Come With Me To the Sea of Love
A strange peculiarity of our times is the polarization that happens in social media. There isn’t a whole of space for nuance and counter narratives in our times. You are either red or you are blue. In each of our episodes we like to explore with openness and love our guests unique experiences and positions.
Our guest today has her own story.
She, like her absolutely gorgeous mother, is a being suffused with Love.
In the midst of Portugal’s insane epoch changing civil war: one that transformed the nation from an autocratic dictatorship to a freedom loving Democracy, Isa Guitana was born to naturalists on the Ocean. Almost as if Aphrodite arose out of her Shell right there on the beach in Lisbon, our beautiful Isa came into being.
Isa’s story is shaped by her affection for depth, song, movement, water, wildness, and her love for family and children. She adores Pattabhi Jois and is not embarrassed by it. She loved him dearly, and he continues to hold a place in her heart .
Isa spoke to us about her introduction to seminal Spanish Ashtanga yoga pioneer Tomas Zorzo. After meeting him, she made her first trip to Mysore, India in 2002, to practice at the “old shala’ with Sri. K Pattabhi Jois. She traveled alone and fell in love with India. And still today, India holds a very special place in her heart. It is the country where she first lived alone, where she met her Guru, Sri. K. Pattabhi Jois, where she conceived her first child, and where she met her now husband, Jay Wong.
She opened the first dedicated Ashtanga Yoga School in November 2003 in Lisbon, Portugal, with her partner at the time Tarik van Prehn, while she was pregnant with her first child, Arjuna, who was born right inside the yoga school two months later.
As a practitioner and mother of three, Isa shares with us how her experience of practicing through pregnancy was very different with each of her children. Arjuna was born 2004 when Isa was in her twenties, her daughter Kailani was born 2014 when Isa was in her thirties, and baby Koa was born last year in 2020 at age 42.
Isa shares with us her different approaches to practice that naturally took place with each pregnancy, as well as her different approaches to giving birth. We talked about the miracle of life, and how the practice of motherhood and the practice of Ashtanga yoga work together to bring us to a place of surrender and awe.
Both are a constant reminder that can connect us to the present moment, the breath of life, and the realization that so much is beyond our control.
“The practice is a deep dancing with the breath of life.” - Isa Guitana
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT ISA
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The Finding Harmony Podcast is hosted, edited and produced by Harmony Slater and co-hosted by Russell Case.
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Opening and closing music compliments of my dear friend teaching Ashtanga yoga in Eindhoven, Nick Evans, with his band “dawnSong” from the album “for Morgan.” Listen to the entire album on Spotify - Simply Click Here.
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