I’m Antje, originally from Germany living in Ireland. When I moved here, I planned to stay only for three weeks but five years later I am still here!

 

I have been practising yoga for quite a while but also had long breaks in between. I do enjoy going to yoga classes. Practising without any interruptons just sets me into the right mindset. At the moment, as we are facing many restrictions due to Covid-19, I find practising from home quite challenging.

 

I started to discover yoga back in 2008, next to other practices that I tried at the time : QiGong, TaiChi, Fencing, Dancing, Zumba and other disciplines. Over the past years, I had a couple of yoga teachers and I find it’s a long way to find someone that does it the way you like it.

 

It’s important for me to have rituals within the practice as they calm me down and help me connect to the present moment. After having these rituals incorporated into my yoga practice I noticed that they have been helping me to get into the right mindset.

 

I feel more comfortable with myself when I practise yoga and I also have the feeling that it’s impacting my life outside of the practice. Under current circumstances, it’s common to feel stressed and when that happens, I try to remember to take the time for a deep breath and to focus on the breathing for a while to let go of the stress and to focus on the solution ( I am still working on becoming a master of this!).

 

For me practising yoga is a wonderful combination of chanting (which I had to get used to as normally it’s not my thing), focusing on my breathing which helps me in other situations as well, doing physical exercises to strengthen and stretch the body and finishing with the relaxation time.

 

I would definitely recommend trying out yoga. There are a lot of different styles out there, which made it difficult for me to find a place to practise after I moved countries . I’m very grateful that Anna offers the yoga sessions as they help me a lot to stay grounded during the whole Covid-19 period.

 

Before Covid-19 started, I was dancing and doing yoga. I think both compliment each other very well - dancing for the social bit and focusing outwards and yoga to calm down, reflect and practise for myself. Since we had a lot of restrictions in 2020, I’m glad that it’s possible to access yoga online and this is my way at the moment to work on finding my balance.