Herbs and Yoga

Image by: www.astanga.dk

Susanna Finocchi grew up in Rome and discovered yoga while she was working in her mom’s herbal shop. Now, she’s running the Astanga School in Copenhagen with her husband Jens.

“My way to herbs was very accidental as I was young in my twenties and didn’t have enough will power to study Natural Science at the University. When my mum was opening an herbal shop because she was real hooked on it, the two things came together and I started to help my mum. A year later the opening I took a diploma on herbs and I started to be interested in it too. I participated in many courses on different kinds of things regarding health and eventually I started a 3 years course for "Technical Cosmetologist" to overcome my feeling of having left something not finished with University, especially Chemistry. This time I succeeded! And then I started yoga and my life took another direction. As you can see it was by coincidence that I came in contact with the "green" world even though I really think that herbs and more natural therapies are efficient,” begins Susanna.

“I jump into things, and on the way I find out that I actually like it.” A friend of Susanna had started yoga and told her that “there’s this yoga, it makes you sweat.” She did, and soon after she stopped all the other things she was doing and begun to teach people yoga. “Living rooms became yoga rooms; there weren’t many people in Rome who were doing yoga at that time, “she says. Then she arrived in Mysore in India, which is where Astanga yoga originated, and met with people who weren’t just treating themselves with alternative things; but that were actually living alternative lives. “They travelled around the world to do yoga, and I was fascinated by this gypsy lifestyle” says Susanna.

She never got a chance to be a gipsy herself. Instead she went to Copenhagen to teach in the Astanga centre for two weeks and met Jens. On the plane back to Rome she asked the woman beside her what it means if a Danish man gives you flowers, and the woman said that he must be in love. “Then I started to cry” says Susanna.

“Yoga brings things to the surface. Your emotions and feelings emerge, so the story of the person comes up. Everyone has a story and it becomes obvious when they’re practicing” she explains. “There’s this new world that opens up when you start doing yoga; this world of possibilities. You start dreaming of being able to do all the things like standing on your hands and so on, but at some point you reach a limit. You realize that you can’t do all the things that you thought you could. This is where the real work begins. You have to accept your own limitations,” says Susanna. “It’s the same in life. In the 20’s you know everything. You think you’re going to make a difference in the world; that you’re the one who’ll show people the limits between what’s good and bad. Then you realize that you’re one of many, and that they’re all doing the same thing. That’s the beauty. Yoga is good at showing us what we are, and that maybe it’s not just beautiful things.”

www.astanga.dk