September 2019.
My interview for Yogasat.ro about Yoga & Life and other personal experiences.
1. What is yoga for you?
For me Yoga is not something. We have noticed that most of the times we tend to bring new representations to something that happens spontaneously in an infinite time and space. We give names and we have the impression that we are creators of concepts, ideas, images, feelings and life itself, when in fact, everything happens while we have the above attitude.
Yoga occurs when nothing is nothing anymore. When we do not even realize what Yoga is, yet an immense intensity of life flows naturally at the same pace, both through the inner world and also through the outer world, becoming one and the same. Yoga appears as the space between the two worlds. The place where they meet. And nothing else. Whether it is body, mind or spirit. If it is difficult for us to find that infinite area called Yoga, we can look at Nature, the Cosmic Space or the breath.
2. What effects did yoga practice have on you?
The effects I felt at the body level first. After almost 20 years of performance sports I had a worn body. I needed balance and recovery. Here I discovered Asana Yoga, in various styles which is actually a unique style. Thus recovering much of the wear and tear created over the years. I want to remember that I still work here.
After that I noticed that the choices we had made in the past, sports and wear, actually hid much deeper wounds. The introspection and the questions started very early, without too many answers, at 12-13 years old when I gave up watching TV. But the power of realizing change and finding another way to achieve a clearer Reality began with the first departure to India where I discovered more than Asana Yoga. Here I discovered the mental patterns and the emotional residues after which I guided my life and began to go deep. This is where the work, the hard work and the change started. Which was not easy, peaceful, balanced or peaceful. Once you get there, where something can change, the hard part begins. It was and is simply a battleground between what I had grown up to then and the nature that had brought me here. In short, we have found that what creates us, if we intend to discover, can remove what is illusory past, parents, society or education, without losing any contact with reality, society or parents.
From here I began to perceive everything completely different. The more we removed and cleaned the deeper and deeper, the more life became easier, more intense, more synchronized and clearer in every aspect of it.
There have been intense changes and experiences at every turn. Life started to make its place right there. Where he had never been.
3. Has yoga changed your lifestyle?
Completely. From performance sports that mean meat 3 times a day, supplements and chemicals, 2 workouts almost every day and exhausting matches every weekend, competition, conflicts with colleagues, opponents or coaches, alcohol parties, drugs and sex, a life without meat, organic food, movement without wear, rare conflicts, non-existent competition, without endless parties, quality time Andra (wife) and Narayan (son) in nature or in an environment free of alcohol and relationships. toxic friendship, working to what I like, giving people health, balance and happiness, from my changes and experiences.
With the hard change, beauty came, the essence of life. I need to point out that everything was and is necessary, nothing is random. Including the less pleasant aspects of the past.
In achieving the change Yoga was not the only one who supported me. Ayurveda, the art of living, which comes from the same Vedic system, was the foundation on which the change made by Yoga was built. I am reminded here of all the experiences I had so far. From childhood to the time of Yoga discovery. It all mattered.
4. How often do you practice yoga?
Every day. But not necessarily on the mattress, but in everyday life.
5. Do you think yoga would bring significant changes to the world if it were included in educational institutions and workplaces?
Yoga can certainly be an important help in achieving a happier life, whether we are talking about the workplace or the classical education system.
First of all, I think 80-90% of those who would start Yoga would resign or change the school and everything that means a schooling system. Who does not educate. But I’m limiting.
Yoga in schools and workplaces would bring freedom. And the two represent a modern form of prison. Freedom restriction. I personally feel it would bring a beneficial change. But any such changes must be made. Freedom is something beautiful, but from the position we are in at the moment, very difficult to achieve. We are educated to see freedom in different forms and images. When freedom has no form, image or name. It is a neutral, natural state from which we can perceive her life and her show.
Now comes the most question
importance. Who will teach this Yoga especially in schools or children? What experience / experiences do these teachers or trainers have?
Do they come with clean intentions or do they bring back memories and unresolved issues from the past?
That we do not want in any way perpetuated by clean souls and minds, such as those of children.
I think that more attention must be paid here. About those who share this experience called Yoga. Not on the Yoga itself.
On those who share any children and build their education. Again, we need clean intentions and long-term uniform development here.
6. Do you do sports yoga or mindfulness?
Yoga comes from a very vast culture. Which is not just about India. Of course, in the area of India, Pakistan, Tibet, Nepal, China, we have the heart of this culture. Even in Japan we find some connections with Yoga and this culture, in Africa, in North and South America, in Europe and even in Romania, through the Pre-Cucutinian, Cucutian culture and the classical Geto-Dacian period. What I want to emphasize is not that Yoga and India are superior, but that Yoga is practiced under different names, in different languages and in other areas of the earth.
