#embodiedpractice

the stockholm studio was beautiful. floor-to-ceiling mirrors, blonde wood floors, expensive candles burning. i settled into warrior two, surrounded by bodies in matching athletic gear, and caught myself doing it.

comparing.

her arms were perfectly parallel. mine wobbled. i adjusted, checked the mirror again, tried to look serene.

and then i realized: i'd forgotten to breathe for the past three poses.

this wasn't yoga anymore, this was performance.

when studios stopped working

seven years ago in barcelona (where i'm from), i found a small yoga studio in gràcia. no mirrors, just old wood floors and incense. on mat, my body would soften for the first time in weeks.

it was simple. it was good.

when i moved to gothenburg, sweden (where i live now), i tried to recreate that feeling. i visited the recommended studios - bright, expensive spaces with perfect lighting.

the teachers were skilled. the sequences were solid. but something felt off.

the mirrors showed me my alignment, but they also showed me everyone else's.

the expensive membership made me feel like i should achieve something.

the athletic environment turned practice into subtle competition.

i'd come seeking quiet and leave feeling inadequate.

this was the same pattern i fell into - when practice becomes performance rather than presence.

what i was actually looking for

what drew me to yoga wasn't flexibility or impressive poses, it was breath.

the way my scattered mind could anchor in my body.

the possibility of being present with what is.

in rishikesh, india (where i did my yoga training), guru devendra would laugh at our western obsession with physical poses.

"you think yoga is touching your toes," he'd say. "but yoga is what happens when you learn to stay."

that simplicity...that willingness to be with what's uncomfortable without decorating it.

that's what i wanted.

but studio culture - the mirrors, the comparison, the unspoken hierarchy - kept pulling my attention outward when the practice is meant to turn it inward.

the teacher who set me free

i almost gave up on yoga in gothenburg.

then i found sara lindström's small studio near haga (a neighborhood here).

no mirrors. uneven floors. sara taught in swedish and broken english, her approach more philosophical than athletic.

"suave, suave," she'd say, soft, soft, when someone pushed too hard.

one evening after class, i stayed to help fold blankets.

"you look tense," she observed.

i tried to explain the comparison, the performance anxiety, the feeling i wasn't doing yoga "right" anymore.

she nodded, kept folding.

then: "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.

building a practice at home

i started practicing in my apartment. just me, my old mat, the window overlooking cobblestones.

at first, i used adriene mishler's videos. her approach felt unpretentious, focused on how practice feels rather than how it looks.

i'd roll out my mat at dawn, before the city woke.

luna (my cat) would watch from the radiator, unimpressed by my discipline.

without mirrors, i had to listen differently.

i couldn't see if my alignment was perfect, so i had to feel whether it was honest.

the questions changed when nobody was watching.

i learned to build my practice around breath, not achievement.

some mornings i'd flow through sequences.

other mornings i'd spend twenty minutes in child's pose, letting tension soften.

nobody saw me practice, i had nothing to prove.

what i kept simple

one mat. two blocks. one strap. one bolster.

i didn't need fancy props or perfect space.

i just needed to show up.

most mornings, my practice was unremarkable.

no impressive poses. no breakthrough moments.

just the same basic asanas i'd done a thousand times.

forward folds that showed me where i was tight.

hip openers that revealed what i was holding.

savasana where my nervous system could finally rest.

this ordinary practice taught me more about yoga than any studio class ever had.

the spiritual dimension

here's what i discovered with only luna as witness:

the spiritual dimension of yoga doesn't require community or guidance.

it requires honesty.

in studios, i'd performed presence.

at home, i had to actually be present.

the yoga sutras talk about pratyahara - withdrawal from external objects.

practicing alone taught me this meant withdrawing from comparison...from the need to be seen doing it right.

when i practiced in studios, my attention scattered across the room.

at home, my attention could finally come back to the only thing that mattered: this breath, this body, this moment.

i wasn't trying to become more flexible, i was learning to honor where my body was today.

some mornings that edge was soft.

other mornings my body asked for gentleness.

at home, i could listen without shame.

what's different now

i still take sara's class sometimes. once a month, maybe.

but the core of my practice lives in my apartment now.

when i do go to class, i notice the difference.

i close my eyes during poses instead of watching mirrors.

i focus on breath instead of scanning the room.

the studio doesn't make me anxious anymore because i don't need it to validate my practice.

the quiet morning

this morning, i rolled out my mat in pre-dawn darkness.

luna was still sleeping. the apartment was cold, the city quiet.

i sat cross-legged, felt my breath, waited for my body to tell me what it needed.

no impressive poses.

just gentle hip openers, a few rounds of cat-cow, a long savasana with my hand on my heart.

unremarkable. ordinary. nobody saw me practice.

and that's exactly what made it yoga.

the studio didn't fail me, i just needed to remember that yoga was never about the room.

it was always about breath, and breath doesn't need an audience.

if studios make you anxious, if the mirrors and comparison are pulling you away from why you started...

maybe you don't need to fix your relationship with studios.

maybe you need to remember that practice can happen anywhere.

in your living room, with your worn mat, with nobody watching.

maybe that's not a compromise.

What happens when philosophy leaves the lecture hall and enters the body?

A few weeks ago, during the Festival of Philosophy at Ignatianum University, I had the opportunity to lead Touching Presence -> a workshop exploring the space between philosophy, theatre, movement, and puppetry.

What began as an experiment quickly became something much more meaningful. The openness, curiosity, and engagement of the participants showed me how much we need spaces where ideas can be experienced rather than only discussed.

Inspired by the warm reception of the workshop, I have decided to continue developing this format through a series of future sessions organized within The Arts Collective School.

