TOIn my first lesson I don’t remember if there were blankets or towels on the floornor if I wore the blue gymnastics tracksuit, but certainly on my feet I wore the pink Superga that accompanied me in those years.
Danda Santini director of “iO Donna” (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
Yoga mats, leggings, technical fabrics, sneakers or black toe socks were there to arrive. The master was of the guru kind, the movements strange, perhaps a little boring; the most difficult test was the final relaxation, the “savasana”.
Leaving the body in contact with the earth, and thoughts with it, was impossible. My thoughts were all there, first of all the thought of abandoning thoughts. I concentrated, I made an effort, I tried again with more determination, but my thoughts made fun of me, as indeed they always have and as the French writer Emmanuel Carrère so well recounts in his Yoga.
Eventually, the lessons triggered terrible headaches. It wasn’t my time yet. I returned to yoga many years later and despite being an unfriendly student, everything that annoyed me at the age of twenty re-centers me today.
What seemed esoteric to me today is clear to me. The body is not an antagonist to be modeled and exhausted, there is no opponent or a record to beat, fatigue cannot be an end nor competition a means.
There is also another way, the search for balance through positions and breathing. There, in that simplicity, oxygen and life entering, negative thoughts and toxins leaving, and in that model, oriented towards connection and not towards victory, it is the key to the success that oriental techniques are enjoying all over the world.
Especially among women under constant pressure, which in the West were the first to embrace, with enthusiasm, a series of disciplines where they are naturally advantageous, perfect for the female body, flexible and resistant together, and formidable for relieving stress. Do not vote for the clash of forces but for harmony with yourself, with the world and with things.
Doesn’t it already seem like a practice of virtues that herald a different and more convincing way of reading the planet and its inhabitants today? “Shanti”, peace, is sung after the final om, trying to maintain the light sensation of well-being and contentment for as long as possible.
We of iO Woman we were pioneers in this: our first Yoga Tours was born seven years ago, then came the Yoga Academythe theory and practice book series, the podcast series Yoga Therapythe yoga long weekends in Tuscany and the female travelers who practiced with us in Sardinia have just returned.
Get your mats ready for the weekend of June 10-11
Just in time to participate today and tomorrow in our first weekend “A Corpo Libero” at the Indro Montanelli public gardens in Milandedicated to movement in the open air, to the discovery of new disciplines, to group practice.
To all of us, enthusiasts or amateurs, this special issue is addressed, with which we greet the beginning of summer. We are already there: we are waiting for you!
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