#79 Tim Feldmann | Ashtanga Yoga: Do Your Practice and All Will Come

Tim Feldmann is the director of Miami Life Center, which he co-founded with Kino MacGregor and Matt Tashjian. He embarked on his yoga journey after a near-fatal accident in 1992 and is authorized to teach by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois and R. Sharath Jois. With a professional dancer and choreographer background, Tim integrates extensive anatomy and meditation knowledge into his Ashtanga yoga teachings. Known for his humorous and profound teaching style, he travels extensively to share his expertise worldwide.

Jesper met Tim back in Kovalam some twenty-something years ago. Yoga has been a very on-and-off thing in our lives, but our interest in pursuing a daily practice has grown over the last couple of years. Jesper has had a daily Astanga Practice for the last three years, and in this episode, we dive into the wonderful wonders of yoga and what it does for us.

We love people who live by their passions, and Tim is certainly doing this. Starting out with a passion for dance, he moved towards yoga, which has been his life for the last 25+ years.

Listen in and do your practice, and all will come.

🗓️ Recorded July 22th, 2024. 📍 At Tempelhofer Feld, Berlin, Germany

▬ Tim Feldmann - Relevant links ▬

• Website: https://timfeldmann.com/ 
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/timfeldmannashtangayoga/ 
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/timfeldmannyoga/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/MrTimFeldmann 
• Miami Life Center: https://miamilifecenter.com/ 
• Video with Lino Miele mentioned in the episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EtCitABLOw&t=259s 

Chapters

• 0:00 Journey From Dancer to Yoga Teacher
• 11:36 Exploring What Yoga Means for Us
• 17:22 A Life Devoted to Yoga
• 27:38 The Essence of Yoga Wisdom
• 37:57 The Three Pillars of Yoga
• 51:56 Do Your Practice and All Will Come

Transcript

00:00 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Welcome. This time we are together with Tim Feldman. Welcome and thank you for sharing your time with us. 

00:06 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
Thank you, Cecilia and Jesper. It's so nice to see you again, Jesper. I haven't seen you for 30 years or something. Cecilia, I don't know, did we ever meet before? 

00:15 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I don't think so, I don't think so right yeah. 

00:18 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
No. 

00:18 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
It's the first time. 

00:19 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
And, as people might hear, we have a common accent. We are both danish, but also all of us is out in the world, all three of us, yeah we're danish and none of us are in denmark I'm in felixberg, I'm at my mom's house in uh in copenhagen. 

00:40 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
So yes, okay, okay, sorry, I got that wrong. 

00:44 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
I guess I told me you were in miami, so well, I live there I'm born and bred in here in copenhagen, but I have been in living in miami for almost 20 years, like 18 years, something like that okay, wow, and but what we are talking about is, uh, and we'll talk about today is yoga and living a self-directed life. 

01:05 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
So, for the people listening, our podcast is called Self-Directed. We often talk a lot with families and parents about parenting and living self-directed life and doing a self-directed education. Some call it unschooling, but what also fascinates us is people who have taken this life and said I have this passion, I want to go this way and actually making it into a life, and you have succeeded that with astanga yoga tim. Thank you. How did that happen? How, how did you win from? I actually don't know what you did before and you said it was around 30. I think we met maybe in 2001 in Kovalam. So it's almost 30 years and you have been doing yoga every day more or less since then. I've just restarted some time ago. 

01:58 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Three years, four years. 

02:00 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, it was in Bilbao. So three years ago I restarted my yoga practice and it feels wonderful. But about you, tim? What was your life before yoga? What was it and how did you enter your today? 

02:19 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
Well, there's a lot to say there, I suppose, but maybe I can tell you a funny story. So you asked me how did it happen? So my wife Kino, I helped her a little bit. She was teaching and I happened to know about anatomy from my previous life as a professional dancer and choreographer. So sometimes she said would you teach? You know half an hour of anatomy. And one day she said to me Tim, have you thought about becoming a yoga teacher? You know, I think you're really good at it and I think you really have something to offer. And then the following words came out of my mouth I would rather get down on my knees and die than become a yoga teacher. So I'm kind of the incidental yoga teacher. 

