Nyilza Yoga is the name under which I want to share with you my knowledge about and experience with yoga. But why 'nyilza'? It is a word from Ladakhi, the language high in northern India. It is the word for the symbol of the sun and moon together.
Years ago, I started taking yoga classes at the gym. At the end of my first yoga class, I was in final relaxation and felt I wanted to experience this more often. Learning to come to surrender, a deep relaxation in every part of my body. In the following years I took weekly yoga classes in a nice yoga studio with a very experienced yoga teacher. A curiosity developed in me about how you could have so much knowledge about yoga and share it with others. At that point in my life I was still searching for exactly what to do, so I went with my sister to get more information about this yoga teacher studies where I felt right at home. I convinced myself that after years of university studies, it was ok to try a practical study for one year. And so, at age twenty-six, I finally began a study of which I enjoyed every single class. I completed the full four years of study and took additional courses and modules. All the class days and all the course material were just the right nutrition for my body and mind. Every day I went to the fine, quiet, building of the training, felt like a gift. I learned to experience a deep form of surrender, but at the same time I also started to feel my own power, my inner fire more.
The years of training have allowed me to develop in a way and in a rhythm so close to myself that I can no longer live without it. No more without yoga, no more without looking clearly at myself and the world around me. Yoga for me now is like brushing my teeth in the morning. If there really is no other way, I skip for one time, but much rather I wake up on my yoga mat a second time every morning and start the day after first taking space and time for myself.
During the years of my yoga training, my adventures in Ladakh also began. In northern India lies a large part of the Himalayas, an area with mostly small villages in green valleys high in the mountains. Through my yoga training, my desire to practice yoga in the country of origin, India, grew. And although I had already made many trips, I felt insecure to travel through India alone. So it was that I joined a yoga retreat in Ladakh with an amazing Belgian yoga teacher. At the end of the retreat I sat in a quiet spot in the mountains around the village of Hemisshukpachan and I felt: I have found my home. I had been looking at apartments in the Netherlands for a few months in the city, always with the disappointing response that it was forgiven to someone else. However surreal and unrealistic it felt in the following weeks that I would have found my home here in the mountains, I could not suppress my desire to go back. After six months, I returned and stayed with the people who are now my Ladakhi family. I got to know the local way of life. I marveled at everything because life is still so close to self-sufficient, so different from my life in a city in the Netherlands. I wanted to learn everything, because I saw these as valuable and meaningful experiences. To learn how to provide for your own basic needs. It all made sense to me to learn where the water in the house comes from, make fire and learn about growing grains, vegetables, fruits and caring for cows. It matched the things I also learned in my yoga training. Just as I practiced the squat at home on my yoga mat to access the first chakra, people here are always sitting on the floor or in a squat. Themes of patience, material detachment and surrender to nature's plan, are naturally woven into people's way of life and nature here. People work incredibly hard to harvest enough each September to get through the harshly cold winter. Despite the hard work, there is no stress and time is always taken to make fresh hot meals every day and tea is always taken to the field.
Many of the themes and exercises from my yoga training I can experience and deepen in Ladakh in a natural way, outside my yoga mat. The infinite mountains with nothing but snow on the peaks, bring me a natural peace and quiet that let me experience the stillness within myself as well. At the top of the world, I come closer and deeper to myself. Always, when I return to Ladakh after having been in the Netherlands for a while, I take in the fresh, pure air and understand more and more why this place is my home. This place lets me be who I am, free from all the stimuli of Western life. The endless choices, distractions, sounds, images, discussions and expectations make me get lost in my thoughts, doubts and uncertainties. A life closer to the basics of our existence, closer to the essence, helps me to be who I am. And yet, I also continue to feel connected to my life in the Netherlands. I want to bridge these two worlds that make up my life. And that is why Nyilza Yoga was born. I want to share with others my acquired knowledge about yoga, yoga philosophy and also everything I have learned about Tibetan Buddhism and about living close to the essence. Yoga put me on the path to start looking clearly, at myself and at the world around me. To live consciously. Ladakh lets me do that even without my yoga mat.
Nyilza thus. The word in Ladakh for the symbol of the sun and moon together. This symbol appears on top of many of the stupas you find at temples and monasteries of Tibetan Buddhism. The two opposing energies in the universe of the sun and the moon together in one symbol, in one word. I was amazed when I first learned this word. I love how these two different energies become one in this word. This is what yoga is all about for me. Balancing all the energies within ourselves. Left and right, the feminine and the masculine, the lower and the higher chakras. Balancing the opposites, bringing a unity. A unity within ourselves, beyond the differences.
Reactie plaatsen
Reacties