The Unity of Yoga & Dance:
The Science of Self-Realization and the Art of Movement
I’m here to help you discover the wisdom within you, and to have the courage to live it!
Sometimes, pictures say more than words.
This summer, just before heading off to my first Formula 1 race in Barcelona, I stepped into a small theatre in the heart of Santa Cruz—not for a performance, but for a photo shoot unlike any I’d done before.
What began as a playful idea with my favorite photographer turned into something much deeper: a living meditation on the path that has shaped me—through ballet and yoga, discipline and devotion, art and soul. In this blog, I’m opening the curtain to share the heart behind the shoot, the story it tells, and the message I hope it inspires in you.
Continue reading and enjoying the pictures (5 min).
For those of you who have been following my newsletter series on Yoga on the Road, you know the story behind my last photo shoot at the end of May this year, just before leaving to watch my first Formula 1 race in Barcelona.
You also know how sore and stiff I felt after eight hours of yoga and dance poses, and how my Travel Qi Gong and Yoga practice not only helped me stay grounded while traveling and watching race cars zoom by, but also made all the pain, stiffness, and soreness disappear within just 60 minutes. (By the way, this Video 15-Min Travel Qigong and Yoga to Reset is one of my most popular videos on my YouTube channel right now if you want to practice with it!)
But what you don’t yet know is why I did this unusual and extraordinary photo shoot in a small theatre in the heart of Santa Cruz, Tenerife. Or what I told the photographer Joaquín Ponce de León (my favorite—go check him out, he is amazing) before the shoot. And, of course, you haven’t seen the pictures!
In this short, summer-themed blog, I want to share with you the message, theme, purpose, and background of these beautiful photos—and then, of course, share some of them with you, each carrying its own distinct message.
How It Came to the Photoshoot in a Theatre
It was really the photographer’s idea. I did a shoot with him last year here in Tenerife (my new home). It was a six-week process to prepare for that amazing shoot in El Porís, a beautiful little village by the ocean in the south of Tenerife. Most of you have seen at least some of those pictures already—each with a breathtaking view of the ocean and the coast of Tenerife.
When we said goodbye a year ago, Joaquín told me, “I know where we will shoot next year’s photos.”
I noticed the mischievous smile on his face and asked, “Where?”
“In a theatre,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “Good idea. We’ll do that.”
Most people don’t remember what they said last week (and my brain also doesn’t retain the most mundane things anymore), but I remembered what he said. And when I called him a year later, I told Joaquín: “Let’s do it!”
I had imagined a classic theatre, the way I knew them from Vienna: old, dusty, red uncomfortable seats, a stage with black linoleum, a musty smell of old makeup, old paint on dusty scenery, and red velvet curtains.
But the theatre in Santa Cruz wasn’t that at all. It was small, modern, with a black stage, a small staircase-like audience section, and a beautiful white ballet studio with enormous wall-length windows, ballet bars, a side mirror, and green trees waving in the breeze outside. It wasn’t what I had expected, but it was perfect.
What I Told the Photographer Before the Shooting
We met almost two months before the shoot to discuss the theme. I had Vivian, my older son, with me because he had been sick—better, but not well enough for school.
So I stood there with Joaquín and Vivian in the white, sunlit ballet studio filled with sea breeze from the harbor and said:
“With these pictures, I want to express the unity of yoga and dance. The science of self-realization and the art of movement in its most refined form.”
I wanted to show the two worlds I come from: Ballet and Yoga. Austria and India. Art and Spiritual Discipline.
These two worlds and parts of my life are closely intertwined. They are, in my life, like Ayurveda and Yoga: two sides of the same coin.
Free Holistic Health Starter Kit!
5 Holistic Health Practices: The Secret to Staying Mentally Strong
& Emotionally Grounded
Kickstart your Ayurveda-Yogi Journey with this FREE Holistic Health Toolkit. It’ll will help you prioritize self-car and finally stick to it!
When my soul incarnated in Vienna, it needed a way to continue the yogic discipline it had known in past lives. Ballet came the closest to that.
I was literally born with the desire to dance and danced wherever I could. From the age of four, I trained weekly and was on stage every year. It was my home.
I was a very shy and timid little girl (always blond and thin!), but in the ballet studio or on stage, I was another person. All inhibitions fell away, and I became one with the music and rhythm.
As I wrote once in an English essay in college: Ballet and dance were my way, as a little girl, to cope with the dark and sober historical past of my hometown Vienna—a city with a white-washed, beautiful exterior hiding one of the darkest pasts in world history.
I felt it, and I transformed my ancestral genetic past into something light, beautiful, and artistic—but the dark shadow never fully left.
Anyway, the discipline of dance and writing diaries from a very young age were my first ways of connecting and expressing the divine. Music, dance, and losing myself in the unexplainable lightness and boundlessness of being were my vocation, my love, and my daily discipline.
Fast forward many years: when I finally discovered yoga and then Ayurveda, I knew I was home in a spiritual sense. My body (and even my vocal cords—I used to train as a singer in New York, Vienna, and London) healed from old pain, injuries, and food addictions.
I found a direct way to devote myself to God and spiritual practice, realizing the love and discipline of dance and writing had been preparation long ago.
Again, fast forward after ten years of traveling and studying between California and India—yoga and Ayurveda—I came to the end of my spiritual search and asked myself: What now?
What is left?
I asked myself: What do I still love?
My answer: Yoga and Dance.
And this is still true today. Even after twelve years of motherhood that took me away from the stage and into the practical world of a householder.
But the circle has closed. Now, more than ever, I realize that all is one. All leads to the same. All points to the same. Everything is a form of devotion to the same—the same essence, soul, spirit, truth, God…you choose your word.
It is all here, right now.
Spirit in matter and matter in spirit.
Soul in body and body in soul.
Love expressed in spirit, soul, and matter.
Call it art or yoga. Call it dance or asana. It doesn’t matter.
Everything and everyone is an expression of the same force, the Shakti, the same essence, the same true nature.
You may call it God or Life or the Universe…again, everyone has their own words.
I don’t really have words for what I have come to realize…but yes, liberation is possible through many different paths, and mine has been, and still is, through yoga and dance. Which also means through meditation and music, poses and paintings, breathing and writing, stillness and movement, inner reflection and outer service.
And so, here it is: the beauty, art, and perfection of yoga and dance combined, showing itself in the light and shadows of our unique life and way of being and expressing ourselves.
May these pictures inspire you and awaken the yogi, dancer, and artist in you, knowing that everything you do is spiritual at its core and in its essence.
Embrace the light and the shadow in you, the yogi and the wild creative.
Be who you are: powerful, raw, creative energy (Purusha) expressing itself in many ways, names, and forms in this world of nature (Prakriti) that we are all part of.
With great reverence to all that is in all its expressions and forms.
May we honor the light and the shadow in all of us.
Om,
Verena Gayatri Primus
Free Holistic Health Starter Kit!
5 Holistic Health Practices: The Secret to Staying Mentally Strong
& Emotionally Grounded
Kickstart your Ayurveda-Yogi Journey with this FREE Holistic Health Toolkit. It’ll will help you prioritize self-car and finally stick to it!