03:11
I must admit that I have still taken those words back many times over and I really enjoy what I do but at that time when I said that that, I was at a time where I was touring around the world as a choreographer with my own project-based dance company from Denmark and it was going very well and it was my big passion. I had such a good time with it so I just couldn't imagine doing anything else than that. Nevertheless, I was all for at that time I had already been practicing yoga for almost 10 years. Um and um, it was my personal place to go. 

03:54
So as a dancer, as a choreographer, it's very extroverted. You know, you show your work all the time, you're being evaluated and you're being, uh, critiqued on your work all the time. And yoga was, for me, the place I came for one healing, and like physically healing, but also very much for my own mental health, my own emotional health to go on this little two meter long, little more than half meter wide piece of plastic and then just like cut out the world for a while, I say as a type of moving meditation. So I don't know if that answers your question, but at least there was a lot of words there, yeah, not very important to get the questions answered, okay. 

04:41 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
So I would actually like him to go back to the dancing. Uh, because I yeah that. Now I remember you did that, but living a self-directed life. So you went to public school proper or school like everybody else yep what? 

04:59
what ignited in you that you was like I can become a dancer and choreographer. That is a bow. And how did your parents take it? Because a lot of people, when we are talking about parenting, they're like will your child ever, anytime, find anything to do and can you just live what you do, what you want to do, and succeed in life? How did you now you're at your parents place in Frederiksberg, visiting Denmark? How did they take it back then when you came and said hey, I want to be a dancer. 

05:30 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
My parents were pretty cool with it actually my mom when she was a kid. She really wanted to take ballet classes when she was a small girl, but she grew up in a working class family and there was no money for such a thing, so she never got to do that. So when I started to, I actually started with physical theater and then I started to take a couple of like modern dance classes as support for that. She thought that was very exciting, and my father, I think he just didn't know what to think of it. To be honest with you, he was a traveling salesman and he's a hunter and you know a kind of guy. He built his own log cabin, you know, and things like that. So when I was starting to do physical theater, he was like oh, theater, you know. And then physical, oh, that's like some weird experimental thing, all right. And and he's also a bit of an adventurer himself he's always wanted to do that. For instance, when he was 16, he ran away from home and he took a job as a sailor on a ship that sailed to Panama and then a couple of years later his father got hold of the back of his neck and put him into like an education. So I think that. 

06:44
And I went to holland to to a dance school there for a number of years, um, and he saw me getting picked up by different companies and different, different choreographers. So actually most of my training became apprenticing instead of going to to school, and I think he was inspired by that. For instance, I went to Australia and I got a job there, apprentice job, something in between and he was very impressed because he always wanted to go to Australia but never made it to Australia. So he was like, oh you know, my son, someone is inviting my son to go to Australia and I think he didn't really care if it was as a dancer or whatever it was For him that was. He got that somewhat and my mom was inspired by what I do. 

07:39
I think I should say also my mom was a health gymnastic teacher from Hille Godlund School of Gymnastics in Copenhagen and later she re-educated as an Alexander Technique teacher. So she was very much tuned into that and my brother was teaching Tai Chi for 20 years, 30 years. So I think the whole kind of family is already looking for alternative paths. But you asked me how I got into dancing and that was through physical theater and I met a guy called Kim Iden who was at that time working together with Thomas Heidelsen in a Danish experimental company called XMIT together with Thomas Heidelsen in a Danish experimental company called XMIT and Kim had just returned from Japan where he had been for a year studying with Katsuo Ono the Japanese type of experimental theater dance called Butoh. And I met him and in a workshop and I just fell completely in love with the whole thing and that just took me into different kinds of dancing I became more interested in like contemporary technical dancing, but that was this, I think, the artistic seat that got me going with that Nice. 

08:59 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
So now I'm the other way around curious why did you become a yoga teacher? 

09:09 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
the way around, curious why did you become a yoga teacher? Well then, lo and behold, um, in 1992, in february 1992, I just moved to new york to, uh, you know, see if I could make it there, because then you can make it anywhere in natural cities right um about a month or two in, I was invited to Venezuela for a dance festival there on a Friday afternoon. 

09:30
Some friends took me up into the mountains they called the Avila, and I didn't know what I was doing. So I unfortunately slipped over a a cliff and I fell down way way further than I should have and I should have died that day, but I didn't. But my body was pretty messed up, lots of broken bones and lots of stuff. And then it took me two years to rehabilitate a series of surgeries and I did all kind of stuff. Um, and in the process of that, a friend took me to a yoga class in new york. I'd moved back to new york, worked as a dancer. Friend took me to a yoga class at the jiva mukti center and I my body just was like a sponge, just like absolutely loved it, and so I continued that because it was making my body heal and it was make my body strong and flexible and well prepared for the dance rehearsal which I was doing on that. So that that was the beginning of that. 

