarti you got some kind of sweets.
I loved the "Halwa" wich we also got often with our meals in the dinning hall.
Hawla can be many things and variations but we got somekind of sweet cardemum, coconut & rice version. sooo tasty!

the last day I saw them preparing for the new years puja, that I missed out on.
amazing what they do thieese patterns using their hands and powders etc.
cool!