Yoga Teacher Training

Jeeee I got my yoga teacher degree finally this year! I’d like to tell a bit more about my yoga background and why I started doing yoga many years ago.

During my entire windsurf career I practised yoga on a regular bases. I had my first experience with a yoga lesson in Brazil, on an open deck, with the stars and moon shining at us and me feeling completely exhausted and with my entire body hurting after a long day of windsurfing on the water. After my first few yoga lessons in Brazil in 2009 I felt how much it did with my body, especially as I was windsurfing more than five hours a day at that time. I was traveling a lot around the world, and from then on I tried to follow lessons wherever I was and started practising on my own. It was great to be able to follow lessons in so many different places and from so many different teachers all over the world, as it really made me realise how many yoga styles there are, how much it depends who is teaching and how much each type of yoga can do something for you.

For a while yoga was mainly a way for me to keep my body flexible and fit with all those hours of windsurfing making my entire body stiff. But coming from a yoga family (my granddad had lots of yoga books already in 1970!) I knew deep inside there was more than just the physical part I was benefiting from.

Analysing myself I realised I was out of breath within minutes during a freestyle heat, even though I was very fit, which is not very useful if you have to sail multiple heats back to back sometimes. I noticed I was holding my breath before going for a difficult trick and while being nervous or focussed, and then trying to catch that up with inhaling very deep again. Yoga helped me to become more aware of my breath and of the importance of breathing.

I started to incorporate breathing exercises, yoga poses and meditation to my daily routine. I have always been very interested in healthy food and together with a healthy diet I felt how much it helped me feeling fit and calm for competitions.

During the windsurf clinics I was giving I felt that the participants would also benefit from some yoga. It’ so tempting to just spend an uncountable amount of hours on the water but exhausting your body completely does not help you improve. Becoming more aware of your body and stretching out tight muscles might sometimes help you improve more than another hour on the water. So together with my very good friend Ladina I started to organise windsurf and yoga clinics.

 

By 2020 I have been doing yoga for more than ten years. But because of all my competitions all year round and my winter training I never found the time to do my yoga teacher training, but finally this year I decided to take time off my wintertraining and get my yoga teacher degree in Bali.

It was a very unique and intense month where I learned more than I could have imagined. Starting at 5AM every morning with meditation and finishing the day around 9PM. And somehow when I still had some energy left I went for a little surf session in my lunch breaks.. because when there are nice waves.. well, you HAVE to go, right? some things even yoga can’t change 😉

My exams went very well and until then I didn’t even realise HOW much I love teaching!

Since Corona times I started teaching online yoga lessons, with the focus on staying fit for windsurfing for people. It’s 3 times a week and costs 7.50 per lesson. Schedules and all the info you can find on this website or feel free to contact me any time. It’s a vinyasa style yoga lesson and although I am pregnant it is a regular yoga lesson, NOT prenatal and you can be sure it’s a good work out for your body 😉

I also teach prenatal yoga once a week so feel free to contact me for more info (I also got my prenatal yoga certificate and I am pregnant myself too so really know what is happening in your body)