Similar to Ganesha the elephant-headed deity in India, Janus is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames, and endings in ancient Roman mythology. He is usually depicted as having two faces. Susanna Finocchi, (our first Italian guest!) is a woman who knows these transitions well.

Susanna expounds on the weirdness of being a Southerner in the North. You become a kind of “in-between person,” neither here nor there, but like all these mythological figures you are given a special insight to human nature. And Susanna, in her loving and enthusiastic way, gifts us with her wisdom today.

Susanna’s mother was a Herbalist, and her father Dionysus was a connoisseur of wine, so it’s no surprise that she would grow to hold space for transformation and health. She details her childhood for us and her first encounter with Ashtanga Yoga, and her subsequent emigration to Denmark.

Together, with Jens Bache, she co-founded Astanga Yoga Copenhagen and was the main teacher there for almost 18 years, teaching hundreds of students.

In 2006, she hosted the entire Jois family in Copenhagen and in 2009 she had the honor of being the first school to invite her teacher Sharath Jois, as the incumbent Guru, on his debut tour, and has since hosted him 6 times since that year.

She made her first pilgrimages to Mysore in 1995 and 1996 and since 2003 has returned yearly to KPJAYI (now Sharath Yoga Centre) to practice and study.

Susanna studied Sanskrit at the University of Copenhagen and continues to learn together with chanting and Indian Philosophy during her trips to Mysore.

She currently is living in Rome, her place of birth, and travels all over Italy and Europe teaching the Ashtanga Yoga method.

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Opening and closing music compliments of my dear friend teaching Ashtanga yoga in Eindhoven, Nick Evans, with his band “dawnSong” from the album “for Morgan.” Listen to the entire album on Spotify - Click Here.