10:44
I should perhaps mention that, perhaps as any teenager, I had been dabbling with Tao and Zen, buddhism and so forth, and I had been doing years actually of sitting practice while I went to dance school in Holland in the Tibetan tradition of Buddhism. So there was a certain coming home for me, going into yoga, because it had the whole strong physical aspect of dance while at the same time it had a spiritual dimension which um was, which felt a bit like common home for me. 

11:26 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I sometimes show people when I talk about the stanker yoga. I show them Lino Miele's 50, his birthday present to himself when he turned 50, because the way he floats almost through the air, I'm like I'm 49 now. Yeah, young man, I'm gonna make it before november, but there is make it yeah, I, I am um. 

11:57
So I would like for us to talk a little about the love of understanding your body and moving the body For me. I have been sitting in front of a computer for more than 25, 30 years, so I'm very contracted in my shoulders of all the stress of sitting there and working. And here last fall I finally got around the knee myself and catch my hand on the back and I almost cried with laughter and joy. I was like what happened? It happened, it finally happened, and so. 

12:33
But, as Cecilia said, I took it up again because we, when we travel, we sometimes invite people together with us, and we had my young cousin living with us for a month and he's like 25,. We had my young cousin living with us for a month, and he's like 25, did his morning yoga every day and I just did. I kept my yoga practice, but just a one sun salutation of A and B, and that was it. Like now I've done my yoga, that was it Better than nothing. But he did it every morning and I was like, oh man, and he has this 25-year-old body and can do stuff. 

13:07 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Okay, I will give it a go. And now I was a long time after, wasn't it yeah? 

13:11 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
at first I was pissed for three months that he was young and could do everything suddenly you were like, let me try I'll do a full practice. Yeah, and then you didn't stop and I was really happy afterwards also very useful in your living condition. 

13:26 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
There were six people in the van. Then you can like tie yourself up to a tiny ball, you know we need the flexibility on many levels, not just mentally, actually physically. 

13:36 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
You should see the dance sometimes when we brush our teeth because the space is it's very tiny. Yes, I want to say 80. It's like a car seat right. Yeah, 80 by 80. And we are two people Just moving around each other with this little dance. Who needs the? 

13:59 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
It becomes a dance. You start to move. Okay, here's Hank going. I'll go over here. 

14:04 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
My leg coming over here everybody in the same rhythm yeah but, but. 

14:12 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
But I for me, I can understand how you can still can have a an interest, because I'm still so unflexible many places there's like a long time. I believe in three years my practice will be a lot better. Is there still goals for you to accomplish in yoga? 

14:33 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
uh, yes, so like, first of all, we gotta define yoga to figure out what goals there is to accomplish, right? So I am now 58 and I'm past my prime in regards to what my physical body can do. So there are many movements that my body used to do with some ease, which now takes me quite some work to replicate. But that's okay. And I think that where, when I was in my, my 30s and even into my 40s, I could more, um, I would more work, like there was a fun aspect of it and it was like exciting and so forth, now I feel that if I don't do my practice, I feel exactly like you do. I feel that I I start my body start to cave in and I start to get weird pains here and there. So the process of getting on my mat is very has a lot to do with keeping my body healthy and strong, somewhat like a healthy gymnastic routine. 

15:37
But over the last years I you know, at some moment in this journey of yoga, you know, I would find myself wake up early in the morning and there was like everyone else were not waking up early in the morning. So, to wake up early in the morning, I couldn't go to bed late at night. So that means, like all my friends, I lost all my friends. And so then you know, I'm there alone in a cold room and thinking why am I doing this? You know, why am I doing this again? You know, like you have, I know I can put the leg behind my head. Now I know I can do that. So why are we doing this so often? And in the process of that, it became apparent to truly understand why is the leg, why am I putting the leg there? 

16:25 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
why is? 