We have adopted Yoga from the area of India, Pakistan, Tibet, Nepal without understanding the system and culture of Yoga. It’s like looking at an expensive and performance car and saying that only the engine does everything. When in order to operate it needs the whole system and all the mechanical connections. Everything is important.
Or as if we said we were Romanians, that we were superficially Romanized in maximum 200 years, denying the real, tangible history of our Geto-Dacian ancestors.
Due to the modern superficial way of dealing with life, emotions, the interior, the past, we have transferred this superficiality to Yoga as well. When in fact Yoga comes from a Vedic period, a Vedic culture and a complete Vedic system.
This system encompassed all aspects of life. Medicine, Astrology, Politics, Economics, Arts, Spirituality and more. In which Yoga is an important aspect, a way to apply this Vedic system, a set of techniques and principles, by which we discover a state of balance or non-conflictual means in any aspect of our life, regardless of color, religion, social position or level of development.
Important to mention for those who do not practice or agree that not only Yoga and this Vedic system are the supreme or unique path. There are others too, important as the continuous search in a direction that always leads inwards.
I personally go this route because of the changes that I have brought in my life and the fact that this culture is one of the few that has survived the language underlying Yoga, Sanskrit, writings, mentioning here Rig Veda and customs , Ayurveda and Yoga. The written sources are those that followed the golden period of the Vedic culture, when the information was transmitted only orally being the experience itself outside any filter of the mind.
In addition to all this, we have noticed many similarities with our Geto-Dacian culture. The best example? The sound, the word OM.
I do not think there is a country, after India and then Romania, that will use this sound, word, more often, with almost the same meaning.
Coming back to the question I would point out that there is no difference between the 2. I met sports yoga practitioners who were very aware of what they were doing on the mattress or in their daily lives. Sport yoga is pure marketing. Sometimes necessary for Western minds full of marketing, self-centeredness, competition, sweaty mattresses full of sweat, unnecessary flexibility and polluting musculature.
To keep the mind occupied, sports yoga can be a new illusion that will bring you back to the same illusion. Infinite. If it was created here, now, it means someone needs it. But that does not mean that it is Yoga in the clean, traditional sense. But it does not mean that it is not Yoga because it somehow comes from there.
Mindful yoga seems to me to be a pleonasm, another invention of modern marketing. To create conflict and competition with sports Yoga. And so on. Infinite.
In short, practically none of the 2. Because they do not exist in the essence of Yoga, in my opinion.
Before practicing any kind of Yoga we have the obligation to practice and understand Ayurveda and the Vedic culture from which they come.
Yoga helps us to observe and bring together what we know, feel and do, as a whole.
Yoga is happening. With a lot of practice, not on the mattress or sweat. But with constant insight.
With each expiration or inspiration. Yoga practices us after we discover it. We do not practice it. Just like life. We have the impression that our control is stronger and we train continuously. Reaching death and realizing one truth. Nothing is under our control, we have nothing and everything we create is a gift from nowhere, which will disappear nowhere. Everything in an infinite intense show, called life, creation, destruction.
Yoga helps us to return to the undistorted perception of consciousness.
Here encountering pure freedom.
And observing without implication this infinite intense spectacle.
This observation gives us a complete experience.
That experience beyond concepts, ideas, words and practices is Yoga. Right in the middle of it. Quietly.
7.Which teacher / masters do you try to follow or follow?
With the coming of the world, we have experienced various teachers and teachers. The first great master was Nature. Then there were my parents, school teachers, Handball coaches, colleagues and everyone else who offered me various experiences.
In Yoga and Ayurveda I got in touch with Dr Munnilal Maurya from Parmarth Niketan – Rishikesh, Yogi Sunil Sharma and Yogi Kamal Singh from Tattvaa Yoga Shala – Rishikesh, Usha Devi from Omkarananda Ashram – Rishikesh, Swami Narayanananda Ayurved Saraswati (Dr Rugue Junior) from Suddha Dharma Mandalam – India and Brazil, Gil Moraes Kehl – Brazil, U Mahesh Prabhu – Goa and Andre Riehl from Udasin and Kashmir Shaivism.
In the last 5 years, when the Yoga and Ayurveda path started, I had a teacher who supported me continuously. My wife. The only man who managed to accept me and support me in the darkest moments that occur with the great changes inside.
All those mentioned above have supported me and constantly support me in discovering the last master. The inner one. What exists in each of us, in every expression of life on this earth and in this Universe. It is the same Universal Master existing in obsolete everything.
