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My teacher said four words. It took me six months to understand them.

In Rishikesh, Guru Devendra was not a man given to dramatic pauses or philosophical performance. He corrected my Sanskrit pronunciation with dry humour, he drank very sweet chai and had strong opinions about breakfast. When he said something important, he said it once, plainly, and moved on. One morning in Paschimottanasana, he came and stood beside me, one hand resting on my back. Not pushing. Simply present. Then, quietly: "You are holding your future." I smiled. I thought it was beautiful, slightly mystical, he moved on to the next student. I would not understand him for six months. The evening it landed, I was in Gothenburg washing dishes, November rain outside, Luna on the windowsill... and then the phrase dropped somewhere below my ribs, into the place where things become real rather than known. He had not been speaking about my hamstrings, the grip was on what I believed the stretch would make me: flexible enough, disciplined enough, arrived.

Has a teaching ever arrived for you months or years after you first heard it?

My friend said: 'You're collecting yoga like trophies.'

Ten-day silent retreat in Ubud. Day three, during meditation, a thought: I'm good at this, better than most people here. And then... oh no. Even in silence, ego had found me. That evening, I broke silence to speak with Ananya. 'Why do you practice?' she asked. I felt defensive immediately. 'To be present,' I said, while being completely absent. She was quiet. Then: 'You're collecting yoga like trophies, Clara.' The truth hurts, it's true. Years of practice, and still so much ego. Maybe that's the practice itself, seeing it clearly enough to smile at it. Recognizing when the path becomes performance.

Who's been your honest mirror in spiritual practice?

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Moving to a new country feels like running in the dark.

Moving to a new country feels like running in the dark. You can't see the whole path ahead. You don't know which streets will become familiar, which words in a new language will stick. You just take the next step. And then the next. Yoga taught me to find stillness, to listen to my body in the pause. But running through winter darkness taught me something different, it taught me to trust movement even when I can't see clearly. After the first week, my feet knew where the path curved. After the first month, I could sense the rise before the bridge without seeing it. Trust built itself one morning at a time. This is what I'm learning: trust isn't about seeing the whole journey. It's about knowing the next step exists.

What practice has taught you to trust the unknown?

I dropped Sanskrit not because I understood it, but to sound interesting.

I started dropping Sanskrit casually in conversation. Talking about chakras and doshas and prana, not because I was integrating this wisdom, because it made me sound interesting. 'In my practice' became a regular phrase. Each word carefully chosen, each spiritual term a signal. Look, I'm not just doing yoga... I'm doing real yoga. But knowledge as performance isn't wisdom. The vocabulary doesn't make practice authentic, it often becomes another way to separate myself from others. Another form of spiritual hierarchy. Sara, my teacher in Gothenburg, speaks about yoga in the simplest terms. She never performs her knowledge... she just shares what helps. That's the difference I'm learning to see.

When does spiritual knowledge become performance instead of practice?

I laughed when someone said running could be meditation.

I was sitting cross-legged in an ashram overlooking the Ganges, trying to follow my teacher's instructions to simply observe my breath. When I mentioned missing my morning runs, another student looked at me with quiet certainty. "Running is my meditation," she said. I didn't understand, I thought meditation meant sitting still, watching thoughts pass like clouds. Running was the opposite—loud, physical, the breath too fast to count. But three years later, running before dawn along the Göta River in Gothenburg, something shifted around kilometer four. My thoughts tired out, the chatter quieted. What remained was just breath, footfalls, rhythm. The same presence I'd been chasing on the meditation cushion, but found through motion instead of stillness. My body knew what my mind couldn't accept: sometimes you have to move to find what's quiet inside.

Has your body ever taught you something your mind resisted?

You don't become someone who doesn't grasp. You become someone who notices the moment the hands curl.

Here is what I have come to understand about aparigraha, slowly, through running and folding and washing dishes: it is not a state you reach. You do not one day become someone who does not grasp, you become, if you stay with it, someone who notices the moment the hands curl. On mat, I still catch my fingers curling. On the river path, I still check the watch more than I need to, and in the quieter parts of Gothenburg life, the parts I write about less, I still catch myself gripping at the question of belonging — whether my accent will always mark me as someone passing through. Aparigraha doesn't ask me to stop wanting, it asks me to notice the moment wanting tips into needing, and in breath, to release what I cannot hold anyway. The pause between grasping and releasing... that small gap is where the sutra actually lives. Not on the mat, not in the Sanskrit. In the breath between the fist and the open hand.

