In 1999 I was 21 years old, I was studying fashion design, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer  (as most 21 year olds in the 90s 😆)

 But I was also working out regularly and nurturing some sort of spiritual practice and an interest in meditation (thanks Moby!) 🧘‍♀️ 

Though the partyin and beer drinking were definitely my main interests 😄

I guess the fashion design studies were the reason I had a subscription on Swedish Elle Magazine, so let’s pay thank you to that because that’s where I read that article about Madonna that made my life take a new turn and eventually turn it upside down.

Madonna was 41 at that time, and she just had that comeback with Beautiful Stranger for the Austin Powers movie, and in this Elle article she told the readers how she did yoga every day, or at least several times a week.

And the, rather superficial, 21 year old me, thought that she looked great for her age and decided to try yoga too – to look good in my 40s too 😆

It was the age of VHS and I found what I was looking for in the local shop for crystals and incense, just next door to the fashion design school where I was studying. 

It was  a video with Maxine Tobias and her male friend John – from which the image above is taken! 

Click here to try it out for yourself! 

Back home I began practicing in my living room, finding yoga ok, a little boring but as the stubborn creature of habit that I am, I kept going and eventually I started to notice the physical changes, as well as the awareness of my breath and the power it had on my wellbeing.

For many, many years I kept yoga as a complement to my other workouts, and it was always more about the physical benefits rather than what it did for my mind. 

However in 2015 I stumbled upon Vinyasa Flow and It’s physical adventures and challenges. 

As a lover of movement I was stunned and excited that handstand and arm balances were part of the practice. 

That there was now a legitimate reason to practice these things – they were part of the practice so to say! 

I was sooo amazed, happy and excited! 

I fell deeply in love with the practice on a physical level, and thought it would stay at that.

Even though I now practiced yoga regularly (like…every day) still considered myself not very spiritual, I was down to earth in a ”nature-science- way” and when I was among people I frowned at woo woo – though that old spark of spirituality had begun to reawaken…

Then people around me began to understand that I had a new, burning interest, and that I was “pretty good at it” (meaning the asana practice) but when they asked, I said that I would never make this my work. 

It wasn’t on the map… 

Stay tuned for part 2 😄

❤️

Emilie