16:25 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
yoga proposing to put the leg there and putting the leg there, like all these movements, have a whole foundation of reasons that goes from literally, the very ambitious approach of liberating us as human being is freeing us up from pain and suffering in any which way in a physical way, mental, emotional way, even in a spiritual way, as you know, liberating the soul all the way to like stretching the hamstrings because it's healthier for your lower back. So, and the whole thing is tied in very beautifully and very well thought out, and I feel it, I feel that, um, here's an example. 

17:16
You know how the necessity for comfort tends to creep into our lives. Do you know what I mean? Yes, you like, we need we cannot just eat vegetables we need some bacon and we need some butter and we need that kind of cheese and we need, you know, a comfortable sofa and we need a good television TV show to watch at night. And we need the people next to us to respect us and we need them to love us and we need them to love us and we need them to love us the way we want to be loved. And it just keeps going right. 

17:51
And in my life, if I don't watch out, then the my cravings for delicious living and comfort in any which aspect in my life start to grow and grow, and grow and grow. When I go on my mat every day, I have to do things which are not comfortable. So, and along with things that are comfortable, and afterwards it's comfortable, but it's a daily reminder that life is more than seeking comfort and it's a daily reminder that I need to be able to stand and function well with a happy state of mind and an open heart, even when conditions are not ideal. So the physical practice on every day gives me that outlook on life, whether you want to call that spiritual, or religious, or psychological or whatever you want to want to call that. So the daily practice is very useful for me in that way. 

18:55 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
It situates me in in my life and it helps me navigate everything all the time I find this tanga really has really a lot to offer for and I, like you, struggle. Are we talking spiritual life? Is it psychology? Is it? Yes, life mastering, what is it? But this state of mind, that is it like a derivate from doing a stanga yoga, could probably be other things, but my personal experience is that and writing that are the two things that I would do like a ritual to keep me. I remember back in the day, 20 years ago, when you were, in theory, doing a Stanko Jürger every day In theory, yeah, he told me when we met you can roll out the mat and make a wishful wish. 

20:00
He would take his mat. Can I say this? 

20:04 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, yeah. 

20:05 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
He would take his mat and a nice bag and put it over his shoulder when he left in the morning, but he would be late. Yeah, yeah and he would take his bike because he was also officially biking to work yes and then he would take a taxi because he was late for work with the mat, with the intention was there and on the way back he would be really tired. 

20:30 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
Yeah and uh, come back it's a heavy mat, of course you get tired because you didn't do the yoga I was. 

20:38 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I was sitting in front of a computer the whole day, very, very hard part of this story is when you sometimes actually did the yoga, because I didn't know we had different mornings. You know, I went the other way with the kid. Sometimes he did actually do the yoga in the morning and he would come back like I don't know, like the sidekick in a Disney movie or like just so happy that it was annoying that I would have to ask him to go for a walk, like, can you calm down? Like a three-year-old. 

21:08 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Cecilia asked me to never do yoga in the afternoon because I got hyped. 

21:13 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Five Because no one's sleeping. Then he was just bouncing off the walls and it was amazing what it did to your state of mind. Now we don't feel it so much. 

21:23 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
No, I think I'm cleaner. 

21:25 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
I think that, whether it's yoga itself, or having a class or a membership, or, for that sake, like you, like you there, yes, but just to have a yoga mat, you know, made your aspirations clearer and secure that every now and then again. You will get on it. I think it's very. For me it's very important to have like a nail that I can go to. For instance, this morning I didn't practice for myself, which I mostly do. 

21:51
I went to my friend Eskil here in Copenhagen and I went to his yoga shala because I just needed someone to, you know, put an eye on me so I didn't cheat too much, you know, so I didn't do a Jesper today. 

22:08 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
But you know what? 

22:10 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
I remember you from Kogalam. I remember you practicing there every day. 

22:14 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, I did, I did, but then, yeah, then came some years where I didn't. Okay, the fun story about esken is he's the reason I run every day. So every time we had a child, uh, I, after some time, I started to reignite my yoga and it was a little hard to get into the habit because you sleep a little and we so I think it was number four. Yeah, a lot of excuses. I went into the yoga shower, he and, and, um, I was there one day when I was like Ablaidam was flying. 

22:50 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I think so, is it, ablaidam? 

