Who is Shaktiprem?

One of my favourite quotes at the moment from Swami Sivananda:

“Sow love, reap peace. Sow meditation, reap wisdom.”

Born and raised in the Southern part of Germany in a smaller place between Stuttgart and Tuebingen, I grew up with all the material comforts there were at that time.

Was it because I lost my Mum at a very young age (though my father remarried and my sister and I got a “new” mother just over a year later), or is it just a part of my personality that I was always interested in the mysteries of life. Why did I have enough to eat when I saw starving African babies on TV? Why was one person loved by everyone and others had it hard to find a friend in kindergarten and later in school? Why was it that one person had the strength to overcome difficult situations in life while another can’t get up and do the necessary things to change a situation? Why was life not fair? – But I wanted it to be fair, it had to be fair!

As I was interested in real health and wellbeing, and I thought there is everything in nature that would allow everyone to be healthy, I decided after I had finished high school to go to a science academy where I studied pharmacy including herbalism and parts of naturopathy.

It was during my time studying pharmacy (eighteen different subjects each week plus hours in different labs) that I found my mind racing like wild to manage the overfilled weekly timetable of subjects as well as having for the first time my own “student household” away from my parents’ house. I wanted to live and not only rush. I wanted to be focused and not when doing one study think of all the other things I still had to do. I wanted to enjoy my studies and not feel as though I was always moving a few steps behind where I should be.

And I was still asking too many questions about the links between emotions and health and the state of someone’s mind and their physical health that nobody in the academy could answer.  

Luckily in that time I found my yoga teacher, a true yoga teacher who didn’t teach what at the time people's idea of yoga was in Germany and still is very close to the feeling of doing exercises, sports, gymnastics - high-class gymnastics. Instead she was presenting yoga as a philosophy, as a spiritual way of life that has nothing to do with a religion but is a science of life, and this was, and still is, something very rare.

Straight away I practiced yoga daily – with the very few exceptions when I was sick in winter with the occasional bronchitis – thriving of the benefits and telling everyone about it. Though not many people were interested.

After having worked two years in a pharmacy I decided that there must be more in life than working in a pharmacy mainly handing out packages of medicine and the occasional herbal teas, tinctures syrups and travelled to the US, Central and South America. And no matter where I was I practiced my ‘Sadhana” (yoga practice) every morning.

When I came back from my travels nearly a year later I got in contact with my yoga teacher and got myself ready to start the next yoga teacher training course with her.

As Yoga is about total balance, which actually means constantly moving into balance, because balance is not a fixed state, I also have started bringing some balance to different parts of my personality and now live roughly half the year in Australia and the other half in the outskirts of Florence.

My residency is in Brisbane Australia, where I spend my time connecting with my yoga community in person in weekly yoga sessions or at their workplaces as well as with my massage and Reiki clients - and outside of work I spend time with my son and his family as well as my friends. And when I am not in Brisbane or run a retreat in Australia you can usually find me in Tuscany where I connect with people who want to see me for treatments, private sessions or retreats “Under the Tuscan Sun”. All in all it is always the goal to unblock something to be in the flow of life again and staying energised and relaxed.