Angelica Nanda Schäfer has been teaching on full time basis for the last 15 years and she runs her own yoga studio in Sweden. With passion for movement and fascination over different ways to still the mind she likes to explore the language between body and mind and she invites you to be creative and playful on the floor. Her teaching is warm, genuine and intuitive and she creates a safe space for you to bloom.

Her background has roots in physical strength and flexibility training and she has for many years worked as a lic.personal trainer and lic. fitness group training instructor. 12 years ago she took the step to explore deeper the world of yoga and pilates through teacher trainings and from that time on all of her classes invites to a holistic approach to movement and life. After longer stays in India living the ashram life and finding inspirational teachers to study with she has for the last years also herself been teaching in Thailand and India during wintertime and she holds space for retreats both in Sweden and abroad. She is the creator of the Freemove yoga concept and is one of the main organizors of the international Stockholm Yoga and Dance festival and Ängsbacka – Yoga and Dance Easter festival. She is also an certified Health and wellness educator as well as Ayurvedic health counselor, masseuse in both classical swedish massage and thai/yoga massage and she is an initiated Osho sannyasin.

The yoga form I teach is in many parts the traditional Hatha Yoga but over the years I’ve moved more and more into the somatic field of exploration and free movement. When I teach regular Yoga classes I often call it “Organic Hatha Yoga”; it is my version of Ha (power/energy) Tha (stillness/ silence) Yoga (union/ oness) where we play with the elements, where we connect with the nature and explore us human beeings as part of it all; where we connect with our authentic movement and get support from ancient wisdom and the structure of Yoga.

I have also manifested my insights in my concept called ‘Freemove Yoga’ which is a movement practice that combines different techniques of yoga- and dance therapy.

I am educated both in Sweden, England and in India and my main teachers are Surinder Singh in Rishikesh and Dr Kamaraj in Kerala. I am also one of two certified teachers in Sweden in ‘Embodied Yoga Principles’ which is a new method of teaching yoga based on ideas from material arts, embodiement, yoga and meditation, created by Mark Walsh who also was my teacher.

For me yoga is a lot about how we meet ourselves. Yoga can help us to respond as we want in our everyday life and we can enhance what we want with the help of body positions; perhaps we need to take more space in some situations, maybe we need support and stability, maybe we need to surrender and let go. Simply said, yoga is about balance; balance in body and in mind so we ourselves can be so balanced that we can be good people on this earth and do good.

Yoga is about how we can experience the feeling of overall harmony inwards even if the outer world is demanding and challenging. In our body, from origin, there are systems that link our mental, emotional and physical state. We can physically work with the body to release emotional states and vice versa, and yoga has a very profound knowledge of that particular connection. Yoga goes very closely with the thinking in Ayurveda which I also practice; they are delicately interconnected and gives us as individuals a holistic perspective on ourselves and each other.