A STIMULATING PERSPECTIVE IN UNION WITH THE OLD-TIME WISDOM

When we started our Yoga journey back in 2010, our focus was on the traditional Ashtanga Yoga method. But as the time was passing by, we bump into our own personal limitations and understanding. This challenge us to travel the world and look for the best teachers we could find.

After years taking courses and workshops with many renown teachers, we found our teachers Dena Kingsberg and Dona Holleman.

The encounter with these strong individuals has shifted our perspective on our own personal practice and worldview.

This is our story.

How Dani Came To Yoga

I’ve started my Yoga journey in 2010 out of my desire to improve my surfing skills. By the time I was working as a waiter in a small restaurant in the Spanish city I’m coming from.

Committed to my decision of leaving behind the “bad life” I was having since my 20’s, I was determined to wake up early and go to surf before work. It was a very refreshing and energising experience to dip in the ocean with the first rays of the sun. The glassy water and being almost alone in the beach deepen the connection with the nature. I could feel a new dawning in my life.

One day, reading an article about surfing I stumble about the benefits of a yoga practice and its impact when you’re on the surfboard.

Soon afterwards a group of women came for a dinner to the restaurant. They were quite chatty, and they told me that they were yoga students pointing to one of the ladies, their teacher. This is how I came to know my very first yoga teacher, Ana.

The Teachers

Even though I’m from Spain, I’ve been studying yoga all around the world, including India for a few years, Australia and Italy. Although my main sources of inspiration are my teachers Dena Kingsberg and Dona Holleman, I have also studied in Goa with Rolf Naujokat for several months every year between 2012 and 2014, and attended many workshops with other renowned teachers.

It was only in 2015 when I first met Dena Kingsberg in India. I didn’t know much about her, just that “she was in the book too”. Shocked by the intensity of the practice in her presence she asked me: “Dani, are you taking a little holidays?”. By the end of that two week intensive practice with her I realised the depth and understanding she had that I’ve never found so far in any other teacher.

I mainly practice ashtanga but since 2016 I began to study with Dona Holleman. By the time I was quite captivated with the Carlos Castaneda’s books (and still am), and found it fascinating how much of a relationship has shamanism and yoga. Dona herself, has done an extensive research on the Castaneda’s books and she found a way to apply that knowledge into yoga, which was the reason I was attracted to her in the first place.

“The sculpture is already inside the stone, you only need to remove what is not the part of it.”

— Dona Holleman

How Yoga Transforms You

Transformation: “change of shape, appearance, structure, condition, nature or character”

Undoubtedly, Yoga is a tool for transformation. It involves a constant process of change. But, all the changes experienced from a human perspective are challenging, tough and often painful. All of us are subject to change, it’s unavoidable. It is how the Universe works. We grow through pain.

The most important thing is how much we learn and how conscious we go through it. The quicker you get it, the sooner you’ll be out of it. And here is where Yoga enters into the equation. With a regular Yoga practice, you are putting yourself daily, voluntarily and consciously into a bearably painful “micro-situations”. All of these situations, day after day, month after month, and year after year, add up and become accumulative growth. The most valuable part of this is when life throws you out of balance, you’ve done your homework and therefore the impact is minor, and the process of regaining your equilibrium smoother.

Think about it like this: just as a diamond undergoes enormous quantities of pressure to become a jewel, with the Yoga practice we do the same. The only difference is that with the tool of Yoga, we split all that immense amount of pressure into digestible bits that we take everyday.