Paula Band

Stories - Nothing more, nothing less

Just another story with all the colours of the rainbow and all the shades of black.

Paula found yoga in 2009 when she experienced a challenging life situation and this time she chose to develop herself. She found Anthony De Mello’s and Eckhart Tolle’s books which led to yoga philosophy books. As a natural robot she wasn’t interested in posture-based yoga at first. Though, she fell in love with yoga asana in Thailand when she met a 77 years-old yogini standing on her head. Inspired and curious she started practicing asana the very next day. Thailand and South-East Asia became her main (yoga) home for years, spending time in Chiang Mai practicing yoga and movement/dance meditation (DanceMandala, BioDanza), travelling, doing illustrations and finding several home-like communities from local yoga studios. In Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City, the only english spoken yoga studio was Sivananda Yoga Center where she immediately fell in love with the traditional Sivananda yoga practice, therefore she continued to her first Yoga Teacher Training in Chiang Rai in 2013. After RYT200 graduation she moved to Cape Town, South Africa to teach yoga for local surfers. Teaching didn’t go as planned as life situations kept changing and she returned back to Finland and started working as a kindergarten teacher. Life was good but something was missing. In 2016 she started to dream about being able to live and teach yoga full-time . She left her current job, moved to Thailand again to study more. She found another yoga home from Koh Tao, took another Advanced Yoga Teacher Training (RYT500) in Chiang Rai and everything suddenly shifted in place. Back in Finland teaching yoga became her profession as she started to teach at different yoga studios in Helsinki. During 2017 she did a therapeutic teacher training with J.Brown and met Cat Alip-Douglas, whose Vinyasa teaching style and wisdom attracted her. Paula studied another 200 hours teacher training with Cat and graduated in October 2019.

YOGA TEACHER TRAININGS/Certificates

  • 2013: 200hours TTC Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center, Chiang Rai, Thailand

  • 2016: 300hours Advanced TTC Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Canter, Chiang Rai, Thailand

  • 2017: 50hours Vinyasa Slow /Therapeutic Yoga, J.Brown, Helsinki

  • 2019: 200hours Vinyasa flow, Cat Alip-Douglas, London

Observing and learning - as a student and a teacher

As a yoga student I wish to remain a beginner. Curious, open-minded, intuitive. Ready to unlearn and learn again. I believe every single Adho Mukha Svanasana could be performed as it was the first time, paying attention to alignment in detail and just feel what is there to be felt. I love to question what I know, break my understanding into pieces and rebuild my puzzle of yoga again and again. I don’t believe in only one teacher or approach that would work for everyone. I prefer to explore different perspectives, schools and lineages to remain open and to evolve. I’ve studied with traditional hatha yoga teachers, Sivananda yoga lineage, vinyasa flow, yoga to prevent back injuries, vinyasa slow, Jivamukti lineage and continuing to study different approaches to Vinyasa flow structures and hands-on adjustments. I believe each teacher has something I could learn from.

As a teacher of yoga I wish to share the knowledge and tools I’ve learned to awaken the interest in people to explore more. I believe the practice is for anyone to benefit from. Yoga always shifts to fit a person. Anyone who practices is enough for yoga, there’s no need to change oneself to fit any made-up standard or label. Yoga doesn’t judge.

I love to create strong flowing asana practice to really awaken the senses and expand awareness into each cell. On the other hand I love gentleness as approach, counter-poses, the undoing, reverse actions, the opposite energies and contrasts. I aim to create loving and allowing space to safely connect with yourself. I do my best to offer each practitioner challenging but loving practice without the need to be productive or perform. I believe bravery is to go towards the unknown, towards the fear. Challenge and a bit of a struggle in a loving manner are allowed to arise. Yoga begins when welcoming the uncomfortable. Though, I wouldn’t be me without laughter. However dark it might feel - even darker sense of humour. I welcome bad jokes, twisted humour, playfulness, irony and loving sarcasm almost at all times. Free jokes are available with or without request during my yoga classes.

As a student and a teacher of yoga I’m interested in how to build a sustainable asana practice through mindful approach and safe alignment. Yoga practice might just be physical activity, a nice way to move the body, but there’s more to that. Personally my practice has taught me for example: How to observe the mind and body? How to find gratitude and pay mindful attention towards small things that already are perfect just as they are? How to remain open, honest and respectful? How to remain truthful in speech, actions and thoughts? How to set and respect boundaries? How to judge less? How to take myself more lightly? How to accept and surrender to what is? How connect to myself even though everything isn’t completed or solved yet? The last but not the least, patience.