Mind Your Freedom - yoga and more

27/11/2025

🔥 Goan fire season. Deliberate. Unattended. Illegal.

Today someone set the vegetation on fire again – in exactly the same spot where two years ago teenagers caused a wildfire. The fire starts suddenly, and the people responsible run away. No one supervises it.

📍 Bird breeding season might be over, but this is still their home. A source of safety and food – especially right after the monsoon, when nature is trying to regenerate.

🐦 A few months ago, this area was full of bulbuls (bilbili).
For the last few weeks – not a single one.
I wonder… why?

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❗Facts:

🔥 Burning vegetation is illegal in India (Indian Forest Act 1927, Environment Protection Act 1986).

🐣 Fires destroy habitats and cause death to birds, insects and small wildlife.

🌿 Ecosystem recovery can take years, and repeated burning may leave it permanently damaged.

💨 Smoke and flames disrupt bird migration and orientation.

🧍‍♂️ Setting fires can lead to financial penalties and even criminal charges.

Silence helps no one. What burns today may be gone forever.

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🔗 If you witness similar incidents – take action. Report it. Don’t look away.

27/11/2025

🌍 Life is moving so fast that many of us feel constantly under pressure — at work, at home... Sometimes before we even notice, stress becomes part of our personality. 😞

💡 Don’t wait until it's too late. Small changes can make a big difference! Take moments throughout the day to pause, breathe, move, and reconnect with yourself. 💚

✨ Try these simple practices:
🧘‍♀️ Breathing exercises (3–5 min):

🔁 Box breathing 4-4-4-4

😌 Relax breath 4-4-6-2

🌬️ Cooling breath (inhale through rolled tongue, exhale through nose)

🤰 Belly breathing

🧠 Mindfulness: notice what you see, hear, smell, taste, and feel in your surroundings.

💞 Resourcing: think of someone or something that makes you feel safe and happy.

🌱 Grounding: walk barefoot on grass or feel the support of the chair and floor.

🦋 Butterfly tapping: gently tap left/right arm with opposite hand, as if hugging yourself.

🎯 Find 5–10 objects of the same color or shape around you — move your head, observe from far to near.

🙏 Gratitude: when you notice something beautiful (like the sky), say to yourself, “I like it.”

❤️ Metta meditation: “May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I be well. May I be loved and loving.” Notice how it feels.

👣 Move: take a short walk, stretch, or do some yoga.

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💬 Seeking help from a professional is not weakness — it’s a sign of strength. ⭐

🌟 Start small. Just a moment or two. Your body and mind will thank you. 💛

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🌿✨

23/11/2025

20/11/2025

Sometimes I ask
myself:
who am I?
Who?

And I hear nothing –
only emptiness
surrounding me.

And yet this nothingness
is lined
with awareness
and love.

It is empty,
and yet so full
of new patterns,
possibilities, occasions
that have not yet
taken form here.

17/11/2025

Free Will — Truth or Illusion?
Since childhood I’ve heard so much about “free will”… but is our will truly free?
In the tradition of my school (Kashmir Shaivism, Trika), we say that free will — at least in the usual sense — doesn’t really exist. Every decision we make grows out of our knowledge, our past experiences, the things we’ve digested and understood… and the things we haven’t yet.

We’re also deeply immersed in our cultural background and upbringing, which subtly shape the way we see the world. Most of the time, we don’t even notice how much they influence us.

My yoga teacher used to emphasize that from an evolutionary perspective, we always choose the best decision available based on the resources we have in that exact moment — regardless of how we judge it later. There’s a bit of comfort in that: we don’t need to torture ourselves with the thought, “I should have chosen differently.”

Science adds another fascinating layer: neurophysiological research suggests that the brain begins the decision-making process a fraction of a second before we consciously register that a decision has been made. It’s like a moment suspended between intuition and awareness.

Maybe that’s why mindfulness and yoga create so much inner space — they allow us to hear ourselves a little earlier, before the world grows louder than our inner voice. 🧘‍♀️✨

**ra

13/11/2025

🌾 When Strength Becomes a Threat

Sometimes, life places us in spaces where our light makes others uncomfortable.
Where confidence is seen as arrogance, and calmness as something to be broken.

There are people who live in a world built entirely around their reflection — narcissistic souls who need to feel bigger by making others small.
They twist stories, change rules, and plant doubt in gentle hearts.
They speak with charm but drain energy.
They thrive on confusion and control, because if you start believing in your own light, their illusion fades.

If you’ve ever met such a person, you know the slow erosion they cause.
How your body begins to carry their words — through sleepless nights, through the weight in your chest, through a constant questioning of your worth.
It’s a quiet violence, invisible from the outside.

But there’s another truth, too.
They only win when you start believing their version of who you are.
You survive by remembering:
🕊️ Your peace is not up for negotiation.
🕊️ Their behavior is a reflection of their fear, not your failure.
🕊️ You do not need to fight them — only to stop feeding them your energy.

