Slow Clarity

I'd been running along the Göta River for years, but training for a half-marathon was different. There was a specific date, a specific distance, and the plan I'd committed to wouldn't bend for cold weather. Luna would stretch across my warm pillow with the magnificent indifference of cats while I pulled on running tights in the dark. Some mornings the temperature was below zero, some mornings the river path was slick with frost. Every logical argument was against going out. I went anyway. On mat, three evenings a week, Sara noticed my hamstrings were tighter than usual, my hips were holding more. 'Your body will teach you something,' she said one evening in March. It was the kind of thing teachers say... I wrote it in my journal without quite grasping what she meant. I understand it now, or I'm beginning to.

What kept you going when everything was telling you to stop?

There's a deep misconception about what stillness actually is. We picture the Buddha beneath the tree, yogis in caves, monks in meditation cells. Bodies that don't move, minds that have transcended the physical. But stillness isn't about stopping the body, it's about stopping the noise. The Buddha spent forty-nine days walking after his awakening, teaching in villages and forests. He knew something runners know: sometimes you have to move to find what's quiet inside. On the path along the Göta River before dawn, my feet on pavement become their own mantra. Left foot, right foot, breath in, breath out. No incense, no teacher, no cushion. Just motion and awareness meeting in rhythm. This is meditation too, just as valid as sitting cross-legged, just as profound. Your body might know a path to presence that doesn't involve sitting still.

How does your body find its own way to stillness?

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After class one evening, I stayed to help Sara fold blankets. She looked at me and said, 'You look tense.' I tried to explain the comparison, the performance anxiety, the feeling I wasn't doing yoga 'right' anymore in studios. She kept folding. Then quietly: 'Maybe you don't need the studio, maybe you need to remember why you started.' The paradox was perfect...a teacher who helped me realize I could practice alone. Sara's small Gothenburg studio had no mirrors, uneven floors. She'd quote Patanjali mid-class, then laugh at herself for being too serious. 'Suave, suave,' she'd say in her Swedish-accented Spanish, soft, soft, when someone pushed too hard. What she taught me wasn't a new sequence or better alignment, it was permission, it was trust. Permission to practice in obscurity, to build discipline without witnesses, to let my yoga be ordinary and honest instead of impressive and validated. I still take her class sometimes, once a month maybe. But now I understand: the teacher who sets you free doesn't make you dependent on their guidance.

Have you ever had a teacher who gave you permission to find your own path?

'I don't stay consistent with practice,' he said. 'Practice stays consistent with me.' I was quiet for a moment, I turned the sentence over in my mind. I'd been thinking about practice as something to maintain, something I could lose grip of if I wasn't careful enough. But he was describing something different. The practice as the constant, and me as the one who arrives and departs. Who shows up imperfectly, skips a morning, returns. And through all that... the practice waits. Not judging. Simply present. Five years into my own morning ritual, I understand it now. I don't sustain the practice, it sustains me. The same floor, the same breath meeting the same cold air. And on mat, in the quiet before dawn, something older than motivation holds everything in place.

Do you maintain your practice, or does it maintain you?

The irony would have been funny, I couldn't see it at the time. In my early twenties I filled my tiny Barcelona apartment with wisdom. The Yoga Sutras. Pema Chödrön. Every text that promised to explain liberation, presence, letting go. I remember reorganizing my shelves one afternoon. I had a whole section devoted to non-attachment, arranged by author, I was proud of that collection. I kept adding to it carefully. It took years on mat to understand what Guru Devendra already knew. Reading about a path is not the same as walking it, the difference is something you feel in the body, not something you absorb through words. Some understandings can only arrive through lived experience... not because the books were wrong, but because I wasn't yet ready to receive what they were offering.

What irony have you found in your reading practice?

