Dona Holleman's quotes

“The body, or rather the subconscious, hears the words but does not distinguish between joking and serious. So if you say jokingly: how stupid I am, the subconscious takes that for real. So as yoga teachers we should NEVER use negative words on the student. Remember as a teacher (and ad a parent) you can mske or break a student”

“We have talked about sound before. Sound is a vibration of the air that hits the ear drum. Then inside the brain the sound acquires a
meaning. In itself it does not have a meaning. This meaning depends on the past, on likes and dislikes, on certain associations, on so many things. People say that bird song is ‘beautiful’ and the sound of an aeroplane is ‘ugly’. This is purely random and personal. From the first time I saw the frecce I associated the sound with speed and courage and beauty and precision and FUN. They passed over Soiano this morning to practice and my heart JUMPED 😁😁😁🛩️🛩️🛩️👍👍👍🤸🏼‍♂️🤸🏼‍♂️🤸🏼‍♂️🍷🍷”

“Now before you make corrected videos I want you to make a jump in quality. Someone asked Michelangelo once how he made his statues. He said he did not make them but that they were already in the block of marble. All he did was chip away the superfluous marble for the statue to come out. So we discussed already the various bodies that we have. To make it short we have the Manomaya kosha or mind, the Pranamaya kosha or subtle body made of prana (suksma sharira) and the Annamaya kosha made of food ( stuhla sharira or gross body). Think of the Stuhla sharira as the block of marble. The statue or asana is in the Suksma sharira. So you need to ‘chip’ away the Stuhla sharira so that the asana in the Suksma sharira can come out. Now, at any time and wherever you want, and in whichever pose you want ( but the best and easiest one is Savasana) you do the following exercise. ‘Scan’ your entire body, and wherever you see/feel any tension, stay there and with your mind ‘undo’ that tension, till that spot becomes soft and warm. Not floppy, but warm. Attention brings prana to any part in the body where it is needed. It is the vehicle with which prana travels. In that way you gradually “take away’ the physical body and strenghthen the subtle body. Once you can do this easily in Savasana, then you can do it in any asana. In that way you allow the Suksma sharira to manifest the asana, which then looks ‘easy ,soft and silent’, as the hardness and noise of the Stuhla sharira is “taken away’. This is the jump in quality you need to make.”