LUNA YOGA^®

is a newly found yet old healing art contemplating the joy of life and inviting life’s energies through movement, breathing, relaxing, visualisations.

Based on ancient yoga techniques and rooting them back to matriarchal times it regards the moon as a guide to inner perceptions and feelings. How do I feel today? What is it that I need? What is my rhythm?

Cycles of nature and especially women’s cycles are honored and celebrated with poses, postures and special dances that can harmonize the functions of the sexual organs. In that way women can influence both ovulation and menstruation and heal themselves. Luna yoga enhances creativity, improves fertility and deepens the sexual experiences. The dances used in luna yoga come from different cultures of our beautiful world. Originally it was Aviva Steiner in Israel who in the seventies found that strong movements can influence women’s health. Adelheid Ohlig, a yoga teacher and journalist, studied with Aviva and enriched Aviva’s system with her understanding of yoga and matriarchal cultures. So since the eighties we have luna yoga as a women’s way of healing body, mind and spirit and coming to unison with nature. Luna Yoga is not only protected by copyright since 1991 but also patented, i.e. registered trademark and may thus only be taught by certified teachers.

For further informations please see also www.luna-yoga.com.

ADELHEID OHLIG - FOUNDER

Adelheid Ohlig (*1945) discovered the yoga path when she was 20. A journalist and an interpreter, she focused on politics and women-related topics. Travelling widely, she was also uncovering various healing procedures and therapies used by the ancient cultures.

In those decades, journalism was dominated by men and had little space for spirituality. Her yoga education was however bringing new impulses. She was diagnosed with cervical cancer in the late 1970s – a crucial experience. This was hard to take: she had been practising yoga for dozens of years, had been on a vegetarian diet and living a healthy lifestyle. Classical doctors recommended uterus removal. Adelheid Ohlig however decided to submit to an entirely different “surgery”. She left her job in journalism and devoted all of her time to healing using nature-based therapies and psychotherapy.

Her travels were a major influence again: she met her new teacher, Aviva Steiner, a former dancer of Hungarian origin, in Israel and was able to feel the effect of her cycle-focused gymnastics and dance on her own body. By then, she had not been menstruating for nearly three years. After three days of intensive exercise, her period came back. Adelheid Ohlig learned to trust the inner wisdom of her body which was awakening and supporting her self-healing capacity.

Thanks to her self-healing experience, she was able to create Luna Yoga in early 1980s, foregrounding the specific wisdom of feminine being. She adjusted Aviva Steiner’s dances to the rhythm of breath and moulded the dance practice into a practice of yoga and meditation. Adelheid Ohlig combined body therapies and movement practices of diverse nations to suit her own needs and explored body arts with her friends and women all over the world, being guided by her intuition, in harmony with her body, mind and soul.

The newly found joie de vivre, the diversity of opportunities in life including hearty laughter, lightness and freedom, made it possible for her to dive again and again into the ever-changing river of life which respecting the laws of the nature. This natural flexibility born inside is an important element in practising Luna Yoga.

Adelheid Ohlig website: www.luna-yoga.com