Where do you notice the moment your own hands curl?

I practiced yoga five years before a teacher asked about the other seven limbs.

In Rishikesh, Guru Devendra asked me to describe yoga in Spain. I talked about studios, flow classes, handstands. He listened, then said so gently, "That is one limb. What of the other seven?" I stared at him. Other seven? Patanjali's Yoga Sutras describe eight limbs - ethical foundations (yamas and niyamas), then asana, then breath work, meditation, and inner practices. I'd skipped straight to the third limb, bypassing everything designed to transform how we practice. The poses were familiar, the context was missing. Every Barcelona class I'd taken focused on achievement, flexibility, the next level... never on ahimsa (non-harming), satya (truthfulness), or santosha (contentment). Western yoga made the practice accessible. But something essential got lost in translation.

Did your yoga classes teach you about the eight limbs, or just the poses?

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Western yoga kept the Instagram poses and lost the inquiry.

When yoga came West, something happened in translation. Physical practice was concrete, teachable, profitable. You could see progress in deeper backbends, stronger balances. Classes became "Power Yoga" and "Flow," sixty minutes of poses, brief meditation at the end. Philosophy mentioned, never centered. Nobody talked about ahimsa, about practicing non-harm toward your own body. Nobody discussed satya, being truthful about your actual capacity versus performing for others. I'm not saying Western yoga is wrong, it brought practice to millions who might never have found it otherwise. The physical gateway opened doors. But in making yoga accessible, we kept what fit our culture, we left what challenged it. We commodified the body practice, minimized the ethical framework. Yoga became exercise. Which is valuable. But it's not the complete path.

What do you think got lost when yoga became Westernized?

When everyone moved into headstand, I stayed in child's pose. My body wanted rest.

I choose simpler poses now. When everyone's moving into headstand, I often stay in child's pose. Not to prove anything about my humility, that would be another ego trap, just because my body genuinely wants rest. I practice without posting. Most of my practice happens in my Gothenburg apartment, just me and Luna, no witnesses. No one to impress, nothing to prove. Sara, my teacher here, once told me: 'Practice in obscurity, that's where the real work happens.' This morning, I rolled out my mat before the winter sun rose. The apartment was cold and quiet. No one saw me practice... maybe this unremarkable moment, this ordinary practice, is everything. True practice is humble. Ordinary. Unwitnessed.

Where do you practice when no one's watching?

I spent two months traveling and my morning practice fell apart. What I found was more important.

My friend Ananya once told me, your practice doesn't live in location, it lives in intention. I didn't really believe her until Barcelona. I was three weeks into travel when the routine I'd spent months building simply... collapsed. Different time zones, different beds, no familiar cold air, no mat in the corner where I'd left it. The old version of me would have stopped entirely. If I couldn't do it perfectly, why do it at all? Instead, I adapted. In Barcelona I walked the streets where I grew up, familiar scents became my moving meditation. In Lisbon, sun salutations on a tiny balcony facing terracotta roofs. In Copenhagen, disoriented, I sat with tea for ten minutes and called that enough. The practice held me. Not the specific form of it, the intention underneath. On mat and in street and on balcony, whatever city I was in, the intention is what I was really keeping.

When life interrupts practice, what do you do?

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I confused discipline with punishment until two words changed everything.

I spent years waking at 4 AM to punish myself for ten kilometres. I judged my worth by my pace, every run had to be faster, harder, more impressive. I was running away from something, not toward anything. Then my yoga teacher said two words that changed everything: suave, suave. Soft, soft. Not forcing. Not pushing. In Sanskrit, tapas means discipline, but it means something much deeper. It's the heat that transformation creates, not punishment. Real tapas is the kind of discipline that comes from love. When I shifted my approach, something shifted inside me. The kilometres became easier, not because I was stronger, but because I stopped fighting myself. Consistency isn't romantic, but it's what shapes the soul. Showing up for yourself day after day, not because you hate yourself, but because you love yourself enough to stay committed.

What practice has taught you the difference between discipline and punishment?

The pose was correct. The breath landed. Something was still absent from the practice.

