We’re living in a fast changing world. The earth is warming up, causing ecological disasters, causing anthropological disasters. The effects of past and contemporary patriarchal and capitalist decisions will lead to increasingly bigger changes in the environment. Like the mudslides we see every year in Bangladesh and other countries, floods of people will move away…
blog
On becoming vegetarian/vegan
It was 1997 when, during a short period of time, we had Mad Cow Disease (BSE), then Swine Flu (swine influenza virus or SIV) and on top of that Bird Pest (aviary influenza). When the horrible images of the panic and destruction of thousands of birds and poultry in China reached me, I had enough….
The human personality according to yoga
In yoga, we use the metaphor of Krishna’s chariot (from the Bhagavad Gita, see below) to deconstruct the human personality: The horses that pull the chariot stand for our senses and are restrained by Krishna, the charioteer representing our intellect. The reins are the mind/ego, with the mind closer to the horses and the ego…
Studio or online?
Lately I’ve noticed that more people are joining online and/or are missing classes. In itself that’s not a problem, of course. What isn’t possible just isn’t, and following an online class every now and then is a nice substitute for a class in the studio. However, yoga works best if practiced regularly and with an…
On advertising
Thanks to the amazing @vanmarledee and equally amazing Kim we now have a new and, hopefully, weather proof sign.Years ago I had a conversation with my acupuncturist Cheng Qian about the difference between advertising and letting people know you’re there. He thought advertising was wrong, in a spiritual sense. I always thought I had to, but it…
Practicing Virasana
Practicing bound Virasana. It’s a difficult position for me. Once, after a yoga workshop where we practiced this for a longer time, it brought me an injury that took more than a year to heal. So I’m very very careful with it.Don’t shy away from difficult things, but explore your boundaries with care.
Saturday morning class
Today someone said: ‘I love the Saturday morning class but I don’t always enjoy it’ and that kinda says it all!The poses seem more difficult in the morning, but your body will feel so much better for the whole day!
Zuiver eten
This is an old blogpost in Dutch (I wrote it in 2014) but it’s still relevant). Iemand die ik ken volgt een dieet via de site BuzzFeed Food:“BuzzFeed’s Clean Eating Challenge”. Hij vertelde dat kalkoen bij zijn boodschappen zat.In mijn ogen is het eten van vlees nooit “clean” te noemen. Zijn reactie:“If by that you…
Hello world!
On and off, for the last few months, I’ve been working on a new website for my yoga studio Yoga Hathi. I choose WordPress to work with, because it’s relatively easy and so I could do most of it myself. In the end it needed some finetuning and I got help from one of my…