Breathe.
Step back.
Reconnect with your inner stillness — that space they can never touch.
That’s where freedom lives.

✨

13/11/2025

🌑💫 Pāra Devi — Lady Awareness 💫🌑

I follow Pāra Devi, also known as Lady Awareness — she who is constantly and simultaneously empty and full.

In her emptiness, she is no different from Kali in her highest form — the pure void, the timeless womb from which all arises.

Every time I face fear, when there’s an ending or deep transformation, I come to Kali like a small child craving a mother’s protection. And every time — she answers. She calms me down, burns away illusion, and holds me in her fierce, raw, unconditional love.

Her love is not soft — it’s real, wild, and transformative.
It’s the deepest love one can experience. 💖🔥

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🌩️🖤 When I Am Afraid 🖤🌩️

Every time I feel too scared,
I call her name.

Then with thunder,
Heavy storm,
In all her fury and wild dance —
She comes. ⚡

With her love,
Down to the bone —
(The bones she doesn’t mind to break at all).

She will save you,
Oh yes, she will...
But your ego will despair.

She will end
All that is old,
All that no longer serves you.

And in the emptiness you feel,
If you dare to look within —
You’ll see it’s refreshing, new...
A new opening,
A new beginning...
A new You. 🌹

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✨🙏 **ra

12/11/2025

🌸 Seeing with the Heart

Europe loves its clean hands —
slow mornings, quiet weekends, with avocado toast and coffee sipped without hurry.
It’s beautiful, this rhythm, this care for balance.

But maybe clean doesn’t always mean innocent.
Somewhere far away,
someone else is sewing, packing, carrying, sorting —
holding the weight of comfort for others to rest.

And when Europe looks at Asia,
it often sees the smoke, the waste, the noise —
and says, “they’re the ones polluting.”
Yet so much of that smoke rises from factories
making what keeps Europe calm and tidy.

Then they come here, with cameras and wonder in their eyes,
to “see the slums,”
as if poverty were a postcard.
No one travels to New York to photograph people sleeping on the streets —
but here, it somehow feels acceptable.

Yet there is life here too —
loud, colorful, kind, unstoppable.

There is beauty here.
You just have to look differently —
not through comparison,
but through breath, presence, and heart.

Because yoga is not only about the body or the pose.
It’s a way of seeing —
without superiority,
without pity,
with love.

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12/11/2025

🕊️ THE CHOICE OF THE SOUL

I choose death —
not as an end,
but as a gate
to truth.

For I will not breathe
against the wind
that carries
my dharma’s flame.

If I must kneel
to my restless ego,
and turn away
from the quiet
calling of my heart —

then let this body
fall silent,
before the soul
forgets
its song.

11/11/2025

Why “Yoga”, not “Jog”? 🌿

A little language note today — because I often hear that the “correct” way is to say jog, asan, or dharm.
Some even think the final “a” in yoga, asana, or dharma came from English.
But actually… it’s the opposite. 🙂

In reality:

Sanskrit keeps the final short -a (अ) — softly pronounced but real.

Hindi tends to drop it (schwa deletion).

> योग → yoga
आसन → āsana
धर्म → dharma

It wasn’t English that added the “a”.
It was Hindi that lost it.

Today, less than 1% of Indians speak Sanskrit,
and most modern yoga teachers use Hindi and English instead.
That’s why the final -a is often dropped — it’s the sound pattern of Hindi,
mistakenly passed on as “authentic Sanskrit pronunciation.”

But remember: Yoga was written in Sanskrit, not in Hindi.
And Sanskrit isn’t just a language — it’s a sacred sound system.
In traditional understanding, each letter (akṣara) embodies divine energy.
The alphabet begins with “a” — Shiva, and ends with “ha” — Shakti.
The varṇamālā (alphabet) is seen as the dance of consciousness and energy.

When we honor the source, we reconnect with its original vibration. 🙏

Unless, we teach in Hindi - in that way, obviously, using Hindi terms is totally valid.

05/11/2025

I'm still learning... ;-)
(See my other certificates in another album)

05/11/2025

Karma vs Kriya ✨

Both karma and kriya mean action, doing.
The difference is that karma is an action born from the ego — driven by intention, expectation, or the desire for a result.
It carries consequences that eventually return to be balanced. 🔄

Kriya, on the other hand, is a pure, natural action — effortless and spontaneous.
It doesn’t come from thinking in terms of gain or loss, but from the natural flow of life itself.
In kriya, there is no “debt,” because there is no ego trying to hold onto anything. 🌿

Next time you do something —
don’t do it for “thank you,” for recognition, or reward.
Do it with the same intention as a child feeding a stray dog. 🐾
With love and awareness. 💗