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In anticipation of the yoga festival Free Spirit, which will be held on July 25-26 at the Luzhniki Aqua Complex, we met with its participant, psychologist Alisa Rotenberg. A few words about kundalini yoga, helping professions and happiness.
Psychologies: You are the president of the Integrative Kundalini Yoga Academy and a specialist in somatic trauma. How would you describe what you do?
Alisa Rotenberg: Now I mainly teach practical psychologists who work by the method of integrative kundalini yoga. This method combines body-oriented psychology, energy yoga exercises and the principles of integral psychology. In addition, I conduct individual psychological consultations and group classes of integrative kundalini yoga.
What quality do you consider most important for those who work in the helping professions?
A.G.: It is impossible to single out one thing … I know for sure that for this you need to go through your own path of healing. This is what gives the ability to empathy, endurance when faced with difficult experiences, understanding how the methods of psychology and the practice of yoga “from the inside” work. And yet I will single out two qualities without which I can hardly imagine this profession – a sense of humor and an inexhaustible curiosity about how life works.
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Where, in your opinion, do yoga and psychology intersect?
A.G.: Yoga gives us the opportunity to open our inner world, sharpen our perception, and get vital energy. Kundalini yoga exercises immerse us in vivid experiences, and we need to learn how to navigate in this vast and multifaceted space. Psychology has accumulated many models that help to understand what happens during practice and how to apply the results of classes in your daily life. Thanks to this, we learn to use the acquired endurance, calm observing mind, subtle sensitivity in our relationships with people, in solving work problems.
In addition, Ken Wilber’s Integral Psychology helps to distinguish progress from regression in practice. Often, bright states are perceived as development criteria in yoga, and superpowers as a desired result. Even the founder of yoga, Patanjali, warned against this. Ken Wilber gives clear criteria for progress along the path of development, helps to recognize the stage at which the practitioner is.
Each stage has its own tasks. At one stage, we need to develop a strong healthy ego capable of discipline and personal responsibility. At another stage, the practice of letting go and dissolving rigid approaches and concepts is needed. If these stages are reversed, regression will occur – infantilization, a shattered nervous system and, as a result, troubles in personal life and at work. Today, this mistake is very common among yoga practitioners.
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Can a person who practices yoga become happy?
A.G.: Anyone can be happy! Yoga can help us look into our inner world, and according to the wise, happiness is not outside of us, but inside. So yoga is one way to bring yourself closer to happiness. But, of course, it is not enough. The one who withdraws into himself, believing that meditation is enough for him, creates the basis for mental pain, and not the basis for happiness. Exclusivity and separateness are antithetical to the very essence of happiness—participation in greater and loving service to others.
What do you think is the key to happiness?
A.G.: Honesty with oneself and the ability to take responsibility. And also a natural desire to be useful to other people.