Reconnecting with Your Body

We live in extremes today. Either we are completely outward-focused – driven by work, social life, phones and endless information – or we retreat into the opposite: journaling, collecting routines, chasing after “me-time.” Yet what’s often missing is something essential: the connection between the outer and the inner world.
I had lost this connection myself for a long time. Movement was always my outlet – running, climbing, exhausting myself physically. It gave me relief, but in truth it was just a distraction. The moment I truly landed in my body came much later – and in the most unexpected way.
In Vietnam, I encountered yoga for the first time in a serious way. I didn’t even want to go and in the studio, I felt like a complete outsider: tall, stiff and not flexible at all. The Vietnamese women around me were graceful and supple. The Indian teachers led the class with a kind of strictness, almost military in discipline, but also with a calmness that immediately fascinated me. When the teacher entered the room, he simply sat down – and the whole room fell silent. No long explanations, no endless corrections. He demonstrated and everyone just practiced.
I hardly understood anything – not the English, not the Vietnamese translations. But that was exactly what sparked something in me. I began to observe, to feel – and for the first time, I experienced a posture in a way that truly made me arrive in my body.
Back in Switzerland, it was different. Yoga here was more technical, more precise, full of instructions. I couldn’t find my place and eventually enrolled in a teacher training – driven by the need to understand what had touched me so deeply in Vietnam. The training gave me a solid foundation and the discipline to learn the techniques properly. Yet at the same time, I realized: it’s not about being perfect – it’s about sensing what feels right in the moment.
Today, that’s exactly what yoga means to me. Sometimes I need movement, to sweat, to find my flow in physical activity. Other times it’s enough to sit quietly, to do a simple posture, even if it doesn’t look perfect. It doesn’t matter if someone is watching or not. What matters is whether I can connect with myself.
And maybe that’s what is most important in our times: not to keep chasing the outside, and not to hide in routines either, but to find a way to connect both. To pause and ask: What do I really need right now? – and to honestly follow that answer.