Working with handmade puppets, movement, gesture, and embodied presence, we will explore questions inspired by phenomenology, contemporary theatre, and artistic practice:

How does the body remember? Can a gesture speak before words? What happens when we allow an object to become a presence? How do we encounter ourselves through the encounter with another?

These workshops are not about performance or technical skill. They are about attention, imagination, relationship, and discovering new ways of experiencing the world through the body.

okay so. 4am in december. gothenburg. pitch black outside.

the alarm goes off and there's this moment where my brain goes absolutely not but my hand is already reaching for my running shoes.

luna (my cat) opens one eye like "you're doing the weird thing again."

and yeah. i'm doing the weird thing again.

first winter things

i moved here from barcelona in 2020. thought i knew what winter darkness was.

i was so wrong.

swedish winter darkness is different. in november the sun doesn't rise until like 9am. december? even later. you wake in darkness, work in darkness, live in darkness.

i'd been running since university, that 5am habit that clears your head before the day starts making demands. when i got to gothenburg i told myself i'd keep it up. morning runs along the göta river. the rhythm would ground me.

except that first winter, the darkness stopped me.

i'd set the alarm. hear it go off in the blackness. think "maybe tomorrow when there's light."

except the light didn't come until i was already at work, already past the moment when running happens.

the morning i finally went anyway, i was more stubborn than smart.

stepped outside into air so cold my lungs hurt. streetlights made these small pools of orange on frozen ground. beyond that? just darkness. couldn't see where the path curved, couldn't see anything except the next few meters.

ran anyway.

feet found the rhythm. left right left right. breath making clouds. shoes crunching on ice. and this unexpected thing: silence before the city wakes.

in darkness everything else gets loud. the sound of breathing. cold air moving through your chest. weight shifting from heel to toe.

couldn't see the path ahead, so i had to trust my feet to find it.

that morning taught me something yoga never could. darkness strips away all the visual noise. when you can't see, you trust what you feel.

this is where it gets interesting

the trust thing

moving to a new country feels like running in the dark, you know? can't see the whole path. don't know which streets will become familiar, which words in a new language will actually stick.

you just take the next step. then the next.

yoga taught me stillness, taught me to listen to my body in the pause. but running through winter darkness taught me something different. trust movement even when you can't see clearly.

(i've written about running as meditation before—but running in the dark is its own thing entirely)

my teacher in rishikesh used to adjust my postures with such precision. "the body knows," he'd say. "you just have to listen."

running in darkness is that kind of listening. no teacher, no mirror, no guide. just repetition building itself into muscle memory.

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.

some mornings the ice made everything treacherous. some mornings the cold was sharp enough to make me question all of this. but i kept showing up, kept moving through what i couldn't see.

this is discipline without punishment. showing up not because i should but because this practice grounds everything else.

here's what i didn't expect:

what you notice when you can't see

when sight is limited, everything else sharpens.

in daylight runs i watch the river change, notice other runners, track my pace. my eyes do most of the work.

but in darkness? my body takes over.

i feel the incline through my calves before i see it. sense the wind off the water before it hits my face. my feet learn to read the path's texture, knowing when frozen gravel becomes smooth asphalt.

this is embodied knowledge, the kind you can't learn from books. builds itself quietly through repetition until your body knows things your mind hasn't caught up to yet.

sometimes i'd catch myself thinking about work, about emails, about life stuff. but in darkness those thoughts have nowhere to land. they surface and dissolve back into the rhythm of footfalls and breath.

what's left is just presence. here. now. feet on ground. air in lungs.

darkness isn't absence, it's a different kind of presence. asks you to pay attention differently. when i can't see the riverbank i hear the water moving. when i can't see dawn coming i feel it in the temperature shift.

my grandmother used to say we spend too much time looking and not enough time seeing.

running through swedish darkness, i think i finally get it.

why i keep going

been running these winter mornings for five years now.

some mornings five kilometers. some mornings barely three. distance doesn't matter as much as showing up.

not about being fast or strong. not training for anything. on the darkest mornings i'm not running away from something or toward something.

just running because this is how i learned to trust.

trust that my body knows the path. trust that darkness won't swallow me. trust that showing up builds something steady underneath everything else.

sara (my yoga teacher here) once said practice isn't about the days when everything flows. it's about the days when nothing flows, when your body feels tight and your mind scattered, and you show up anyway.

that's what these dark mornings are. practice. not perfect, not impressive, just consistent.

after each run i come back and luna's waiting by the door. judging my snow-covered shoes. i make coffee. sit by the window as first grey light starts touching the sky.

and i notice the darkness outside has shifted. something's changed, the way something always changes when you move through difficulty instead of waiting for it to pass.

this morning the alarm went off at 4am.

same darkness outside. same cold. same frozen path. luna's same mild disapproval.

but i'm different.

when i step into darkness now it doesn't feel like an obstacle. feels like an old teacher, one who showed me something essential about trust and moving through what i can't see.

i'm not brave for running in the dark. just practiced at it.

and that's what trust is, right? not absence of fear but practice of moving forward anyway. not seeing the whole path but knowing the ground exists beneath your next step.

darkness taught me trust isn't about certainty, it's about rhythm you build when you keep showing up, keep moving, keep breathing even when you can't see what's coming.

the path appears under your feet, not before them.

I no longer wake up to a schedule. I wake up to presence. My first breath of the day is not for the world — it is for the Divine.I do not reach for my phone. I do not open the door.I simply sit. And I breathe: OM. Not a sound. Not a chant.A vibration. A returning. A remembrance. As I inhale, I feel golden-white energy enter my crown — Sahasrara — like divine mother herself pouring light into…