26445339426976
NO. 45

Amanda Nørgaard

Love for life

Amanda Nørgaard is a model, Kundalini yoga and meditation teacher, creative entrepreneur and founder of the spiritual platform Illumination, and she has been preoccupied with finding her spiritual path from a very young age. With a sometimes difficult upbringing, she quickly became aware that there was another way of living life and that it was up to her to explore this. When we made our first letter with Amanda in 2018, she had just returned from Peru, where she had been working with plant-based medicine for a month and spent 1 days in isolation in the jungle. At that time, she had just begun her journey.

“It is said that the doors will only open once the initiate is ready. First you might get a key to a small door, and then later a key to a somewhat larger door,” she says and goes on to say how she had experimented with cocoa ceremonies, ecstatic dance, spiritual circles, different kinds of yoga, Vedic astrology and also tried - in vain - to become a witch’s apprentice.

While she lived in New York and worked as a model she heard about Kundalini yoga for the
first time.

26445339689120
26445339558048

“The word itself stirred something inside of me. I immediately began looking for more information, butat that time, it was still a bit secretive,” she explains.

Still, the word Kundalini kept being on her mind, and at the end of 2016, she moved home to Denmark where she rented a furnished apartment from a deceased person’s estate on Østerbro via the newspaper. While living there, the word Kundalini mysteriously re-entered her life with renewed strength. Perhaps it was because the home’s former owner had had access to spiritual dimensions:

“A lot of strange things happened in that house. I found out that the former owner had been very interested in spirituality and that she had come from a long line of witches. I remember how the word K-U-N-D-A-L-I-N-I suddenly came back to me while I was walking around the house. At the same time, a new door opened, as the astrologer who I was following suddenly announced Kundalini yoga.”

26445339787424
26445339885728
26445340049568

Amanda’s first hour learning Kundalini yoga is still a vivid memory for her:

“I laughed, I cried and I got angry. I felt so many layers of myself in 45 minutes. Afterwards, I felt light, calm and ready. It was as if something had opened up inside me. I could feel that I was moving my body and my mind in a way that it had been longing for.”

Shortly after, she began studying this form of yoga, which is centred around the whole human being and its inherent creative energy. From meditation and physical yoga to working with breathing, pranayama and mantras. She felt that she had hit just the right frequency.

“Kundalini yoga is a tool used to create balance and harmony in both our physical bodies and our minds. It is a fantastic tool, but you yourself provide the power. You are moving your own energy. For many people, this is a whole new way of feeling themselves.”

Why did you begin searching?

26445340147872

“For many years, I suffered from PTSD, depression and anxiety. My searching was about coming home. It was about reconnecting with who I am. Now I feel that I have ended up in a safe place and I trust myself and I trust life. And this is undoubtedly because of all the work and the love that I have given to those parts of me that have been in pain. The parts that have been afraid to live. In the beginning I was very interested in the mystical and occult, which I still am, but now I am just as interested in being a human. Right here. Right now. Learning to understand myself through my human reactions and experiences as well as through my meditations and my therapeutic work. It is holistic for me.”

26445340278944
26445340344480
26445340442784

How do you manage to pay enough attention to your feelings in the hectic world we live in?

“It takes a lot of work, and basically, I believe it’s about letting go of perfectionism. It’s about just sitting down for a few minutes and finding your breathing and sensing that you are alive. Even if your place is a mess and you need to do the dishes. For many people, it comes down to inherited patterns. Perhaps your parents were not good at listening to themselves, and it is the same as learning a whole new language. I started saying to myself that if I was able to listen 1% more to myself, that would be a huge success. Life becomes much richer once we begin feeling ourselves,”she says, adding:

“However, a lot of people think that getting a feel for things is about sitting very quietly by yourself and just feeling all the wonderful things. This is not the case, as when you begin to be in tune with your feelings, you feel EVERYTHING.” She laughs.

“Also the things that we don´t want to feel. I have always believed that calm was about living like some undisturbed Zen monk. For me, it is more about creating the space to feel and listen to my feelings. Am I feeling uneasy? Then why? Have I been too busy or forgotten to breathe? This internal communication is an important part of healing and getting closer to myself. All feelings carry a message, after all.”

It was a crucial meeting in 2018 that really accelerated Amanda’s journey. She met her spiritual teacher, who unfortunately passed away recently. In the middle of the shelf in Amanda’s office there is a picture of her teacher. At first glance, they resemble each other. They have the same intense gaze, the same mild expression. It was coincidences that led to them meeting each other. Or perhaps it wasn’t.

26445341622432

“When I met my spiritual teacher, there was such a clear reverberation. My heart opened up like crazy. It was almost bubbly. We had a really strong connection. It is hard to describe in words what I learned during our time together. She was a rebel, a poet, a badass and a businesswoman. We had strong disagreements at times, and this taught me a lot about unconditional love. But most importantly, she loved life. And that imprint will always be in my heart. Loving life and creating with the best that we have.”

26445341720736

Illumination is an online creative house where Amanda’s love of making creative, immersive and healing spaces unfolds. Both through daily practices, online programmes and retreats.

“For me, it was a powerful thing to experience that I was my own healer. And to experience who I am. Without old narratives, traumas and filters. I love witnessing when the people who come to me rediscover the joy and wonder of being alive. The more we are in the world, the more we contribute. For me, it is all about love. Love with a capital L. If you ask me, this universe is made of nothing but love. I believe that our human journey is to wake up to what we are - which is love. And to fill our lives and the world with that. After all, that is what is so amazing about being a human. You can feel my nervous system and I can feel yours. We are all connected. The more love and life that we can awaken within ourselves, the more love we create around us. Because if you are love, then everything you touch will also become love. This has given me a whole new sense of joy, creativity and playfulness in my own life. And that is what I want to make more of in this world. Life and love.”

26445341819040