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In Rishikesh, Guru Devendra was not a man given to dramatic pauses or philosophical performance. He corrected my Sanskrit pronunciation with dry humour, he drank very sweet chai and had strong opinions about breakfast. When he said something important, he said it once, plainly, and moved on. One morning in Paschimottanasana, he came and stood beside me, one hand resting on my back. Not pushing. Simply present. Then, quietly: "You are holding your future." I smiled. I thought it was beautiful, slightly mystical, he moved on to the next student. I would not understand him for six months. The evening it landed, I was in Gothenburg washing dishes, November rain outside, Luna on the windowsill... and then the phrase dropped somewhere below my ribs, into the place where things become real rather than known. He had not been speaking about my hamstrings, the grip was on what I believed the stretch would make me: flexible enough, disciplined enough, arrived.

Has a teaching ever arrived for you months or years after you first heard it?

Ten-day silent retreat in Ubud. Day three, during meditation, a thought: I'm good at this, better than most people here. And then... oh no. Even in silence, ego had found me. That evening, I broke silence to speak with Ananya. 'Why do you practice?' she asked. I felt defensive immediately. 'To be present,' I said, while being completely absent. She was quiet. Then: 'You're collecting yoga like trophies, Clara.' The truth hurts, it's true. Years of practice, and still so much ego. Maybe that's the practice itself, seeing it clearly enough to smile at it. Recognizing when the path becomes performance.

Who's been your honest mirror in spiritual practice?

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Moving to a new country feels like running in the dark. You can't see the whole path ahead. You don't know which streets will become familiar, which words in a new language will stick. You just take the next step. And then the next. Yoga taught me to find stillness, to listen to my body in the pause. But running through winter darkness taught me something different, it taught me to trust movement even when I can't see clearly. After the first week, my feet knew where the path curved. After the first month, I could sense the rise before the bridge without seeing it. Trust built itself one morning at a time. This is what I'm learning: trust isn't about seeing the whole journey. It's about knowing the next step exists.

What practice has taught you to trust the unknown?

I started dropping Sanskrit casually in conversation. Talking about chakras and doshas and prana, not because I was integrating this wisdom, because it made me sound interesting. 'In my practice' became a regular phrase. Each word carefully chosen, each spiritual term a signal. Look, I'm not just doing yoga... I'm doing real yoga. But knowledge as performance isn't wisdom. The vocabulary doesn't make practice authentic, it often becomes another way to separate myself from others. Another form of spiritual hierarchy. Sara, my teacher in Gothenburg, speaks about yoga in the simplest terms. She never performs her knowledge... she just shares what helps. That's the difference I'm learning to see.

When does spiritual knowledge become performance instead of practice?

I was sitting cross-legged in an ashram overlooking the Ganges, trying to follow my teacher's instructions to simply observe my breath. When I mentioned missing my morning runs, another student looked at me with quiet certainty. "Running is my meditation," she said. I didn't understand, I thought meditation meant sitting still, watching thoughts pass like clouds. Running was the opposite—loud, physical, the breath too fast to count. But three years later, running before dawn along the Göta River in Gothenburg, something shifted around kilometer four. My thoughts tired out, the chatter quieted. What remained was just breath, footfalls, rhythm. The same presence I'd been chasing on the meditation cushion, but found through motion instead of stillness. My body knew what my mind couldn't accept: sometimes you have to move to find what's quiet inside.

Has your body ever taught you something your mind resisted?

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Here is what I have come to understand about aparigraha, slowly, through running and folding and washing dishes: it is not a state you reach. You do not one day become someone who does not grasp, you become, if you stay with it, someone who notices the moment the hands curl. On mat, I still catch my fingers curling. On the river path, I still check the watch more than I need to, and in the quieter parts of Gothenburg life, the parts I write about less, I still catch myself gripping at the question of belonging — whether my accent will always mark me as someone passing through. Aparigraha doesn't ask me to stop wanting, it asks me to notice the moment wanting tips into needing, and in breath, to release what I cannot hold anyway. The pause between grasping and releasing... that small gap is where the sutra actually lives. Not on the mat, not in the Sanskrit. In the breath between the fist and the open hand.

Where do you notice the moment your own hands curl?