22:53 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yes, next to Panem Institute, yeah. And so I was there one morning and tried to reignite myself and he said but Niesper, see you tomorrow, then You're doing really good. And I said oh man, I can't, I have four kids. And then he looked at me and said I can see you have the strength, but you really don't have the stamina. You should do it more often. And I got so pissed at him because he was right, but I was for years. So I said to myself oh man, that stupid guy, I will spoof him wrong. So I made myself a commitment that I could show him stamina and you're welcome to share the story with well, it's on the podcast, yeah that was like I would show 

23:37 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
him good things can come from anger right, so I decided to run one kilometer every day and I've done that since, yeah, for 11 or 12 years now before it must be 12 years yeah 

23:50
yeah I think a routine like that you know that just gets the heartbeat up and going a little bit and I think it is. As we grow older, it becomes more and more important. When we are in our teens, 20s, 30s, we can get away with a lot, you know. Health is just there. We start to enter our 40s, 50s, 60s. We can, like I feel it very much here in my 50s. There's a lot of stuff I can't take for granted anymore. Like how I eat, you know when I get up all that stuff. 

24:23 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
What have yoga done for you in your life? How has it? What is the most important part of yoga for you? I think my question is that's a very good question. 

24:36 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
It's so. You know, I have made my hobby or my healing practice become my entire life, my professional life and my entire life. My wife is a yoga teacher and practices every day. Um, it's all I do, and when I you know, when I don't practice on my by myself, and I go to india once a year, and I just this year managed to set up a situation where two of my dear philosophy teachers from my soul in india, um, where I can study with them on zoom, which I haven't been able to do all these years. So now, every wednesday and thursday, I study with them online also. So right now, I'm chanting every day to try to learn the Bhagavad Gita, to try to learn to chant the Bhagavad Gita and um, and some other texts, um, so, so it's my entire life that this is what I do, um, but mostly I would say it has really worked for me in so many ways and it has really won me over. 

25:53
So I look at the world through the glasses of yoga. I look at the world through a navigation device which I call the Patanjali's thesis of yoga, the yoga sutras. It's how I understand the world, it's how I, when I'm in trouble. I refer to what I have learned to try to understand what is going on with me, what is going on in this situation. So it is my main navigation device in my life. My life, it's the way I, it's the way I see the world. So I don't that. That is the, perhaps the essence, uh, that's my answer. 

26:43
That is the essence to your, to your question. 

26:45 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Then we can go in deeper if you want to do that I would like to I want to yeah no, but that's just because, if you can but I feel you know might be a very big thing to unfold, but if you're comfortable with you, know as much as we can. Absolutely in this context, yes, and also. 

27:03 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
Maybe there's other things you want to talk about. But you see, the thing is that I feel that life is really difficult to understand. I think it's really difficult to maneuver around and I think it's very confusing and I feel that it's very, very difficult to come by information. That is, hard truths, no-transcript. Oh, which one should I eat now? So I just feel like my entire life is these questions, and not only questions but also dilemmas. It's like I pass the donut store. I want to eat it. It's like, wow, you know something inside of me? Go give me a donut and then, like the other part of me, go, no, donut is bad for you, you know. And so there's, you know. 

28:24
You have to like weigh all this kind of conversation up. Right now, for instance, I'm like thinking am I talking too much? Am I moving the direct, the conversation in the direction that you actually intended, or am I just talking about something that's interesting to me? So I feel that's so like that's just constantly questions for me in this in the world. I tend to overthink things, there's no doubt about that. 

28:54
But so, coming from just like feeling life is really confusing and I feel that I have had very few influences in my life that has done a systematic, methodical job in attaining wisdom. Everyone just flies by, kind of what their parents told them and what their teachers happen to tell them. And now I feel that, after all the and I've gotten some great advices over the years from from people, but now I feel I am studying wisdom. And I've gotten some great advices over the years from people, but now I feel I am studying wisdom, and I'm studying wisdom from a set of people through centuries that has really taken their good time to reflect, to contemplate and to meditate on how to, how to live, how to be happy, how to live in peace and minimum friction and harmony with oneself and with other people and the world, and so forth. 

30:06
So I feel I am the university of wisdom and every now and then a little bit of something seeps in and I can't, you know, as we say in Denmark, I can't get my arms down. It's like so exciting to get some information like that. But, as you can hear, I could also have studied political science and like become a democrat or a republican or, you know, or a liberalitarian, or I could have become a christian or anything. I think there's many possibilities out there, in the way that we're trying to approach the understanding of the world, this one just really works for me and I'm not saying it works for everybody. 

