For yogis, contemplation of nature has always been one of the main sources of knowledge about the workings of the mind, the cycles of life and the unity, non-separation, of all creation. The Upanishads teach us a fundamental truth: the individual self (Atman) is a reflection of the absolute reality (Brahman). Through the divine origin mankind is interconnected with all of the creation. Natural phenomena, all of its processes are not lying outside of ourselves, are not just objects of our investigation - they are part of us too. When we look at a mountain, we are also the mountain. When we sit at the river, we are also the river. Nature is a mirror of our inner life and our mind is the bridge between these two worlds.
January 24, Saturday, 19:15-20:15
at Three Boons Yoga Berlin-Kreuzberg, Dresdener Str. 11 or on Three Boons Livestream via the Website
All are welcome!
Costs: free if you took the class right before. Otherwise by donation to or 3BY/ USC Login
om om om
Recognizing the greatness of life requires courage. This means to stand up for the dignity of being a human, don’t succumb to the burden of the monkey mind, but rise above. In the asana practice Ujjayi breathing - upward striving victory from Sanscrit- is the manifestation of this intention. The bodhisattva vow to live for the awakening of others also includes yourself. Don’t be shy, or think that it is silly and unattainable. Find within you the voice that wants to be happy and free and let it be the front singer, listen to the melody and the lyrics of each moment in joy and clarity. And agree to nothing less.
📷 @a_shikina ✌🏼
Allowing the practice to touch you is essential in yoga. In the end you let it penetrate all of your being - thoughts, words and actions. Not as a restriction, but as a very special kind of aliveness that is both focused and receptive.
Begin to listen with the heart, let the chants touch you, cry in shawasana, laugh after a handstand, let it be immediate, with no analysis in between. Even if you can explain the connections within the body - I bend the knees and the lower back straightens - don’t start to treat it as something mundane. The beginners mind is in constant discovery, that is how it stays awake and in here-and-now.
Suzuki Roshi pointed out: a professional sees only one solution, a beginner sees a vast field of opportunities. So who are you now?
📷 @a_shikina 🙏🏼
Ultimately our practice is about how to be human, a being with a potential of awakening. It is about recognizing your own awakening.
Practice starts with discipline - coming to school (three/four) five (six, seven) times a week, showing up, silencing the disorienting voices in the head. Every time you step in the mat or sit down for meditation, you already allow for a possibility of transformation. To stay amused by a repetitive practice, that doesn’t imply a competition or even a participation medal - that is pretty bold move. For a society of ever changing entertainment this choice is radical.
My favorite quote from Kurasawa’s “The four Samurais”: - Are you willing to join the (righteous) battle that would bring you neither money nor fame? - YES!
📷 @a_shikina 🙏🏼✨
Being a yogi means being an anarchist-a fiercely open-hearted rebel, who is not taking the presented reality for granted. A yogi is an investigator: what is my body? What is my mind? WHAT am I? These are the real questions. Practice is a way to answer them. Spiritual teachings - scriptures, talks of teachers dead or alive - sound like answers, but will you be able to find the resonance between their wisdom and your life?
tbc
📷 @a_shikina 🙏🏼❤️🔥
This is Nicholas Roerich depicting the Himalayas as he observed them during his grand (and seriously extreme) Asian expedition in the late 1920s. I saw these paintings as a kid and was hypnotized by the colors, the shapes, and the mystery vibrating in the thin air of the canvas.
When I later saw @nepalimsya_travels photos from Nepal, I understood that, in using those unbelievable pigments, Roerich was less of a dreamer and more of a realist.
Wide and mighty, purple-blue Kangchenjunga — the entrance to the blissful kingdom of Shambala; the place where Shiva drank poison to save the world and where Lakshmi was born.
Mount Kailash — the precious snow jewel where Shiva resides with Parvati, known as Mount Meru, the center of Buddhist cosmology.
Ninety-three otherworldly paintings he brought back from that expedition, and hundreds more he created after it. Roerich, just like yogis of the past, sensed the spiritual force emanating from the Himalayas. In his diaries, he writes that one cannot reduce the mountainous state of mind to the banality of habits on the ground.
That other state is a calling.
If the Himalayas have ever stirred something in you too — an ancient memory, a quiet longing, a spark of wonder — join us this April. Let’s walk those paths together and see what the mountains choose to show us.
