You've surely had someone say to you: It's all in your head. And now I'm telling you it's true. Every experience you've ever had and will have, is experienced through the filters in your mind. In yoga we learn about Maya -- the veil of illusion -- and it's that veil that we see the world before we reach yoga, or become enlightened. Can you imagine what a psychedelic experience the world must be for a child before she has downloaded language to make sense of the world, to inca

A few years ago, I was sipping an over-priced cocktail at a sky bar with one of my oldest, closest friends and my boyfriend -- two of my absolute favourite humans. This was during the biggest book fair in Sweden, and I was about to publish my novel, something I had dreamt about since I was little. My boyfriend and I had only dated for about six months, so we were still very much in the butterflies and unicorns-state of infatuation. Annoyingly kissing all the time. Hanging ove

Since I started my little yoga dude project, I slowly but surely started seeing more men on the mat in my classes. It made me quite happy! It worked. But in the last few weeks I've felt the presence of male yogis drop again. Maybe it's just summer? Or perhaps it's because I haven't presented you with any awesome yoga dudes for awhile. The draught is over! I hereby bring you Martino! Martino Mostacci, 33 Café owner and musician Originally from Verona, Italy but now living in B

Sometimes I think of my yoga practice as one big long preparation for dying. A way to soften the blows. A way to make peace with the inevitable fact. That one day I will die. And everyone I know and love will also die. We will die at the point when we have acquired most experience and skills. We don't know when. Or even how. We just know that it is bound to happen. And we spend a lot of time and effort trying not to die. We wear seat belts when while in cars. We wear helmets

From December 27th to January 4th, I spent my days in silence, meditating. Upon arrival at one of these courses (Vipassana), you are asked to surrender your phones, any books/magazines, notebooks, and any food items. You are assigned a bed in a dormitory room and then the days start with a wake-up gong at 04:00 a.m. You pretty much meditate, seated, in your room or in the meditation hall, all day, with breaks for breakfast, lunch and tea (no dinner) until about 19:00 in the e

Yesterday morning I took the U-bahn to Wedding to meditate with Mother Meera. By her devotees, this South Indian woman is considered to be an embodiment of the Divine Spirit on earth. The session (one of several that day) was attended by a couple of hundred people, and took place in some carpeted conference hall at the Wyndham Hotel. We sat on rows of chairs. A few minutes after I had entered the room with my friend, Mother Meera was led in. Everyone stood up, turned towards

I am deeply worried. About where our current lifestyles are taking us. And what our habits, addictions and devices are doing to us. A few days ago I was on a train from Stockholm to Gothenburg. On that particular train, that stretch is covered in four hours. Across from me were a couple. Somehow they caught my attention. Everything they wore looked new and shiny. They walked in with bags from Burger King and proceeded to eat a couple of burgers each, washing them down with bu

My meditation teacher urges us to meditate two hours per day: one hour in the morning and one in the evening. For years I thought of that as the gold standard; impossible for me to attain in my daily life. Easy, when away on retreat of course, but very hard in the hectic city life I lead with many commitments and engagements. I would only sit for one hour with other meditator friends or at the centre. It took me years since my first meditation breakthrough in 2006 to even est

I need to acknowledge here, that I borrowed this title from J. Brown, who was one of my first teachers, and who runs an interesting podcast (especially for teachers of yoga). J borrowed the title from Zack Kurland, who was a guest on the pod. Last Friday morning I decided to check out a yoga studio in my neighbourhood, that I had never been to before. I ended up at Kaala Yoga, where I ended up in a class with Michael. About two thirds into the class, which was fairly physical

I told myself last night: the first thing you will do tomorrow morning, after meditation, is to write a blog post. The alarm sounded at 06:31, a great time for me (I would get up even earlier, but then I would have to go to bed at 9:30 and I'm already too much of a grandma). I rolled out of bed, and obediently sat down on my meditation cushion with my timer. I've been doing this for years now. Still, there is often a lot of resistance to the practice. It should be the easiest

I shut down my Facebook account about seven years ago, and never looked back. I have led a globetrotting life, and I know a lot of people. When I moved back to Sweden in 2007 after thirteen years in the New York and New Orleans, it seemed FB would be a good way to keep in touch with my American friends. And when I moved to Berlin from Stockholm in 2009, it seemed that FB would be a lifeline to my friends in Sweden too. But slowly I started to realize that FB was both a time t

This is probably the most quoted aphorism from one of the most iconic text on yoga 'Patanjai's Yoga Sutras.' It is also the only mention of the practice of asana, kind of ironic since asana is the main focus of modern yoga. It means: Seated posture should be steady and comfortable. In the context of Hatha Yoga (physical yoga, or the yoga of the body, not a style of yoga that many people today take it to be.) it's often understood to mean that each and every asana (posture) sh

In early 2007 my life was a total mess. I was sleeping on a leaking air mattress, on the floor of a rundown shotgun house in a rough neighbourhood in a city shattered by the hurricane, and where murders were as common as kindness to strangers. My next door neighbour was a Boa Constrictor with a head as big as mine. I never saw him. But I saw the frightened face of the punk kid that stopped by every other week or so to feed the him turkeys, while the beast's roommate (my landl