30:52 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I just say no, no, but it has the combination where the, the body is included in the understanding of the world, where where, sometimes, uh, when I hear people talk about um, they talk about mind and body, like it's separate and and I think our understanding of it is separate. But sometimes I'm like, hey, it's my body, I am, it's not my body, I am everything here, and we also have that in yoga. 

31:23 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
We have a century-old discussion between the practitioners of yoga and the scholars of yoga, the pundits, and they don't always agree. You know, it's a different experience to know what a deeper state of absorption is tiana, that is called in sanskrit from a practitioner's point of view and from an intellectual point of view, it's two different things. So, and they are, you know, arguing oh, it's this. 

31:54 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
You know, it's this, you know so it's there again is a confusion for us yeah, no, no, no, I was just thinking about. I do my yoga every morning. I have a minimum program I go through and sometimes for me it is most often is it's just physical exercise, where it's just it's good for my body. I will sit down a lot of the day because I'm working in front of the computer, so it's good to go through this. 

32:28
Most often I cheat in more than 90 percent where I'm like I listen to something, a podcast, something to get the time going while doing it. But then there are the days where I do it without and are present in the body, which can be both terrible, because it's not always nice to be present in the body in an exercise. But sometimes it's also really wonderful to connect the breath and the body. And right now, while I'm talking about it, I'm like oh yes, but tomorrow you should try doing it without audiobooks or anything and just be there in your body, give yourself that time. But it's for me, it's easier to keep the stamina and, okay, I'm doing it today if I put in a podcast, for example. 

33:19 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
Um, yeah well, it sounds like you are a very realistic and also very honest man and with a minimum amount of pride, so that is very yogic values. You know, that is very honorable, um. But I think, like in general, in yoga it is proposed that whatever, whatever support you need, you take, you know, whatever support you need to go towards goodness or in this case we talk about yoga you take that support. Whatever support you take to move away from yoga, try to see if you can wrestle free of that attachment. But if you get on your mat when you have a podcast or something, oh, you do that. 

34:10
Man, like, at the moment I'm doing all this sanskrit studies, so I put some chanting on that. I'm trying to learn. I I have found a guy from the chin maya foundation on youtube so I listen to him chant every day and every, I think, 10 minutes. There's like a commercial for, you know, an ice cream or a bank or a new car or something. But, um, at the moment it's really um, I feel like multitask because I need to get this, the rhythm and this information into my head and every now and then I start to be able to chant along with it and also it gets me going and I think that's something interesting that you said that sometimes you know the yoga practice and there's time for yoga practice. 

35:02
We don't use music, we're doing it by ourselves. So there's no teacher. If you're doing it alone, there's not even anyone next to you. So it's a minimal amount of stimulation that you're getting, it's a minimal amount of support. It's all on you, so good on you for doing that. But in the process of that I also feel sometimes it just gets too intense. Man, it's like I don't. I feel so much and what I feel is not necessarily comfortable. I'm sleepy, I'm sore, I'm stiff, I ate too much yesterday, my mind is going crazy, whatever it is, and if I can just get a little bit of distraction, not to get so over flooded by the discomfort, um, for instance, by I take, I put some chanting, you put like a podcast I think that's okay you know, and then there'll be other times where the practice comes a little bit easier. 

36:00 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Then we do it like that but tim, if I wanted to take my practice further. So until now it has been very physical, uh, focused, um, and I know for myself. I know the next step is like, yes, but try to be in your breathing in the exercise, but if I wanted to understand some of the philosophy around yoga, what is a good starting place? Is there a good book who is talking about this, where I can broaden my horizon? 

36:29 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
oh, that's so much, that's endless amount okay I think the problem is more to figure out where to start than to figure out if there is some information. But if I may, in your case if I may, give a suggestion, do you remember that we, that lino milo mila, back in the days he taught us that we do a stanga vinyasa yoga by the methodology of the tristana? Do you have, do you remember that word, the tristana? 

36:58 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
no, okay, as I said, no, no pride, no, a lot of honesty yes. 

37:04 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
So tristana means three, try mean three means three and stana means principles or pillars. 

