I opted to write a memoir about my personal experiences in yoga, rather than a traditional research-based thesis. A key distinction between memoir and autobiography or auto-ethnography is that it’s not linear—much like my yoga journey. Often, experiences, particularly around healing emotional trauma, are more circular in nature, perhaps even more of a spiral. According to Carl Jung, “The spiral in psychology means that when you make a spiral you always come over the same point where you have been before, but never really the same, it is above or below, inside, outside, so it means growth.” (Jung 5, p. 21). In his book Why Therapy Works: Using Our Minds to Change Our Brains, Louis Cozolino, PhD explains that coherent narratives, such as Joseph Campbell’s “the hero’s journey”, are an important part of psychotherapy and provide a way for individuals to make sense of and heal from complex trauma. To illustrate this point, I will be employing the Jungian-inspired “heroine’s journey” model developed my Maureen Murdock, PhD—a similar framework to the “hero’s journey” but through a feminist lens. Personal narrative can also be a form of (svādhyāya) self-study. I chose to organize my eventual memoir into three sections: Divine, Liberated, and Love. On their own, each word represents a crucial part of my yoga journey: Divine represents my invitation to the practice through isolated mystical experiences; Liberated represents the therapeutic benefits that kept me coming back to the mat, as well as my initiation into the depths of my shadow work and ultimately individuation from my saṃskāras, or “conscious our unconscious patterns of though, communication, and behaviors” (Yoga Therapy Foundations, Tools, and Practice 2021, p. 285); and Love represents my integration, a union of the paradoxical nature of divinity and individuality. Combined, the phrase “Divine Liberated Love” has taken my initial intention of integration to a much deeper level, helping me to remember who I truly am and what matters to me.

Denna essä ämnar fördjupa förståelsen av yogalärarens profession genom att undersöka dess vardagliga praktik i ljuset av filosofiska och historiska grunder. I synnerhet undersöks villkoren för dagens moderna yoga i en narcissistisk kultur och hur den moderna yogaläraren kan förhålla sig till dessa villkor utifrån en filosofisk förståelse om yoga som självtranscendens. Modern yoga har blivit ett exempel på sakraliserad självdisciplin och möjligen en form av ritualiserad narcissism. En narcissistisk kultur som sådan med den upanishadiska självtranscendensens språkbruk, tillsammans med en kommersiell nyandlighet uppmanar oss att perfektionistiskt söka uppnå känslan: jag är gudomlig. Essän undersöker dock potentiella vägar och praktiska kunskaper hos yogaläraren som inte leder undervisningen i en narcissistisk riktning utan snarare söker vända blicken mot en värld vi gemensamt delar offentligt med andra människor. / This essay aims to deepen the understanding of the yoga teacher's profession by examining its everyday practice from philosophical and historical foundations. In particular, the conditions of today's modern yoga in a narcissistic culture are examined, and how the modern yoga teacher can relate to these conditions of yoga from the perspective of self-transcendence. Modern yoga has become an example of sacralized self-discipline and possibly a form of ritualized narcissism. A narcissistic culture as such with the language of Upanishadic self-transcendence, together with commercial spirituality, urges us to achieve the feeling: I am divine. However, the essay explores potential paths and practical knowledge of the yoga teacher who does not want to lead the teaching in a narcissistic direction but instead seeks a common world publicly shared with other people.