Freedom Yoga

I always love to give interviews about yoga.
What can I do? It is just my favorite topic to talk about...

This time I talked with Jason Cole from Beyond the Mat about my journey, about teaching, finding meaning and of course, my second favorite topic: Depression...

Have a great time listing!

EP 26 - OR SHAHAR - FREEDOM YOGA by Beyond the Mat • A podcast on Anchor I'm speaking with Or Shahar who is the founder of Freedom Yoga all the way over in Germany (That's right folks, Beyond the Mat has gone International again!). Or has created her own workshops and online programs after going through some clinical depression before becoming a yoga teacher and we're go...

Looking for the right words for my next article and stumbled upon this great expression.....

The first google search brought me this great song!

Adele - Chasing Pavements Buy/Listen 25: http://smarturl.it/25Album?IQid=yt Buy/Listen 21: http://smarturl.it/Adele21Album?IQid=yt Buy/Listen 19: http://smarturl.it/19Album?IQid=yt Fo...

Another great talk I had is now available online for you to listen to.
It is a real previlige to talk to pepole about yoga freely and openly and to have this recorded for other pepole to listen.

https://beyondyourwildestgenes.com/freedom-yoga/

Discover the power of Freedom Yoga with Or Shahar Or Shahar took her first yoga course over 10 years ago during her first trip to India, at only 18 years old. At 23, recovering from depression, she took a plane to India again, where she discovered her deep connection to Buddhism, took her first

The new website is here!
I went through a very long thinking process, I asked around, I have listed and this is where I wanna start.
At the moment, I think this is really the best way the world can use me.

My hope is that this website will be of benefit to every person how is suffering from depression and is considering yoga as something that might help. because as the title says: Depression Sucks, Yoga Helps

Let me know what you think...

http://upwardfacingdog.com/

Now you can also listen to the great conversation I had with Michael Acanfora from !

Have Fun!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qkan0k6uIQs

"Hapiness is an Inside Job"
You can almost say that I and have the same slogan...
I was a plaesure gettting to know her work and talking with her about yoga, hardships and depression.
My favorite Q: How do you know when yoga is not enogth and you need to seek medical help?

You can find my answer to this and many other great qeastions inside:

Spring Training: Yoga​ - Podcasts by Connie Bowman Warm and breezy, Connie Bowman is a voice and on-camera actress as well as the host of the podcast Happy Healthy You!

Would you consider yoga something that can help you deal with your depression?

I would love to know your answer to this question as well as a few others.

Help me help you manage your depression better through yoga!
Take the survey!
(It is completely anonymous and takes only 3 and a half minutes)

https://or7.typeform.com/to/Jn8yS1

You can’t drive a fancy car in $3 flip-flops We tell ourselves we deserve nicer things because we’ve earned them. We need to act and look like the type of people that do well. Especially on our social media feeds! I can’t Instagram my $3 flip-flops getting out of my fancy car, I won’t get 1,000 likes!

So... I am doing this!
It took some time but I have decided to take myself on a new adventure in a new direction. I want to help people handle their depression better through yoga.

As I am trying to learn from past mistakes, I want to ask you what you think before I start to create my offerings.

Sometimes you need to help somebody so they can help you...
So first I need your help.

Whatever your struggle with depression is behind you or you are still in the midst of it, if you will be kind enough to give 5 minutes of your time and answer this 10 questions, I will be forever grateful and much smarter (and feel much more confident about this whole thing)

If you are lucky enough to not be in my target audience Please Share! This will help us a lot as well. I am sure you have at least one friend who can benefit from this.

So here it is: https://or7.typeform.com/to/Jn8yS1

In this small eBook, I would like to share with you my experiences about how to l make your spiritual practice deeper, helping you transform your life into a more positive one.

Because, let’s face it: If you don’t go deep if you don’t really make a continuous effort, nothing happens.

The transformation you will experience will be as shallow or as deep as your work.

https://www.freedomyoga.info/deppen-yoga-practice-opt/

How to deppen your yoga practice- opt in - Freedom Yoga Look, I’m not the one to tell you what to do and I’m all for keeping yourself inspired. But, can I share something that I learned as a teacher, as a student, and from personal pain?

My favorite way to keep up with yoga stuff and to stay inspired is to listen to yoga podcasts. My two favorites are Yogagirl and J. Brown Yoga. I know it seems impossible to like so two dramatically different teachers, but this is exactly the kind of multidimensional perspective I need in this crazy days.

A topic that bothers both of them a lot, and subsequently me too, is the long-necessary arrival of the movement in yoga-land.

Woman are finally speaking up and big time. Communities are changing, questions are being asked and black and white answers are on high-demand.

I truly believe that these extremely sensitive questions are impossible to answer with generalization.
Maybe it is the perfect teaching in non-dualism and its connection to acceptance and compassion. The only way out is through in self-inquiry.