37:22
So the three pillars of yoga is asana, pranayama and drishti, which means the movements, the breath and your concentration, so your state of mind, your focus of the mind. So if you want to go just a tiny bit deeper into that aspiration of doing more real yoga, here would be the proposition. Let's say that you go into, you do your Sunam Skala A and you go into down dog and now you're there for five breaths, right. So as you enter that movement, then you're a little bit. Now the body's a little bit. Still you can keep trying to get your downward facing dog a little better. You know, straightening the legs a little more, pushing the arm a little more, whatever it is that we're doing to get into a good down dog. If you do that we say you are only concerned on the physical. So a recommendation is move your body into a reasonable physical shape, reasonable physical state when it's there, change your mind to your breath, observe your breath and then move your breath into a reasonable state of breathing. 

38:45 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
When you're there, then change your focus to your mind and move your mind into a constructive state. So what is a constructive state? Yeah, I was like what is a constructive state? 

38:50 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
Now, first of all, I think that's different for everybody, but a non-constructive state would be one that goes I hate this, I am never going to get it. This is awful. I think I should go and buy donuts now. I'm a bad person because I listen to a podcast. Why am I doing this? You're an idiot. There's a good reason that my mother never loved me. 

39:16 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
You know, whatever it is, the whole negative radio. 

39:19 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
The whole thing, you know. So that state of mind is not supported. If we imagine that it was a teacher who said the words to us at that moment, that we're saying to ourselves that we would never go back to that teacher. So if we can change and change the conversation inside to be supportive and it doesn't need to be quint, essentially yoo-hoo, it just needs to be supportive so at least I can say there's another truth here, um, and that is I am here and there's only four breath left and I can take four breath and I can, and I know that if I do three more of these down dogs, I'm going to get a little stronger and I'm going to feel better after, even though it doesn't feel so good right now. You know, even that kind of moderation of the mind space changes the mind from a non-supported to a supported. 

40:29
That particular principle in the Buddhist tradition they call cleaning the mind. Cleansing the mind Just like we brush our teeth. Wake up, you have a bad taste in your mouth. You take your toothbrush and you put some toothpaste and we go like this and then what happened? No, we have a good sensation in the mouth. Other people's gonna like us better too. So the same thing with the mind. Why not clean the mind a little bit every day? 

40:57
and I think the thing is that none of us in our culture has learned to clean our mind every day. We just the mind is the mind. I have a thought, it's. How can I get rid of the thought? No one knows. Just take the mental toothbrush and do a little cleaning. So that is the tristana method get the little reasonable body, get little reasonable breath, get little reasonable mind all the time and we, you, we can use it. Even you know when you're driving around the, the ring road, around berlin, you know wherever you are are. 

41:32
It's also the same idea. So I would start there. But I can only propose that, because you have a practice, what to do. If you don't have a practice, then it's more difficult, it's much more difficult. Then get a practice, some kind of practice running, you know, as per Eskil, or whatever. Get a practice, some kind of practice running, you know, as per esky, or whatever get practice. 

42:02 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
You can hear, I I drank the kool-aid, right? Yeah, no, no, but it's a kool-aid I like I believe in this thing, it's one of the things I've. I've kept this in my body, mind and soul for more than 25 years. I've been wanting to at some point be there, be present in that way, and it is growing on me. Let's talk a little about Miami. So you moved to Miami and you have created a yoga studio. So if people want to find you, where do they find you there? 

42:38 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
Yeah, so I met this girl, tina McGregor. She's a little bit of a celebrity in the yoga world these days and I met her and we tried to move to Denmark, but she thought that the weather was awful. How could that be be? See, I was like what's wrong with her? Right, like, change your mind, yeah and uh a lot with that, oh man. 

43:04
I'm actually, you know, I just got in and my clothes is slightly wet from, uh, this raining here today Anyhow. So she said I can't do this man. So then we moved to Miami and the weather is considerably better in Miami than in Copenhagen, I must admit. And then we opened a yoga center there we call Miami Life Center, and we've been in business for 20 years Over there. We opened 2006, so 18 years, and it's gone really well and somehow we have managed to be worldwide. I'm not sure if it's recognized or despised either of those two, but it's going really well. And during covid we bought a building, we bought an old warehouse and we fixed it up, which is kind of like an old punk rock life dream of mine. So, and now we're running that over there together. 

44:10
So and but I'm not teaching there very much yeah, I'm teaching, just like workshops sometimes, and some longer intensive. Every june we we have a course together where we are going more intense, but then usually I travel around the world. Like this coming weekend I go to underbap I was just in majorca actually and teaching there and traveling around europe now, um, and traveling america and asia, yeah, and just like you, you know, like on the road. 

