Yoga-Discourse

Final and published version in Dutch

in English

Nothing opens up a work - or the thinker himself - like his bedroom, his kitchen, his writing desk, the view from his window. The places where he walked. The stones and benches where he used to sit, thinking over a plot, the figure of his hero, an argument to his opponents, his well-wishers or his critics.

This year, after the EUY Congress in Zinal, the main destination on my way home was Nietzsche's house in Sils-Maria.

Beforehand I had re-read his letters, written from this small Swiss village in the mountains. I spent two hours talking with the director of the museum about his research. I visited the house itself, Nietzsche's bedroom and his study.

But the most interesting and the most intimate turned out to be outside - in the nature around it.

It was the walks along his own route. "Walked-out thoughts" - ergangene Ge(h)danken. The stone on which the conception of Zarathustra was born. Gazing into the crisp, icy summer wind, the bright contrasting colours, the scale of the high, still snow-covered mountains rising out of turquoise, glazed glacial lakes.

That is when my thoughts began to fill with new ideas, themes and titles - already bound up with my own work.

In a space of such contrast and grandeur, in the beauty of this valley and the life-filling force within it, such surroundings work involuntary miracles of scale upon thought.

For Nietzsche, only those thoughts have value that have been walked out. Now I know where, and exactly how, he understood that.

@Yoga_Discourse

The Smell of Books from India

Indian books are something special.

A bookshop, the smell of local paper, volumes wrapped in old newspapers and covered with a visible layer of dust - all of it is at once overwhelming and alluring, precisely because it is so unmistakably itself.

I almost never left such shops empty-handed. Every book revealed another facet of yoga, philosophy, or Indology. Sometimes a trip to India would end with a visit to the post office, where a small crate - covered in stamps and postmarks, tightly bound in postal netting, and packed to the brim with books - would begin its journey home.

Today, one of those little crates arrived from Calcutta, instantly stirring up old memories. The faintly damp smell of an Indian book, the moisture of newspaper pages, dust on my fingers…

And suddenly I realised just how much I miss India.

Allow me to share a little about my path.

My primary identity is that of a practitioner of yoga. I entered my first class 22 years ago in Ukraine and have loved everything about yoga ever since. Studying yoga feels like travelling back in time to explore the history of the human mind and its often hidden potential. Being fully immersed in yogic activities, at some point my professional interests began to shift toward becoming a yoga teacher — for me, simply another and more advanced stage of the same path. Teaching carries greater responsibility, yet it also gives a deeper and more vivid experience of meeting the structures of our consciousness, its limits and its possibilities. It fosters profound relationships with students — something one comes to understand and truly value only over time.

Having initially studied economics, my yoga practice and teaching led me first to a master’s degree in physical education and later to a PhD in philosophy, which I dedicated to studying the transformation of meditation (dhyāna) in yogic texts. Today this path has brought me to an elected position as President of the European Union of Yoga. This personal — and at the same time social — responsibility has quickly become an inspiring, intellectually engaging, and at times political activity, offering a unique experience of meeting remarkable people both in the yoga world and in wider cultural contexts.

I was born in Ukraine in a Greek family and early in life found myself moving between worlds — travelling widely and studying in Europe and the United States. This Ukrainian-Greek heritage has always been a strong part of my family’s history and identity, and naturally it shaped my own. I mention it here so that my students can better understand the cultural and personal background that influenced my approach to yoga.

In my teaching, I aim to unite rigorous self-inquiry with practical transformation. Yoga, as I understand it, is a discipline of attention: it refines perception, clarifies thought, and helps one meet life and emotions that come with it with intelligence and courage. My classes combine philosophical reflection with embodied practice, inviting students not only to move and breathe, but also to think, question, and consciously evolve.

For me, yoga is not only a practice but a way of seeing — a dialogue between body, mind, and the mystery of being.

https://t.me/DimitriosD

New group. Invitation to join.

When I invite people to a new yoga group, I never know how others see yoga and what they expect to encounter in a class.

Yoga today has many faces and Instagram avatars. For some it means dynamic bodily postures; for others — silent sitting with closed eyes. It can be linked to great Vedic seers and profound philosophical texts, yet also to “goat yoga” or even “beer yoga.”