I know, I needed to do some. And as I often do, I have put it into writing:
https://www.freedomyoga.info/2018/03/19/yoga-and-metoo/

This is for you if …
You know all the benefits of a regular practice and feel ready to establish one.
You are feeling confused and overwhelmed, and don’t know where to start.
You are trying to establish a regular practice but aren’t finding success.
You already have a plan for a regular practice but find it hard to keep it up.

Is this for you? Check out my one on one teachings

https://www.freedomyoga.info/one-on-one/

There is something about sexual abuse stories inside a yoga teaching relationship that gets me extra pi**ed off.
Like, sexual abuse is the most horrible form of abuse anyway, but paring it with abuse of power given to you by your perceived "spiritual merits" makes five times worse.
Abusing the trusting atmosphere of a used-to-be sacred relationship between a yoga teacher and his students is the most shameless thing to do.
It not just making it dramatically more traumatic for the abused students and stealing them from so much, it also steals yoga its reputation.

I have so many thoughts on this subject lately, it took me a very long time to write this blog. It's longer than usual (don't say, I didn't warn you) but I feel it still doesn't convey all of my thoughts.
This is why I have facebook :)

Here is the link
https://www.freedomyoga.info/2018/03/19/yoga-and-metoo/

I just love this podcast so much and it was such a pleasure to be on it.
I think this is probably the best option for me to introduce my full story to you. So if this is interesting to you, this link is for you:

https://www.jbrownyoga.com/yoga-talks-podcast/2017/12/or-shahar

Or Shahar - "Light of the Dawn" - Israeli Yoga Teacher, Buddhist, passionate about depth and connection Or Shahar , from freedomyoga.info , is a podcast listener with a booker who got a bit lucky and caught J in a moment that led to this candid and unexpected conversation about family, cultural divides, and the universality of yoga. Or shares her process of healing depression and trauma, making a lif

Unless you have been living under a rock (which is a totally fine place to live) you would have heard that the " movement" had arrived at "yoga land" and this raised in me, as well as in a lot of other people, a few important questions.

Like: Can you separate the teaching from the teacher?
and: Can we avoid these scandals?

It might feel like it does not have a lot to do with you personally and your practice, but on the broader level, the politics of what we are doing is always influential. Whether we like it or not. (another post about the changes in yoga teacher training courses, is on the way)

As they are no clear black and white objective answers, in this blog post, I was trying to sort out through my own thoughts and answers, with the hope that it can inform and enrich your practice along the way.

My biggest admiration is to the woman who finally decided to speak up. I am so inspired by their courage!

https://www.freedomyoga.info/2018/03/19/yoga-and-metoo/

If you ever tried to dive deeper with your yoga practice, you probably already noticed that: There is a lot of unrealistic and useless stuff out there.

I am not the one to tell you what is real and what is not, but I would like to share with you my experiences about how to l make your spiritual practice deeper while avoiding a lot of BS.

Because, let’s face it: If you don’t go deep, if you don’t really make a continuous effort, nothing happens.

The transformation you will experience will be as shallow or as deep as your work.

Here is the link to your free eBook
https://www.freedomyoga.info/deppen-yoga-practice-opt/

Willing to invest 50€ in your yoga practice?
Here are your options:

Pay for a 1/10 of a 200-hour yoga teacher training
or 1/5 of a yoga retreat
or 1/2 one day seminar.

or maybe...
Buy one pair of fancy yoga pants
or one decent yoga mat
or 10 chai lattes

or just do a course that actually teaches you yoga philosophy and theory in a practical down-to-earth way.

https://www.freedomyoga.info/become-your-own-teacher/

A good article that continues my thoughts on what the yoga teacher training courses are doing to yoga.
The most interesting part for me in this article is the question:
Can we even have a discussion when we can't even agree on what is yoga and what is the goal of the practice?
If you are practicing for wellness or fitness, your experience will be fundamentally different than the experience of someone aiming for unlimited inner freedom.
Your motivation to build or to participate in a training will be completely different as well.

Maybe we should just see Yoga Alliance as a regulator only of "Yoga for fitness".
And all of who are anyway not interested in a yoga ass just keep being happy in our anarchy????

https://www.jbrownyoga.com/blog/2018/3/a-case-for-anarchy-in-yoga

A Case for Anarchy in Yoga   Radical transformation is the provenance of yoga. The promise of bringing about change in oneself through will and determination, being able to derive truth and purpose by observing our own experience rather than succumbing to societal conditioning or the influence of outside author

My next blog post is on the way, it is going to be on a very hot and complected topic, so it needs some time to cook.
Until then you can enjoy my latest blog post about another hot and complicated topic:
How to deal with hard negative emotions (a.k.a depression and anxiety)

Here is the link: https://www.freedomyoga.info/2018/02/01/stay-with-it-but-dont-build-a-camp-there/

Talk soon!

I loved talking with AJ from My Seven Chakras about how to deepen your yoga practice.

He had some really interesting questions like:
What is the difference between how Yoga is practiced in India and in the West?
What does Yoga teach us about ethics and behavior? and much more.

