Yoga runs through human history like a river meandering through changing landscapes. Shaping and shaped by the curves of human bodies and societies, yoga is always in continuous variation. The yoga I teach today is very different from the practice i was given by my teachers who in turn radically tweaked and transformed what they […]
To most of us, yoga is about being awake, mindful and aware. However, a certain measure of mindlessness seems to be vital as a form of counter pose in modern yoga, one we often resist going into. What function does the unawakened have in yoga? Blog post for Supersoul yoga on the overlooked practice of […]
A post written for Super Soul Yoga
If you have practiced yoga more than once, you may already have experienced what we could call its cyclical aspect. You return to a pose, to a breath, to a sensation knowing you have been here before, yet this time it feels slightly different.
If we […]
Join us for a week in the beautiful mountains of Portugal. Birgitte will teach a yoga retreat supporting a somatic self-inquiry on your mat with slow, deep posture flows, sensitive and natural breath release and sweet bedtime meditations.
The yoga posture practice is based on continuous movements that gradually deepen your sensitivity to sensation […]
Teaching yoga is a rewarding job in itself. It is also a job that takes a little extra. The originality and freshness of your teaching comes from the depth of your living practice. This retreat helps you find ways to teach from your body rather than from knowledge or belief. It is also an opportunity […]
Most professional musicians practice scales and arpeggios throughout their career. Scales allow the artist to become one with the instrument. In that way, music can express itself freely and passionately without fingers struggling to find the keys. This is not unlike yoga posture practice. Here the instrument is your body. A yoga teacher will take […]
“The difference between an enlightened being and one who is not enlightened is that the one who is not enlightened thinks there is a Difference” (Some great zen master)
Before we put 2015´s endless stream of bad news behind us and start fresh, allow me to share something that happened last […]
I had no other way, always presupposing that I couldn´t chose freedom”
(Franz Kafka)
Every now and then, we modern yogis need someone to mess with our heads. Franz Kafka is a man for that job. His short story “Report to an academy” makes beautiful use of our monkey theme to reflect on […]
There are times where our life just flows and we take the corners as if we are on rails. No friction or bumps in the road. And there are times where we get out of a bed with a heavy heart and drag our feet through the day. I think it’s safe to say that […]
Practice yoga in one of the most beautiful, well-kept yoga shalas in Europe. Milelja retreat center has been hosting retreats for nearly 30 years in a homely and intimate atmosphere, plunged right in between the deep blue Mediterranean and the rough volcanic mountains. We welcome students of all levels and branches of the yoga family […]
A dear friend recently wrote to me telling that her friends thought yoga was self-centered. In Denmark this has been argued passionately in news papers and social media. Is the roaring success of mindfulness and yoga in the west not just making us less engaged in other people and more absorbed in our own little […]
Q: where do you place the needle on ”yoga as a spiritual practice” versus ”yoga as a body shaper” scale.
B: Yoga is for me is unity. Therefore, it’s hard for me to place that needle anywhere. I see no opposition between spirituality and embodiment. There is nothing about your body that is not […]
When you find the toothpaste in the refrigerator. When you lie awake at 5AM. When the meditation bell rings and you realize you just spent 30 minutes grocery shopping. When your mind goes round and round in circles to the rhythm of whatever rimes with anxiety. Say hello to monkey mind.
Migrating from Buddhist teachings, […]
Yoga is no longer the exclusive privilege of solitary cave men. Today´s yogis work for money, have relationships and live busy lives. This can spark the apparent dilemma between “my yoga practice” and “dealing with stuff”. You can hear it when we modern yogis talk about practice as that other thing we need to counter […]
Yoga is no longer just the privilege of meditating cave men. Modern yogis live engaged lives full of relationships and responsibility. This sometimes leaves us with an apparent dilemma of balancing our time for practice and everyday life. Instead of seeing yoga as the art of balancing two separate things, these two workshops will approach […]
Exotic as it was to teach retreats around Europe for 3 months it feels quite lovely come back home. Looking at the kids going off to school this morning I caught myself thinking that things will go back to normal now.
The mind is a funny one.
Back to normal? As if that […]
“To be one is always to become with many” (Donna Haraway).
Body
There is no way to be sure. But I read in a book the other day that human genomes can be found in only about 10 percent of the cells that make up my body. The other 90 percent are filled with […]
Love grows like grass. Within and beyond the nuclear family trees trunks, the tiny roots of love shoot out in all directions. Love is an unstoppable multiplicity. A spiky, unbreakable, bristling vitality. Breath by breath, year after year love overgrows an endless array of relational landscapes. Love is wild, ceaseless. Once the small cuttings take […]
A story about my first meeting with a spiritual teacher: A Tibetan Lama who handed me an axe instead of teaching me how to meditate. That was actually a much better idea than i was prepared to admit at the time.
Published by the creatively maladjusted Rebelle Society.
This is it!
“Whatever is […]
What does yoga postures, acupuncture, mindfulness and pizza have in common? At the Copenhagen Business School, scholars and managers met to discuss the role of Mindfulness Meditation in high performing organizations. Revisitng my former role as an academic scholar i presented a historical reflexion of the corporate mindfulness boom. See the video here
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My latest for rebelle Society. Yoga in india was once a dangerous and subversive practice spitting in the face of power. What happened?
http://www.rebellesociety.com/2013/06/30/the-rebellious-heart-of-yoga/
Wild Yogis
To us modern westerners, the image of yoga posture practice is one of beauty, peace and good health. Yoga looks neat. A little too neat according to […]
A blog post for the creatively maladjusted Rebelle Society. Postulating bodly that yoga is not about controlling your self or the world around you but rather to reveal the absence of any boundary between them.
http://www.rebellesociety.com/2012/10/18/beyondtheboundary/
full text below:
By Birgitte Gorm Hansen. “You can not always control what goes on outside. But […]
Here is a blog post/essay I did for Elephant Yoga. relevant for yogis and mediators alike.
original post.
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2012/10/yoga-need-not-be-about-control-birgitte-gorm-hansen/
text version
Yoga makes some big and audacious promises.
According to The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Yoga is a practice that will stop the chatter of your mind*. I don’t know about your mind […]