In Rishikesh, Guru Devendra asked me to describe yoga in Spain. I talked about studios, flow classes, handstands. He listened, then said so gently, "That is one limb. What of the other seven?" I stared at him. Other seven? Patanjali's Yoga Sutras describe eight limbs - ethical foundations (yamas and niyamas), then asana, then breath work, meditation, and inner practices. I'd skipped straight to the third limb, bypassing everything designed to transform how we practice. The poses were familiar, the context was missing. Every Barcelona class I'd taken focused on achievement, flexibility, the next level... never on ahimsa (non-harming), satya (truthfulness), or santosha (contentment). Western yoga made the practice accessible. But something essential got lost in translation.

Did your yoga classes teach you about the eight limbs, or just the poses?

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When yoga came West, something happened in translation. Physical practice was concrete, teachable, profitable. You could see progress in deeper backbends, stronger balances. Classes became "Power Yoga" and "Flow," sixty minutes of poses, brief meditation at the end. Philosophy mentioned, never centered. Nobody talked about ahimsa, about practicing non-harm toward your own body. Nobody discussed satya, being truthful about your actual capacity versus performing for others. I'm not saying Western yoga is wrong, it brought practice to millions who might never have found it otherwise. The physical gateway opened doors. But in making yoga accessible, we kept what fit our culture, we left what challenged it. We commodified the body practice, minimized the ethical framework. Yoga became exercise. Which is valuable. But it's not the complete path.

What do you think got lost when yoga became Westernized?

I choose simpler poses now. When everyone's moving into headstand, I often stay in child's pose. Not to prove anything about my humility, that would be another ego trap, just because my body genuinely wants rest. I practice without posting. Most of my practice happens in my Gothenburg apartment, just me and Luna, no witnesses. No one to impress, nothing to prove. Sara, my teacher here, once told me: 'Practice in obscurity, that's where the real work happens.' This morning, I rolled out my mat before the winter sun rose. The apartment was cold and quiet. No one saw me practice... maybe this unremarkable moment, this ordinary practice, is everything. True practice is humble. Ordinary. Unwitnessed.

Where do you practice when no one's watching?

My friend Ananya once told me, your practice doesn't live in location, it lives in intention. I didn't really believe her until Barcelona. I was three weeks into travel when the routine I'd spent months building simply... collapsed. Different time zones, different beds, no familiar cold air, no mat in the corner where I'd left it. The old version of me would have stopped entirely. If I couldn't do it perfectly, why do it at all? Instead, I adapted. In Barcelona I walked the streets where I grew up, familiar scents became my moving meditation. In Lisbon, sun salutations on a tiny balcony facing terracotta roofs. In Copenhagen, disoriented, I sat with tea for ten minutes and called that enough. The practice held me. Not the specific form of it, the intention underneath. On mat and in street and on balcony, whatever city I was in, the intention is what I was really keeping.

When life interrupts practice, what do you do?

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I spent years waking at 4 AM to punish myself for ten kilometres. I judged my worth by my pace, every run had to be faster, harder, more impressive. I was running away from something, not toward anything. Then my yoga teacher said two words that changed everything: suave, suave. Soft, soft. Not forcing. Not pushing. In Sanskrit, tapas means discipline, but it means something much deeper. It's the heat that transformation creates, not punishment. Real tapas is the kind of discipline that comes from love. When I shifted my approach, something shifted inside me. The kilometres became easier, not because I was stronger, but because I stopped fighting myself. Consistency isn't romantic, but it's what shapes the soul. Showing up for yourself day after day, not because you hate yourself, but because you love yourself enough to stay committed.

What practice has taught you the difference between discipline and punishment?

I know what it looks like when practice is going well. The breath in the right places, the transitions smooth, it all looks right. What nobody tells you is how absent you can be from all of that. The watching was constant, it was woven into everything - how I moved, how I adjusted, whether what was on the mat would look like dedication to some imaginary observer. Nobody was observing. The watching didn't care. Sara's studio was the exception. Small, unmirrored, quiet. She'd offer

What does practice feel like when no one is watching?

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