Gastblog: Why Yoga Now? By Petri Barten

We’re living in a fast changing world. The earth is warming up, causing ecological disasters, causing anthropological disasters. Here’s why you should practice yoya, especially now.

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 from disasters, towards safer spaces.

(Young) people of today are part of the generation that will have to actually confront what we now can hardly imagine (partly paraphrasing philosopher-activist Lieven de Cauter). 

Everything we now know will change.

Yoga teaches that everything around us is always in a state of change. The only real constant is the you in you; the purusha in/with the prakriti. And through yoga, you will consolidate this ‘real you’. Through yoga and its techniques you’ll be able to root yourself in your body, even while everything will be uprooted, landslided, washed away, dried out. 

You will be grounded in you, you’ll be home wherever you are.

Through yoga, you’ll be able to draw strength from this spiritual-physical connection. Strength we will need, no matter what age we are now. We’ll need strength and perseverance to help the change the world is going through, to build a place for everyone. EVERYONE.

Because, as yoga says: we’re all just souls having a human experience.

Petri

Petri Barten is eigenaar en docente van yogastudio Yoga Hathi in het centrum van Eindhoven. Ze is beeldend kunstenaar en is al meer dan zeventien jaar met yoga bezig. In juni 2010 studeerde ze af aan de opleiding tot hatha yogadocent van Ron van der Post in Nijmegen. Deze opleiding is gelieerd aan het Yoga Training College in Chandigarh, India, en leidt studenten op in de traditie van Brahmrishi Vishvatma Bawraji. Petri's leraren zijn Swami Yogananda (Brahmrishi Mission India), Krshna Prya Didi (Brahmrishi Mission India), Ron van der Post (Yogastudie.nl / Brahmrishi Mission India), Petros Haffenrichter (Jivamukti Yoga München Deutchland), Sarah Powers (Insight Yoga USA), Suryans Thakur (Om Yoga Rishikesh India) en Stewart Gilchrist (East London School of Yoga). Naast yogalessen geeft Petri ook meditatieworkshops, Shiva Yoga, kinder- en tieneryoga en schrijft ze blogs. Je kunt haar volgen op Instagram: @yoga_hathi.