About

Vision: sight, an idea of sth

[<ὁρῶ (ancient Greek) =to see, to examine>]

“right behind your eyes, you are there”
Will Johnson

What really makes us shine doesn’t come from any external light. Inside you, the ancient Indian sages will tell us, lies hidden a huge SUN. Your purpose is to SEE how you shine from within.

In our lives we act primarily as operators. Most of our time is spent every day on the tasks and goals we need to accomplish.

Yoga comes to remind us that above all we are VISIONARIES.

But the better world that we, as yoga students envision is not made of some DREAM that we created with our mind but of the REALITY THAT WE HAVE TO DISCOVER ABOUT OURSELVES.

 

Here you will find ideas and practical methods based on the VISION OF YOGA to exercise your body and mind. The goal is to start slowly regulating the levels and direction of your energy and concentration so that you always have, albeit your busy, controversial and sometimes conflicting everyday life, a sense of inner fullness and balance. To know at all times which is the appropriate STARTING POINT of your thinking and which is its appropriate REFUGE.

Katerina

In her journey to date, Katerina has taken different paths that converge, however, on one unchangingly single path, that of the search for her personal mission through her daily work.

Her first journey begins in 1999 as a student at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in the Department of History and Archaeology. For several years afterwards, she attends a series of seminars in History of Art at various museums and institutes. The prospect of working on a future research project in the museum sector lies behind her decision to enroll in 2012 and complete the postgraduate program in “Digital Humanities Studies” at UCL in London.

After her return to Greece, she stays on the path she opened in England, continuing her research as a doctoral candidate at the University of the Aegean (Department of Cultural Technology and Communication), but the means for its completion are not satisfactory and after a year she quits her studies.

But already, without knowing it, the seeds of research into the system of yoga, which she would henceforth set as her life’s goal, had been planted in Athens much earlier. In 2009, at Maria Mytilineou’s studio, she becomes acquainted along with yoga also with her body’s difficulties and her resisting mind.

Despite her apparent “break” with a practice she is not ready to understand, a deep connection inside takes place. And this connection gives her the following period the urge to practice as a student and later as a teacher the techniques and principles of the ashtanga vinyasa yoga method that she gets “in love with” and to which she has devoted herself wholeheartedly ever since.

There have been many milestones on her yoga journey, some minor and some major. Among the most important ones are the series of seminars in ashtanga vinyasa yoga that she attends with the “old” teachers Manju Jois, Eddie Stern and Chuck Miller, in Indian philosophy with Dr. Dimitris Vassiliadis and Arvind Pare as well as the sesshins in which she participates by traveling to Germany and Italy at the zendo of Zen Master Hyon Gak Sunim (Zen Center Regensburg) and Zen Masters Doryo Cappelli and Annamaria Gyoetsu Epifania (Centro Zen Anshin).

Some new milestones constitute the teacher training in pranayama (Pranayama TAC Level 1) that she completes with Vinay Kumar, the courses with Swami Saradananda (Yogic techniques) and Shantala Sriramaiah (Veda theory Masterclass 1).

However, there are also milestones that, apart from valuable knowledge, also provide her with special inspiration. The latter concern her acquaintance with Kristina Karytinou (teaching of ashtanga yoga), M.A. Narasimhan (philosophy of Yoga, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra) and Neema Majmudar (philosophy of Vedanta, Advaita Vedanta).

Kristina Karitinou

Kristina Karitinou was a student of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois and, with his authorization, has been teaching the Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga method since 1991. Katerina follows Kristina’s teaching, which is dedicated to her late husband and first teacher Derek Ireland (1949-1998), while attending a series of teacher trainings during the period 2014-2018 (over 400 hours in total) in the First and Second Series of Ashtanga Yoga and gets inspired by the importance that Kristina stresses on the value of tradition and lineage.

M.A. Narasimhan

Professor M.A. Narasimhan was a student of the great Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He has specialized in advanced psychology and research methodology in the field of education, in the Sanskrit language and in Indian philosophical systems. For two years (2018-2020), Katerina has been studying with him the philosophy of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra intensively, on a “one-to-one” basis. In 2019, she travels to Copenhagen to participate in a workshop on the Yoga Sutra that he coordinates together with Dr. MA Jayashree. The love for research from authentic sources which inspires her through his teaching is the main pillar for the completion of her book entitled “ASTANGA YOGA: A Journey Back to Balance” , published by Archetypo Publications.

Neema Majmudar

Neema Majmudar was a student of the master Swami Dayananda Saraswati. She has been teaching Vedanta philosophy in classes, seminars and retreats for over 20 years. Although Katerina has only recently been part of her group of students, Neema’s emphasis on the need for precise, clear knowledge has won her over from the very beginning.