GRATITUDE
Insight Yoga
In a greeting to you … let all my senses spread out and touch this world at your feet. Like a rain cloud of July hanging down with its load of unsurfaced showers, let all my thoughts sink to your door in greeting to you. Let all my songs combine their different sounds into a single stream and flow to a sea of silence in a greeting to you. Like a flock of homesick cranes that fly to their mountain nests day and night, let my whole life take its journey to its eternal home with a greeting to you.
Rabindranath Tagore
I am very aware that my teaching and sharing today is based on a long journey and a multitude of people, places and experiences that influence it. For thousands of years the yoga tradition has been kept alive by the direct transmission of knowledge between teacher and student and by the yogis’ ability to listen deeply to the lessons of life that are unfolding in each moment. To honor this millennia-long chain of dedicated teachers and the support I have received along the way, I have decided to include this page of gratitude.
My first and first thanks go to India, the motherland of yoga and fertile soil for countless yoga masters who contributed to the liberating teachings of the various Traditions have contributed – Praṇām.
Greetings also to the lineage of the yogs, who have made it their life’s work to preserve and promote these priceless teachings.
I would like to thank my family for their continued loving support for this calling, which must have sometimes seemed like an obscure and crazy calling to them.
There isn’t enough space on this website to include all of the great teachers I’ve had the privilege of along the way study, thank you personally, but I would like to mention some important ones:
1. My German teacher Elke Hauschildt, who inspired me to meditation and yoga at the age of 17, would like to name a few important ones:
2. Dr. Knut Friess, my first Hatha Yoga teacher and a great exponent of the Sivananda Yoga tradition. From the beginning, Knut attached great importance to the philosophical understanding of what is the heart of all yoga traditions.
3. Anila Chödrön from the Tushita Retreat Center, who took me under her wing in both Tibetan Buddhist meditation practices and Reiki
4. Satya Nayayan Goenka-ji and his assistant teachers who revealed to me the importance of mindfulness, equanimity and selfless service
5. The Insight Meditation Community worldwide that opened me up to more
6. Integral way of practice. In particular, Jack Kornfield’s compassionate wisdom and Christopher Titmuss’ penetrating research continue to nourish and inspire me
7. Clive Sheridan, who introduced me to tantric teaching and has been my friend and mentor since 1998.
8. Paramahamsa Niranjananda and the swamis of the Bihar School of Yoga, where I studied in the late 1990s. Thank you for the valuable teachings in Haṭha and Tantra Yoga. At the same time, I am painfully aware of the recently exposed abuse that has gone on within this organization and that has hurt so many. That is completely inexcusable and terrifying. It has to make us question them Practical approach that so obviously lacks integrity and decency. My heart goes out to the victim survivors.
9. B.K.S. Iyengar and his teachers for their great contribution to improved alignment in āsana practice and the introduction of yoga props. You have made the āsana practice so much safer and more accessible.
10. Hogen-san Yamahata and Tenshin Reb Anderson Roshi, who led my first humble steps in the noble Zen tradition – Pillars of Void.
11. Georg Feuerstein, who, with his fearless research and scientific expertise, was my first real teacher of yoga philosophy
12. Yoga Arts, INSPYA Yoga and many more who gave me the chance to share with students worldwide and to be encouraged by their wonderful team of teachers
13. My next yoga sangha: Apple Zhang, Darin Elliott, Simon Moyes, Roger & Claire Ash-Wheeler, Lance Schuler, Consta Georgoussis, Louisa Sears, Rose Baudin, Miranda Preston, April Galetti, Oles Krolikowski, Sam & Tondi Gilfillan, Isa Pflüger, Frank Schaufler, Simon Krohn, Erik Adams, Dan Fanthorpe, Emil Wendel, Adrienne Ni Cheillaigh, Holger Grossmann & Family, Chris Kummer, Jasjeet Chawla & Family, Katie Stackhouse, Xavier Fichera, Zoe Trenwith, Tamblyn Lord, Nancy He and Armin Baumann