Give it a listen and tell me what you think: http://www.mysevenchakras.com/authentic-yoga-for-the-mind-body-and-soul/

"If you are not a part of the solution, you are part of the problem"

After years of feeling like "the yoga world" is just stuck in a rut, I start to have some hope.

Yoga Alliance is currently the main organization to create and enforce standards for yoga teacher trainings, thereby setting the values of the whole market, what influence each practitioner and teacher. Or in other words, even if you don't feel it, this does have something to do with you.

After 17! years of not changing these standards, they are finally hearing the call and even better, they ask us, yoga practitioners and teachers, for our opinion.

This is rare and new and exciting. This might be history in making!
Be a part! (it only takes 10-15 minutes)

https://yastandards.com/

Yoga Standards Project - A review and implementation of yoga standards that serve the yoga community. Opinion | Yoga Teachers Need a Code of Ethics | The New York Times Teachers, like therapists or educators in other fields, have an inherent power, which can be used to either heal or exploit.

I don't know what about you, but my January was pretty tuff!

Only in the last week or so, good things started to happen to me and I can begin to see the shift happening and the light at the end of this very dark winter tunnel.

In my interview with the extremely sweet Ashley James (http://learntruehealth.com/yoga/), I talked briefly about starting to forgot my dark days, and how it all really felt. At the time, based on this very feeling, I actually started to write this down, so that I don't forget and stay to stuck in my cloud.....

But then January came and with him some unwanted, but yet very familiar old friends: Depression and Anxiety.

I took me around two weeks, and a lot of getting over myself to write this month blog.
I needed to use the method I was writing about in order to even be able to write.

And I am damn glad I deed!

I wrote, I took a deep breath, I deleted some stuff, I wrote some more
And today I even hit Publish!

So if you want to find out more about my main method for dealing with depression, here it is:
https://buff.ly/2EwkQRp

My way of dealing with depression: Stay With It But Don’t Build A Camp There I have written and talked about my depression quite openly before, but I think that the time had come for me to elaborate on a very important tool I am using to deal with my dark phases. To summarize my main “method” in one sentence: Stay with it, but don’t build a camp.

I almost forgot that I have once written that blog about this really powerful story that once happened to me.
But I needed to remember it today, because I still have days where I almost forget my light, and don't know what to do with it anymore.

Maybe you need a reminder as well:

To be honest, I was quite surprised at the depth I and Ashley found on this podcast.
It was the first time we ever talked, but the conversation went really deep real fast. We talked about yoga for weight loss (mostly as a support), for letting go of attachment to physical stuff, and for healing.
We went deep in philosophy but stayed practical and realistic as well- my favorite kind of conversations...

You can find our conversation here: https://buff.ly/2CZbkpc

Yoga For Healing Some choose to do yoga for weight loss, but realistically, yoga merely serves as a support to lose weight. That is why it is essential to connect with your body to be able to listen to what it needs.

As somebody with many passions and dreams, I found this video really helpful.
It is always good to have clear boundaries and definitions, so everything can work together in harmony, instead of competing on your time.
You can have it all, but not all in once!

Elizabeth Gilbert on Distinguishing Between Hobbies, Jobs, Careers, & Vocation | +Acumen Access the course at a discounted rate here: http://bit.ly/Livewithoutfear Have you ever felt called to do something else with your life or career? How do yo...

First and foremost, I can’t ever think or talk about “being one” without recalling the HILARIOUS video where a poor Australian anchor tried to tell the Dalai Lama a Dalai Lama joke, and the sweet Dalai Lama does not understand the joke AT ALL – but you know what? He laughs anyway (probably as an act of pure compassion ….I’ll leave the link at the end of the post for you.

But anyway…

For me, “being one” means to close the gap between the ego and the true self, and to live as one with your truth.

Read more on:
https://buff.ly/2kpUESt

Practicing yoga asanas?
Then I think might be a good idea to educate yourself about them.
Don't leave all the work to your teacher, this is just lazy, empower your self and become your own teacher!

A great place to start is this wonderful article form my dear college Denise Brodowski

Categories of Yoga Asanas, Part 1 - Zen Yoga by Dynamic Mindfulness Have you ever wondered why is a yoga class is structured the way it is? In her latest post, our teacher Denise Brodowski explains categories of yoga asanas.

Due to a chain of lucky events, my new blog (http://bit.ly/2lVFDFg) is also linking to the same J Brown, I just gave an interview to.

It was a blast talking to him+
a fulfillment of a small career goal!

I am sure you will enjoy it!

Or Shahar - "Light of the Dawn" - Israeli Yoga Teacher, Buddhist, passionate about depth and connection Or Shahar, from freedomyoga.info, is a podcast listener with a booker who got a bit lucky and caught J in a moment that led to this candid and unexpected conversation about family, cultural divides, and the universality of yoga. Or shares her process of healing depression and trauma, making a life f