44:45 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Maybe there's a second one here about the traveling lifestyle I was also thinking about it when you said what was it earlier? This thing about not getting too comfortable? Yes which is a very much a centerpiece for me in in the choice of of our lifestyle. Um, because living in a van six people I'm not going to say it's uncomfortable, but it is definitely challenging and we don't have a sofa and we don't have a TV and we don't even have a kitchen sink. 

45:30
So a lot of things. I can see, now that we've been traveling for six years, that we appreciate comfort very much when we have it yeah but we also know that we don't need it and it's not a centerpiece for a good life. So but I was just now that you talk about all this traveling. I'm like, oh man, we have an entire theme here. We haven't yeah touched, but time is running out. So you have a yoga shalala in Miami and you live in Miami, except you're never home. 

46:03 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
I would say I am in Miami about half the year and then I'm somewhere else the other half, and it's like one weekend here, one week back, three months in Asia, couple of months back, months back, you know like that all the time. 

46:21 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
So yeah, okay, with a background in choreography, have you ever wanted to make your own yoga choreography? Or maybe saying oh, this, I would like to add an extra movement here, because it's not totally in dance sync, if you get my question. 

46:38 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
Yes, the answer is no. 

46:43
No, like, I always work within. Like as a dancer, as an artist, I worked on what was perceived cutting edge, experimental stuff, um, breaking all the rules all the time, kind of was the idea. And I have since found my immense value in the traditional approach. So I am practicing very traditionally, as per how yoga has been taught for centuries, with a teacher who is very strict on making sure we follow the rules in regards to our physical practice. And then I I'm all these classes I am taking in philosophy. 

47:33
It's all about understanding these texts that are thousands of years old, actually, and trying to understand how they're relevant for me and how they're relevant for other people and how they're relevant in the modern world. And so, if I should say it in a little bit different, if I should answer your question in a little bit different way, it's very rare that I look outside the form for an answer. It's like I look deeper, inside. Where can I find an answer to this question that I have? And then I start to look inside the forms, inside the text, inside the philosophy, inside the practice in itself. Forms inside the text, inside the philosophy, inside the practice in itself, because time and time again, I have found that yoga, the philosophy of yoga, answers these questions and helps me unfold and find freedom by searching in and so forth. 

48:33
So no, I'm not but my own inventing new they also asking me they're like don't you miss the creative aspect? 

48:41 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I'm like nope, wonderful. Well, it is a time for us to round up and I I would love for us to meet up one day, traveling and immerse ourselves in in yoga and talks about philosophy and and life. Um, if I can get you to mention where people can find the, the life center and your personal page, and also if they want to see some of the practices kino have made, so if you can share the different web pages where people can follow you and find you yes, so our yoga center in Miami is called Miami Life Center. 

49:22 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
The website is called www what a surprise miamilifecentercom. I have a personal page where my travel schedule is on and very creatively it's called wwwtimfeldmancom. And if you're interested in my wife what I would do I would just Google Kino, yoga or Stanka, and then a bunch of stuff comes up. She also travels and teaches, teaches, and she has a whip portal where there's a ton of yoga information and classes and workshops and fun stuff called umstarscom perfect we put it in the show notes we will put it in the show notes. 

50:11 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Thanks a lot. It was wonderful talking with you today and I will take the next step and try to be more present in my breath for tomorrow's yoga practice see how you like it and don't do a three step two or three, yeah, don't feel bad about some support. 

50:31 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
You know what what I mean. No, no, just do whatever gets you mad. You do, no problem. 

50:37 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Let that be the final words. Whatever gets you to your mad, yeah. 

50:42 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
Thank you guys for having me. It was fun. Have a good time. Go to your balcony now and make a cup of coffee and to your big saloon swimming pool or whatever the rest of the day, I think I will go to the old airport of Berlin and do some yoga absolutely are you in the Berlin area? 

51:04 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
yeah next to the old airport yeah, there's an old airport and they've turned it into a giant park and Cecilia is doing yoga with the kids. 

51:15 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Yeah, we didn't talk about my yoga. No, we're going to have to do another one? 

51:20 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
Yeah, we have to. 

51:22 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
It was a pleasure. Thank you for your time. 

51:24 - Tim Feldmann (Guest)
Thank you very much.