I know what it looks like when practice is going well. The breath in the right places, the transitions smooth, it all looks right. What nobody tells you is how absent you can be from all of that. The watching was constant, it was woven into everything - how I moved, how I adjusted, whether what was on the mat would look like dedication to some imaginary observer. Nobody was observing. The watching didn't care. Sara's studio was the exception. Small, unmirrored, quiet. She'd offer

What does practice feel like when no one is watching?

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What does it mean to practice with integrity when nobody's watching?

In studios, I'd performed presence. At home, I had to actually be present. The Yoga Sutras talk about pratyahara - withdrawal of the senses from external objects. I always thought that meant closing your eyes and shutting out the world. But practicing alone taught me something different...it meant withdrawing attention from external comparison. From the need to be seen doing it right. When I practiced in studios, my attention scattered across the room, I couldn't help tracking who held longer, folded deeper, looked more serene. At home, my attention could finally come back to the only thing that mattered: this breath, this body, this moment. I wasn't trying to become more flexible, I was learning to honor where my body was today. Not yesterday's flexibility or tomorrow's goals. Today's honest edge. Some mornings that edge was soft, I could fold deep. Other mornings my body was tired, tight, asking for gentleness. At home, I could listen without shame, without feeling like I was failing because I needed to rest. The practice became conversation with my body instead of performance for others. As love instead of achievement.

How does your practice change when nobody's watching?

My watch battery died on a Sunday. I ran without data for the first time in years.

Swedish December. The watch died on a Sunday evening, the charger had vanished somewhere in the flat. I looked for it without real urgency, that should have told me something. I ran Monday morning without data for the first time in years, disorienting at first, then strange, then, two kilometres in, simply like running. My feet on frost-hardened path, breath making shapes in the dark air, the river moving on my left. Day three was when something shifted. Without numbers I started paying attention to different things: the sound my shoes made on ice, whether my breathing felt strained or easy, the way cold air lands differently in each nostril. The information was all still there, it just wasn't scored, no verdict waiting at the end of each kilometre. I found the charger eventually, tucked behind a stack of books. I still wear the watch most mornings. But something had loosened... the grip had shown itself clearly for what it was. And once you have seen a grip, really seen it, you cannot entirely unsee it.

What do you notice when you remove the measurement?

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What if unanswered questions aren't problems, but companions on the path?

For years, questions felt like enemies. Not-knowing meant I was doing something wrong, failing somehow. Every question demanded an answer, every uncertainty required resolution. But something has shifted in my practice. The questions still arise, they always will, why am I here, what am I seeking, who am I becoming? But now they feel different. I write them in my journal and leave them unanswered. I sit with them on my cushion and don't reach for resolution. I let them walk beside me on my morning runs. The questions aren't obstacles anymore, they're what keeps me curious. They keep me humble. They keep me awake to what I don't yet understand. Maybe that's the practice: not answering the questions, just living with them honestly.

What question has been sitting with you lately?

She gave it freely. I needed a studio and Sanskrit vocabulary to accept it.

That realisation came slowly, not as a rebuke but as a quiet adjustment. I had spent years building a vocabulary for something I had already received - the breath instructions, the quality of attention, the unhurried presence that moves through a house the way a river moves. She never knew she was teaching anything. She was just living, and living a certain way takes practice, it takes the kind of devotion my yoga training gave a name to but didn't invent. My grandmother's mornings were all of it, she would have found the Sanskrit unnecessary... In moment I understood that, something shifted in how I thought about knowledge. Wisdom moves through gestures and daily routines, through the way someone holds a teacup. We carry it forward without knowing, and sometimes we need a certificate to tell us it was real all along.

What wisdom do you need permission to trust?

I went to Rishikesh to learn yoga. I found my grandmother instead.

Every dawn at the ashram, we meditated in a small hall that opened toward the river. Mist rose from the Ganges in the early light, thick and soft. Temple bells from across the water, incense and river water mixing in the lungs like something from a very old dream. I sat one morning, breathing slowly, and felt something I recognised before I could name it. A quality of stillness, a fullness in the quiet. I had felt this before, I had felt it on a stone terrace in Granada, watching a woman water her plants. Guru Devendra taught me the Sanskrit, Abuela Isabela had taught me the practice twenty years earlier, without a word of it... What moved me most wasn't that the circle had closed. It was realising the circle had never been open. What she planted had been growing in me the entire time.

Have you found what you were looking for?

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