#embodiedwisdom

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 my spanish grandmother knew about yoga without ever doing it 🌿

On terrace in the early morning, the Sierra Nevada looked like something drawn by a steady hand.

My grandmother's stone terrace in the Albaicín, Granada.

Cool tiles under my ten-year-old feet. Jasmine climbing the whitewashed wall. The old radio inside playing something low and melancholy.

She moved through her plants with the care of someone who had nowhere else to be.

"Ven aquí," she said that morning. Come here.

She placed my hand on my own chest. "Breathe like the mountains breathe," she said. Despacio. Slowly.

I breathed. The jasmine moved. The Sierra Nevada held still on the horizon.

She never called it pranayama. She didn't know what pranayama was.

Neither did I.

🌿

Her days had a shape to them, a rhythm you could feel more than describe.

She woke before the heat settled in. I'd find her at dawn already moving through the small rooms of her whitewashed house - not hurrying, not dawdling, just present to each thing in turn. The kettle. The window. The clay pot that needed less than the others.

In those summers I'd come to stay, I'd sit on the terrace pretending to read. But mostly I watch her. I watch her the way children watch things they don't yet understand are being stored.

She sat with her sewing in the afternoons the same way she sat with prayer.

"Respira, mi niña. Despacio." Not just to me. To herself, I think, as much as anyone.

What I absorbed without knowing I absorbed it: that attention itself is a practice. That stillness isn't the absence of movement, it is the quality of it.

She didn't teach meditation, she just lived it.

✨

Years later, in a yoga studio in Barcelona, I'd learn Sanskrit words for what she had been doing all along.

Pratyahara. Dhyana.

And later still, I'd discover something that changed how I understood everything.

In classical yoga philosophy, asana - the word we use for poses, for the whole physical practice - doesn't mean pose.

It means seat. Simply: that asana means 'seat,' a place to be still.

Patanjali devoted fewer than five of his 196 sutras to the body in posture.

My grandmother had been practicing asana for decades.

She called it sitting down.

The realisation was warm and a little bittersweet, I had traveled so far to find the words for what she had already given me. I needed a studio and Sanskrit vocabulary to value what she offered freely on a summer morning in Granada. In moment I understood that, something shifted. Wisdom doesn't announce itself. It moves through gestures and routines, and we carry it forward without knowing.

🧘‍♀️

In 2023, I studied at an ashram in Rishikesh, on the banks of the Ganges.

I had traveled to India to learn... what my grandmother had known all along.

Every dawn, mist rose from the Ganges. Temple bells from across the water. Incense and river water in the lungs like something from a very old dream.

I sat one morning, breathing slowly, and felt something I recognised before I could name it.

I had felt this before. On a stone terrace in Granada. Watching a woman water her plants.

The ashram gave me the vocabulary, she had given me the thing itself. The circle closed quietly. And what moved me most wasn't that the circle had closed - it was realising the circle had never been open.

What she planted had been growing in me the entire time.

🌿

Some mornings now, I breathe deliberately at my desk in Gothenburg before I begin anything else.

Slowly. Despacio. In breath settling me into the chair, into the day.

This is what a morning ritual becomes over time - not a routine you follow but a devotion you return to.

Her stillness became my stillness... I didn't notice when it happened.

The mountains still breathe, I breathe with them.

She never knew what she taught me. She was just living, and I was watching.

Sometimes the most profound teachers never use the words we've learned to value. They just show us, in the language of their own lives, how to be present.

Mantra Isn’t Chanted. It Is Lived – Ask Bharadvāja

(750 words)

Most people meet mantra as sound: syllables repeated, whispered, or sung. But Rishi Bharadvaja, whose wisdom breathed life into the Vedas, revealed something far deeper: a mantra is not simply recited — it is inhabited. For him, a mantra was a living current, and one’s life was the vessel through which it revealed its power.

Rishi Bharadvaja saw sound as sacred architecture. When a seeker uttered words without embodying them, the structure collapsed into echo. But when breath, intent, and daily action aligned with the essence behind the syllables, the mantra became a living river carrying the soul toward clarity. To chant without living, he said, was to invite rain but build no soil to receive it.

He walked this truth. His own life was an open scripture: every gesture, every silence was an extension of a mantra’s pulse. Even gathering herbs or tending a fire became offerings, because he inhabited the same attention that animates holy sound. Disciples noted that sitting near him felt like entering an inaudible chant — a vibration held by the integrity of his living.

To Rishi Bharadvaja, the mantra was not a formula to manipulate reality; it was a mirror that asked: Are you ready to become what you seek to speak? When a seeker embodied peace, the syllables of “Shanti” resonated naturally. When kindness became reflex, “Maitri” no longer needed rehearsal. In this way, chanting moved from the tongue into the bones.

This teaching calls us beyond performance. Many chant but remain strangers to the essence. Rishi Bharadvaja reminds us that mantra is an apprenticeship to being. It asks us to soften pride, refine listening, and let our smallest actions echo the vibration we invoke.

When we truly live a mantra, we surrender the urge for quick results. Like seeds beneath the soil, its resonance germinates quietly in the darkness of discipline — watering habits, shaping speech, refining thought. Over time, we notice that we no longer need to repeat it consciously; it hums through our posture, our patience, our way of greeting the day.

Toolkit: Bringing Bharadvaja’s Teaching into Your Life

Choose One Essence, Not Many Words Select a single mantra-quality (e.g., compassion, truth, serenity) instead of chasing multiple chants. Anchor your week around it.

Infuse Your Breath Each morning, inhale the meaning of your chosen word; exhale any resistance. Let the breath carry the vibration before your voice does.

Align Speech with Intention Speak in ways that match your mantra’s heart. If your essence is peace, notice when language grows sharp, and pause before responding.

Embed in Micro-Actions Transform ordinary moments into living chants: wash dishes as an act of steadiness, walk as an expression of balance, write emails with respect.

Evening Integration At night, review: did I live the mantra today? Celebrate small victories; note where tomorrow invites deeper resonance.

Silent Transmission Occasionally sit in quiet, letting the mantra rest unspoken. Feel its current vibrate beneath thought — a reminder that words are only its shadow.