My time in Sri Lanka has been one of the most amazing journeys I’ve ever experienced. The people I’ve met, the things I’ve done and the places I’ve seen. Discovering 5 Rhythms and meeting Sudevi Sundari are said experiences that have topped the list.
Sudevi is a beautiful yogi who has been teaching for over 20 years all around the world. She has studied many different styles of yoga and therapy from many gurus and schools. This makes sense when you attend one of her classes. I visited Sri Yoga Shala for her Hata class and loved her style. It was gentle, but challenging; mindful and slow, as well as quite feminine in the way we moved.
After the asana (poses) practice we started the 5 Rhythms class. This was something so not on my radar before. The idea of dance, for me, for was usually after a few drinks at a festival or night out. This was way out of my comfort zone but I ended up loving it and felt a wave of indescribable energy come over me.
Sudevi described 5 Rhythms as a way of reaching into parts of the body that yoga can’t get to. That description stuck with me and I certainly felt that after the class. It made it’s way into areas that were not achievable by the traditional yoga poses.
After that, I went to as many yoga and 5 Rhythms classes as I could before she left Sri Lanka to move on to her next adventure. I just had to sit down with her and ask her all about her yoga journey thus far and it has certainly inspired me in my own journey.
You’ve been teaching yoga for over 20 years now. How and why did you start yoga?
I was 22. I seemingly had “everything” – beauty, health, wealth, men – but still felt this void, an emptiness inside. I had never prayed or believed in God. Then one day, I Just kind of prayed for the first time. Just crying and praying, looking for a sign.
Not long after I received a phone call from a friend. She asked me to come and meet this yoga teacher from the himalayas who was going to be in Hong Kong. At the time, I was a dancer and a jogger. Yoga, to me, was boring.
I went and in an instant, there was this past life recognition. This “Where have you been?” moment. I really felt like I had to meet him at that time of my life.
So I started my yoga with him. 4-6am, 5-7pm, 4 hours a day for the next year. I was just a student until he said to me “you would be an awesome yoga teacher”. Then I went to Yoga University and studied there for 2 years.
Yoga gave me this sense of home, it really made me feel anchored. I really got into the rituals. It kind of grounded me.
It gave me a different perception of how to look at the world. I instantly turned into a vegetarian and a lot of compassion developed in me for animals and human beings. Since my training I really feel like I live yoga. The real essence of yoga, which is connection. Connection to self, to others and to God.
Tell us your practice style and how did you choose your yoga method?
I don’t think that it’s that important to choose the style of your yoga. It’s more important to choose the teacher.
In days back, it depended on the vibrations of the teacher and student.
Hatha yoga is the style I practice. It’s the traditional style of yoga. But it’s how i connect with the teacher. The things that I looked out for were “can I learn from this teacher?”. “Is she/he a living example?”.
It’s really about the teacher and how he can bring his knowledge and teachings. There’s no other teacher that I could have learnt from.
Tell us about 5 Rhythms and what it can do for the body?
The 5 Rhythms, started by a beautiful urban shaman by the name of Gabrielle Roth. She resided in NY and she made this map, like a wave. She encouraged students to put these 5 rhythms in action. Understand the energy in the body. Understand that we can always switch from these rhythms. And how we can flow from one rhythm to another without getting stuck. A way of expressing everything, all aspects of yourself.
5 Rhythms came into my life a few years ago. It’s a practice about embodiment and about embracing whatever comes up. It really works on, predominately, 5 different energies that we have in our body and of course we have mixtures of these.
The first rhythm, we have flow. This is about receiving yourself, receiving your environment, being able to adapt, breathing yourself in, breathing others in, receiving. We start to find our ground and connect with our environment.
The second rhythm is staccato. It’s about putting who you are into the world, expressive, action, achieving your dreams and your goals. Expressing yourself fully as you are. Getting things done. It’s really about the exhale. Letting yourself into the world without holding back. Showing the world who you are.
Then third rhythm is about chaos. It’s about understanding in the body how to let go, there’s so much information coming through the body all the time and we need to filter, we need to trash stuff. Let go of what no longer serves us. It’s a mix up of the two first rhythms – flow and staccato.
Fourth rhythm is lyrical. It’s about letting go of letting go. It’s about finding that lightness and that expansiveness.
Fifth rhythm is silence. It’s about letting yourself be. Just as you are. Expressing whatever’s left. You come to a still point. Although we are always moving. It’s about being aware of your centre and your still point.
These 5 rhythms are in your body. It’s how we learn to practice them. There’s always a time to let stuff in, to let stuff go, to let stuff in, out, let go, let go of letting go. And to let yourself just be.
What yoga pose(s) do you recommend/ not recommend for ladies who suffer from hormonal imbalance?
You always want to work on the adrenal glands with hormonal imbalances. Which are situated on the kidneys. Anything that is forward bending, side bending, inversions, working on the major endocrine glands – the pituitary and hypothalamus, thyroid and parathyroid.
The endocrine system, once it’s healthy and activated and energy is flowing freely around these areas, your hormones will start to balance. Inversions, anything where the heart is above the head, twists, forward bends, backbends.
Yogi women and men. What’s the difference you’ve found from teaching both?
Yogi women and men. We hold different tensions. I had a private class teaching a husband and wife recently. The wife was very flexible and the husband was stiff. He was very stiff in the hips. There is this responsibility of the masculine, holding on. So his shoulders were also very stiff.
Men tend to be goal orientated. Which is doing the pose and ignoring how the body feels. Whereas woman, the feminine energy, tends to accept where they’re at and know that everyday they will get more flexible.
You’re also dealing with the whole person. It’s also about the mental level. Taking the whole person in. A lot of men are now getting in touch with their feminine side but there still is this competitiveness. They sometimes want to achieve the pose at any cost.
Your favourite quote?
My favourite quote at the moment is: A Papa New Guinean quote:
“Knowledge is only a rumour, until it is felt in the muscle.”
In other words, you can have all the knowledge but if you don’t put it into practice on a physical level, and live it, it just becomes theoretical and it’s just in the head and we want to feel it in the body.
We want to be living yogis. It’s not just about theory. It’s about realising that knowledge, when you realise it, drips down from the head, through the heart, into the body so you can be a living example, so we can be the beautiful human beings that we can be.
Do you have any special rituals/ routines, do you mind sharing?
I have this steady spiritual practice. Everyday I wake up, i have this little anchor or shrine where I have all my teachers there and i bow to them, bow my head and surrender. And I make myself an instrument, so that this knowledge can pass freely through me to others.
Understanding this, we understand that i am very little, I’m not proud (or I try not to be proud) with who i am.
I understand that all this knowledge actually comes from my teachers.
This little ritual of surrendering to my teachers allows me to really understand and remember how i was living 23 years ago and how i was living an ignorant life.
They say ignorance is bliss. It’s not. Awareness is bliss.
I offer incense to the gods and goddesses that i resonate with. Which is Krishna, this beautiful blue boy who holds a flute. He’s full of bliss and knowledge.
I also chant. I have beads, which are 100 beads that I chant with some kind of mantra every single day. It helps me to clear my mind. My mental body. I chant to clean my mental body and these repetitive thoughts. In sanskrit ‘man’ means ‘mind’ and ‘tra’ means ‘free’ – mantra.
I will always hit the mat in some point in the day and do some prana (breath) activation, pranayama. I will always get a little dance in too. Even if it’s just one song.
At night I will chant another mantra. Again i will bow to my teachers. Always remembering.
By being the best version of myself.
Thank you, Sudevi for being my yogi inspiration <3
Sudevi Sundari | yogaparamgati.com