Imken Donde: Yoga to beat stress and back pain
Imken Donde is a yoga-practising and yoga-training German based in Hamburg. Her personal physical issue of back pain and mental issue of stress has made her to embrace yoga. Yoga has helped her to eliminate back pain from her body and to extinguish stress from her mind with the help of yoga. With experience and acquired expertise, she conducts yoga sessions and gives holistic yoga therapy among other specialist yoga.
What makes you to practise or come into yoga? “Lower back problems and too much stress brought,” said Imken Donde, “to yoga.”
IMKEN & IRMINSUL:
Imken is an ancient Viking name, and it is derived from the word ‘Irminsul’ which refers to tree trunk or pillar of sacredness erected in the open air.
Imken conducts workshops on yoga taking the attendees to a journey of unwinding ‘stress, tension, perhaps discomfort; flowing gradually into more open-ness, moving body as much or as little as needed, to find your very personal way into deeper relaxation, and towards a more open heart, stronger intuition, and to build physical and mental strength and clarity’. She reckons yoga can help one to explore one’s own heart and to nurture one’s heart (to give love, to show compassion, and sensitizing the hidden gems of intuition). She also blends meditation, pranayama (breathing techniques of inhalation and exhalation), hymnal chants, diving and delving into stillness and silence.
Yoga can improve the functioning of digestive system and to enrich the power of gut intuition. It can fuel the feeling of ‘love to oneself’ and with that feeling of love ‘love others’ – the highway to let out the emotional and physical blockages of the heart and the organs around, above and below the heart.
Imken’s profession takes her to different countries. She was travelling when she heard about a yoga festival, and she stopped. “A big yoga festival with lot of love and lots of different offerings – music, sounds, yoga, kirtan,” she said www.monsoon2047 met her at the Sjöbergen’s Yoga Festival. “Lot of free spirited and colourful people…that are not involved in material side of things, in my understanding, but that is very global because I have got a very superficial view,” Imken reflected.
MATERIAL LIFE v IMMATERIAL LIFE:
Many a human being is confronted to juggle between material life and immaterial life. Imken Donde knows about the material side of life, and it appears she is beating the material side of life by practising yoga – a form of immaterial life.
What do you mean when you say material things? “Material things means you have to have a big car, you have to have a big house, everything has to be perfect and in order for you to enjoy life,” answered Imken.
TYPES OF YOGA:
Imken Donde practises 4 types of yoga: Hatha Yoga (creative and intuitive flow), Sama Yoga, Yin Yoga and Restorative Yoga (relaxed and slow). In her experience, she found a cure for lower back pain and to beat stress in yoga. Her practise includes privates, semi-privates and holistic yoga therapy.
BACK PAIN:
Lower back pain or lumbago occurs in a person due to different reasons of strain related to ligaments, muscles, nerves, spine (vertebral bodies or vertebrae), and other nearby organs of the spinal column in the body such as kidneys.
Lumbago is experienced by many people in the world. In the USA, according to American Association of Neurological Surgeons, more than 75% of Americans experience back pain in their life. But back pain is treatable without surgery. Back pain can also occur due to lifting of heavy things or exercising too hard.
EXPERT OPINION ON BACK PAIN:
“Most acute low back pain results from injury to the muscles, ligaments, joints, or discs. The body also reacts to injury by mobilizing an inflammatory healing response. While inflammation sounds minor, it can cause severe pain,” wrote John Peloza, MD. “There is a significant overlap of nerve supply to many of the discs, muscles, ligaments, and other spinal structures, and it can be difficult for the brain to accurately sense which is the cause of the pain. For example, a degenerated or torn lumbar disc can feel the same as a pulled muscle – both creating inflammation and painful muscle spasm in the same area. Muscles and ligaments heal rapidly, while a torn disc may or may not. The time course of pain helps determine the cause.”
ITINERANT IMKEN:
Imken Donde travels widely to conduct workshops on yoga for people who want to seek remedies for their physical and mental ailments in an organic way. She has also established herself as the yoga teacher and craniosacral.
India & Imken: Imken also visits Goa on the west coast of India. She is one of the yoga teachers at Ashiana Yoga in India, and also visits the UK; Germany, Norway among other countries. She is innovating new techniques in 21st century yoga.
Date of interview with Imken Donde: 2019 June 15