Yoga and Vedic science have changed my life completely. Many see yoga only as postures on the mat, but I’m talking about yoga in a broader way of understanding: as a healthy lifestyle for body, mind and soul. We are much more than just ‘our body and a bundle of thoughts’. There is a deep and mysterious reason why we are here. As a child psychologist I studied for many years in university but I could never find out what this reason for living was. Something in life was missing, but I never knew what it was. And because I was living in different countries due to my profession as a development worker for several years, I never really felt what home was anymore.

Learning about yoga philosophy I found out that yoga is the path of moksha or self realisation. The path to some sort of higher living. I came to know more about our true self or atma, the soul. I’ve been studying thoroughly for almost 8 years with an Indian teacher, experiencing, practicing, traveling several times to an ashram in India and having the honour of practicing ancient yoga for many hours there. And I’ve been searching inside. It felt good right away. It felt as ‘it’; the thing I was missing in life. Home. I started to live the yoga lifestyle very strictly to clean myself energetically, to be able to deeply experience this soul-energy.

Life is a pilgrimage. The wise man does not rest by the roadside inns. He marches direct to the illimitable domain of eternal bliss, his ultimate destination. Swami Sivananda

Daily meditation, pranayama, asanas and mantra chanting made me a different person: with inner peace and strength, much more content, happy, blissful, patient, and I might say a more loving and compassionate being than I already was before. I felt connected to my inner self, my real self, my soul. I was more fine tuned with the higher energy of love, the divine, because once we are connected, we feel that we are all one body of love. 

I found out that this cleansing process is actually the universal dharma or goal of our existence: with Jnana, Karma and Bhakti Yoga we clear up old patterns and thoughts (which are often negative and self destructive and remove us further from our truth), which will make place for the pure energy of our soul or atma: unconditional love. This cleansing proces helps us to connect better with the higher energy during meditation (dhyana), it clears up the sky. And only through meditation we can reach this higher purpose of life. 

During this path we get closer to love and eventually we are able to see love everywhere, we think with love, we speak lovingly, we act only out of love and we attract more love into our lives. When we become love, we merge with love because particles of the same attract. We dissolve into the divine. That is moksha the reason why we are here. Realising this we can see that love is all that is true: it is everything. Then we only want to serve love or the higher energy. 

In that stadium I am at the present moment: searching for a way in which I can serve best, with the deep knowledge and skills that I’ve built up the past years, considering ‘us’ as body, mind and soul. Right now it feels best, besides teaching and coaching children with my own developed methods for yoga, meditation, dance and games, and coaching adults with a ‘home made’ approach called Yoga Therapy, to write about the process and share my experience in a way that it can be supportive for others who are interested in walking the same path of moksha. Everybody can walk this path, everybody can reach this state of yoga.

The first book written together with Dhroeh Nankoe, has been published and I am very grateful that it has been received very well: it is about teaching children a different way, with understanding of energy, emotions, the heart and love with energisers based on the science of yoga and meditation. When we start young, our children don’t have to walk this path, they keep on shining their inner lights continuously.

If you are interested in some more information about moksha and yoga, you can also read my blog in which I share more about this inner cleaning process and the healthy yoga lifestyle with sattvic food, which can lead us all to perfect physical, mental and spiritual health. It brings us to love and bliss inside, without searching it outside ourselves. It brings us to a deep feeling of happiness and oneness, it brings us home to our soul. 

Namasté.

While everything around me is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying that change a living power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves and recreates…. For I can see in the midst of death, life persists, in the midst of untruth, truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists. Mahatma Gandhi