The Birth of BodyRiver Yoga
The first time I tried a yoga class, was in 1989 in London. This was after making some changes in my life, that awakened a sense of something missing in my life. A deeper calling of my soul...
It was a Sivananda yoga class. I moved through the asanas stiff yet strong, just like an oak tree. After the asanas, I laid down for Savasana; the final relaxation. This is when something magical happened that changed my life forever. During the Savasana my awareness opened up to a sense of vastness, and a feeling of coming back home. After the class I was euphoric. My whole inner being had been set on fire, I was passionately ecstatic.
After that, not a day went by without spending time in yogic practice, hours at a time. The moment I placed my palms together at my chest, to do the Sun Salutations, I was back home, in that sense of inner vastness and stillness. My hunger to permanently experience this vastness was insatiable.
The following year I traveled to India to attend the Sivananda Yoga Teacher Training Course in Kerala. I was overjoyed to be able to spend the next some months living a yogic life, morning to evening.
In 1994, after giving birth to my first daughter, I moved back to Finland with my husband at the time. A year later some people started asking me to teach yoga. That is when it truly began, the first few breaths of BodyRiver yoga, as it was to be called years later.
As I lived on the Åland islands in Finland at the time, I was far away from my teachers, and was one of the only yoga teachers on the island. Due to this I turned inward for guidance.
Over the years this guidance revealed teachings to me, that were more feminine in their flavor. I came to realize that a lot of the yogic teachings are masculine, and for thousands of years taught by men, to men.
I began to see something new and different unfolding, by daring to follow my guidance in total trust.
Today this guidance is like my breath, every class rests in surrendering to this wisdom, knowing that It Knows deeper than my person ever could, what is needed and right in every moment.
And this guidance is now also part of every moment of every day; I am living the life of the dream of my youth; a yogic life.
What is BodyRiver Yoga?
"My work is and has been to birth This Way, as well as to stay awake to Her continually changing Form, and transmit that deepening awakening and unfoldment into our reality." - Pia Maria Savela
Many women around the globe in today’s world have the freedom to pursue spiritual practices. The availability they haven´t had until recently, is to find spiritual practices that honour their feminine essence as much as their masculine.
This has allowed the woman to dive into their essential Shiva nature (which exists in men as well as women), but many Eastern traditions in particular have asked her to discard her feminine, embodied, sensual, constantly changing essence as non real.
And this is all fine, as long as it serves your deepest longing in that moment. But there might come a time when you as a woman might wake to feel something missing, as if a part of yourself is left by the doorstep.
Luckily today, there are many paths, many ways offered to the yearning feminine practitioner. BodyRiver Yoga is one of these ways.
BodyRiver Yoga is a more feminine expression of the yogic path, resting in Awakened, Empowered Shakti. As a Tantric Yoga form, it recognizes the importance of the Feminine as the guiding principle toward ever deepening awakening. Traditionally in many tantric schools, it has been the woman who is the teacher, the guide.
BodyRiver Yoga is taught by women in their strength of vulnerability and intuition, to both men and women, as ultimately it is a way of the inner marriage of the feminine and the masculine principles - "Alchemy of Union". Why? Because the Feminine is the Master of Relationship - Union/Marriage.
But in order for a woman to be able to guide another toward this inner marriage, she needs to stand awake and clear in Herself - here is where the Yogini Training comes in to awaken her to this.
Ancestral Roots of BodyRiver Yoga
Over the years I have investigated to find the roots of this practice that I offer. For I know that however new it might feel, its roots are deeply connected to its ancestry.
The tradition I find most closely related to BodyRiver Yoga is Kashmiri Shaivism. Yet, as I see many similarities, I also recognize that Bodyriver Yoga is its own unique expression, born to serve the needs of this day and age. She is Conscious onto Herself, yearning to incarnate more and more fully into Her Form of Divine Expression. As Shakti, She is constantly evolving and changing.
In the BodyRiver Yoga tradition the Creation of Shiva is Shakti - as real as Shiva. They are truly interdependent;
Without Shakti, Shiva does not exist but as Pure Potential.
Without Shiva, Shakti is without consciousness, a wild, chaotic Pure Force/Energy, that could destroy itself out of sheer sensual ravishment.
The vision and purpose of BodyRiver Yoga
The purpose of BRY is to assist your Whole Being awakening. The movements and the breath, together with practices in awareness, presencing and chanting are used for unlocking blocked areas in the body, which can be experienced as tightness, contraction and stiffness. This affects the pranic (life-force) flow in the nadis ( life force pathways). As the flow is freed up, it can produce an emotional or energetic release in the practitioner, which the teacher fully supports.
We store a lot of our unexpressed emotions, traumatic experiences and parts of ourselves that we don't accept, in the nadis. The release has the effect of making Being/the Sacred in us more available to be recognized, very naturally.
The yogic practices are also there to support and strengthen the body's nervous system, enabling it to eventually be able to hold the high vibration of permanent awakening.
BRY is a Tantric Path that uses yoga postures called asanas, breath and sound vibration as some of the practices to connect you to your deepest Essence. It doesn't end there. It takes it a step deeper by including practices that allow you to drop into your bodily experience - to become Embodied Spirit. What does this mean? One of the experiences of embodied awakening is an awakening of your emotional body.
Embodied awakening is NOT a transcendent experience. You will very profoundly feel the effect of life on you. As you become more integrated and whole in your own being, your awareness will expand to include being very aware of your impact on others. This is truly a step towards the much spoken "we are all one". You will literally experience through your feeling body that it is all you.
This awakening creates a profound permanent realization and knowing of being non-separate. This knowing allows for a sense of peace, stillness and ecstasy, sometimes palpable, sometimes more subtle, but always present and available. This type of awakening will also radically change your physical body, in its capacity to hold the new way of being. It is not simply an awakening where you "remember" who you are, as it is definitely not a mental process. The body itself goes through a shift on a cellular level.
What I Offer
BodyRiver Yoga workshops of various lengths, covering different aspects of the teachings are offered regularly.
The book "The journey of a yearning heart" to be released soon - an autobiography of Pia Maria's journey
Would you like to host Pia Maria and "Shaktimedicine" in your country/area?
Go to the Contact page for more information