Image 1 & 2: Kanchenjunga, N. Roerich, 1936
Image 3: Mount Kailash, N. Roerich, 1933
Image 4: Photo by @nepalimsya , sunset over Machapuchare mountain
Friends, this is happening: April 2026, Nepal, trekking and yoga, let’s go together! Me and the Himalayan expert @nepalimsya_travels are organizing a fantastic 10-day tour: we will hike at 3,000 m elevation, watch the sunrise over snowy peaks, meditate and practice asana in the mountains that are the home of yoga itself. Amidst this striking beauty, let’s tune in the mind-body, shake off the dust of city routines, begin to see wider and breath deeper. I sense a great adventure! Maybe you too?
We aim at a rather small group, so that the groove is just right. Let me know, if you want to join! Check the link in bio for a day-to-day plan and detailed description. Or simply ask me directly anything you wish to know.
Can’t wait to go on a journey with you!
🕉 🕉 🕉
📷 by @nepalimsya_travels
Focusing on the breath is the most common entry to dharana – concentration - and dhyana –
perhaps dissolving the active mind so much in the focus, that meditation enters. Whoever tried this
technic knows, that it is difficult. That the mind is noisy, and attention is weak. Yet not giving up
is essential – we are anyway not trying to achieve or accomplish anything. Observing the breath on
a meditation cushion is a laboratory, an experiment. But it is also a meeting with a close and dear
friend. You can listen to your own breath and think: „hey sweetheart, how have you been? A bit
shallow today, the stones of thoughts are hindering your stream? Let’s remove them to the side
and breath in a bit deeper. I see you are rushing today? Those plans of tomorrow afternoon are
chasing you there? You know what, I’ll tell them they stay put until the bell rings. Let’s now take a
slow pace, like the honey dripping from the spoon into a tea cup.“
For a practitioner their breath hast to become the closest friend. The most intimate confessor of
what is on the mind. A doctor, that can soothe the pain of the mind and the body. Breath is a
bridge between the mind and the body. It is not that they are separate in the first place, but the
mind tricks us easily in it being the „defining“ force, while the body is merely „following orders.”
Breath is a physical process, it operates through the autonomic nervous system, we don’t need to
decide to breath, this is in the code of our DNA – breathing.
We can become aware of some of the autonomic processes in the body – such as heart beat. If you
seat very quietly, you will begin to sense it. You may even observe, how your attention can speed
up the beating of the heart. I have not experienced yet that my attention is able to slow down the
heartbeat, but I have heard some yogis are capable of even stopping their heart. It is not very
natural or advisable I would say, but it is definitely possible. The breath shows itself more easily to
our senses – through the hearing we perceive the sound, depending on the depth of the breath we
can observe expanding and narrowing of the chest as the air enters the lungs. We are able to sense
the cooler air entering the nose holes and warmer air leaving it. Observing the process of the
inhalation and the exhalation – not only the final results of it – exhaled - inhaled, but all of it,
uninterrupted tides of breathing, of that vast ocean.
When I am in the mountains I like to change the perspective and see how they are hanging upside down from the belly of our planet, sharp snowy peaks striving to leave the field of gravity, to pierce through the atmosphere. This is not a kingdom for humans. Time, air, skies here are different. I abandon the role of an all-mighty conqueror and become an animal with hungry lungs, unstable body temperature, limited sight and just two feet to walk on. Kingdom of mountains presents the vastness, overwhelming massive of Earth’s skin. Mountains are Earth’s skin. The history of our little blue dot is all in the rocks. This summer I entered a cave that was more than 80 million years old. The wind from the corridor of time rushed through my ears. This is 77.2 million years before genus Homo began to use stone tools. This is 79 million 865 thousand years before human consciousness evolved to the level of using language. This must be the reason, why all spiritual traditions identify mountains as places of unstruck power: they are the evidence of existence – world – life unbound and not divided by the thinking mind. They are the witnesses of creation wild and not described in words. Through them we remember freedom and imperturbability. Soon I’ll be seeing the Himalayas.
Landed in the future
Turned out it is today
Thank God we were holding hands
As the wild wind from the sea was blowing
the fires and their works further in the multilayered with-no-end sky
We only marveled at the stillness and glow of the heart
🕉️
Light to all, light to the Universe💟