The yoga, however, is difficult to describe before it is practised. Many things a new student will meet cannot be fully explained without experience. How can we know what a journey will bring before we take the first step? How can someone explain mathematics to a person who has never studied it? And those who have already “done yoga” often come with expectations that can obscure what a class will truly be about.

Still, I want each new student to have at least a glimpse of understanding of the program. I would describe it like this:
• We will practise yogic postures (āsanas), but the outer form is not what matters — it is about the science of moving and directing energy through the body;
• We will work with practices that «control the mind», exploring the many different shapes that control can take — this is one of the most interesting part of self-study;
• We will discuss emotions, beginning where the mechanics of Western psychology stop;
• We will enter the esoterics of yoga — not as incense sticks or New Age psychedelic imagery, but as a clear and precise inner discipline of communication with others;
• We will study the methods behind insight and mystical experience — beyond the modern picture of an ecstatic or intoxicated figure.

I hope this contrast helps to return yogic categories to their real meaning, apart from how mass culture has appropriated them. We will study yoga; you will discover more about yourself than you knew before. Self-actualisation and transformation will be the long-term goals.

https://t.me/DimitriosD

Theme of the next Congress in Zinal: “Emotions in Yoga: Bhāva and Rasa”

As always, the choice of theme is the result of a long process. About a year and a half before the Congress, the federations of the European Union of Yoga submit their ideas. These proposals are then discussed by the Board and Executive Committee, and sometimes the list is narrowed down to just a few options. This year, however, all the proposed themes were so compelling that the full list was brought to a vote at the General Assembly in Bratislava this spring.

After discussions and two rounds of voting, the chosen theme became “Emotions in Yoga: Bhāva and Rasa.”
It is especially joyful to note that this theme was proposed by the Ukrainian Federation of Yoga 💙

In the photo — the moment when I first announced this theme at the closing ceremony of the 2025 Congress in Zinal, Switzerland.

The roundtable as a new feature

Over the past three years at the EUY Congress in Zinal we’ve introduced a format that was new for these gatherings — the round-table. The aim was to diversify the familiar “vertical” transmission from teacher to student and make space for a “horizontal” dialogue between teachers — right in front of the audience.

Colleagues backed the idea from day one. In the first year, we ran a bilingual discussion, but the complexity of simultaneous interpretation and the creeping timetable pushed us to split into two separate round-tables — one French-speaking, one English-speaking. By now the format has settled in and become part of the Congress’s tradition.

Yogic Intertwinings. Meeting Matti Rautaniemi

Back in 2017, together with the https://www.in.yoga/ru/yoga-science/ team, we translated the article https://www.academia.edu/13153227/Wellbeing_for_sale_Representations_of_yoga_in_commercial_media I suggested it for translation because the authors raised a crucial issue—the commercialization of yoga in the media space and the trimming away of its spiritual dimension. The text turned out to be strikingly relevant: it became one of the most widely read pieces, and I, like many other teachers, have quoted it countless times in my lectures. But that wasn’t the end of the story.

Last year, during a meeting with a delegate and the president of the Finnish Yoga Federation (YFF), I mentioned the article—only to discover that its author, Matti Rautaniemi, is not only a researcher and publicist but also a practitioner and a member of the federation. Already then, while planning the upcoming Congress in Zinal, I suggested to the Finnish delegation that we explore the possibility of his participation.

And now, here we are: I finally met Matti at the EUY Congress in Switzerland, dedicated to abhyāsa and vairāgya. Here he delivered two lectures and joined a roundtable discussion with four other teachers, which I had the pleasure of moderating. We also exchanged books, and now The History of Yoga in Finnish will become part of the EUY library.

This meeting is a perfect example of how paths and circumstances intertwine in unexpected ways—sometimes through subtle, almost imperceptible, yet deeply supportive forces.

A crucial and fascinating part of the Congress is the General Assembly, where the leading yoga federations of Europe come together to discuss plans, address pressing issues, and map out strategies for growth. This year, for the first time, I took full responsibility for organising it together with the board team. We managed to resolve a number of questions that had remained unsettled for years — some for more than a decade. I’m very pleased with the results. After the Congress, I plan to share some of our collective achievements.