About my teaching

I have been on a life-long spiritual path of healing and awakening. With more than 30 years of experience in meditation and yoga traditions, along with a modern evidence-based training, I teach an embodied and open-hearted way to transform our suffering into greater presence, wisdom, and joy in life. My teaching is an integration of mindfulness, compassion, and gentle yoga practice for the development of greater peace and well-being, which I call Mindful yoga.

Mindful yoga

Mindful yoga represents the culmination of my life’s work to integrate Buddhism and Hatha yoga, together with a contemporary understanding of wellness and psychological health. I am passionate about bridging Eastern traditions with Western science, and how to effectively assist people out of suffering and into optimal living. Mindful yoga is a proven way to address common ailments like stress, insomnia, anxiety, and depression, as well as a method for awakening greater joy, clarity, and happiness, and it is accessible to people of all abilities and ages.

Experience

I have been working to develop Mindful yoga in Norway by first introducing it to yoga studios in 2015 and establishing the Mindful Yoga Education at Oslo Yoga in 2018. I have been a co-therapist with founder Maja Thune in the first Therapeutic Yoga Teacher training in Norway from 2016, using mindfulness and yoga as therapeutic tools in psychiatry, and I have been a faculty of the 300-hour Foundational Yoga Teacher Training through Oslo Yoga, teaching a mindful approach to yoga. I began teaching mindfulness and compassion meditation in 2006, and I have been offering courses, workshops, retreats, and lectures since then.

Training

I began my early training in a combination of Vipassana meditation, Bhakti yoga, and Hatha yoga when I was 15 and I have continued in these traditional practices for over 30 years. My first spiritual teacher was Ram Dass, whom I met when I was 16, and I received personal guidance in those formative years. I trained under Ram Dass as an environmental/spiritual activist and underwent his ‘Compassion in Action’ program. During my teens I also had a private tutor in Classical Hatha yoga for 2 years and continued my training in Iyengar yoga from Chad Hamrin for another 2 years. I was introduced to the direct Tantric Buddhist teachings of Ati yoga/Dzogchen when I was 20 by the late master Namkhai Norbhu Rinpoche, and lived for a year in a Buddhist center, where I met my Dzogchen teacher Lama Surya Das. I underwent a foundational 9-month Ngondro practice of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism under the guidance of a qualified lama, Ani La Tsering Chodron. In 1995 I was again introduced to my true nature through the non-dual teachings of Advaita Vedanta/Jnana yoga, while on retreat with Gangaji, and followed her teachings and those of Ramana Maharshi for many years. I have also spent time in training with the lineage holder Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, and I lived for a year in India visiting ashrams, teachers, and going for pilgrimage to holy places.

Accreditation

I was educated in a 2-year Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program (MBSR/MBCT) through the Institute of Mindfulness-Based Approaches (IMA) in 2014 and certified in Mindful Hatha yoga and MBSR Therapeutic yoga from Kathy Ward in 2015 (200hr). I received my Advanced Vinyasa Yoga Teacher certificate from Mark Stevens (300+ hr). I am certified in EDGU spinal yoga through 3 months of residential training with founder Jeoffrey Page Redman. My Yin yoga training and diploma was through Biff Mithoefer. And I was initiated into level 2 Reiki healing from Dhammadasa.