It is with great pleasure that we introduce you to our friend Anna Guryeva. She graces us a with a marvelous little window into the Russian soul. From the heart of Siberia, she reveals a path to joy.

To see the beauty of the Russian spirit, one must understand the generational hardship of the people, and Anna’s narrative, though particular to her, shares this ancestral trauma. To know the horror of the last century, and the centuries of slavery that came before, and Anna’s own personal enslavement, is to see the miracle of Anna’s ecstasy.

We gently coaxed Anna to talk about serfdom in Russia and her own travails. Though it isn’t easy. Anna is ready to move on, you see. And, the Russian ethos in general, isn’t one to dwell on, or speak about their tragedies.

What does suffering mean to a culture when a third of their population was forcibly married and held in servitude for life? You see, around 23 million Russians were held in slavery until 1863.

People carry that kind of wound throughout the generations. Anna spoke to this and growing up in Siberia, now living in St.Petersburg.

We dug into Russian history through Anna’s eyes and her personal experience with being indoctrinated into a religious cult, where she lived as a domestic slave for three years.

After living in Moscow for a year and seriously exploring the option of becoming a Christian Nun, she moved to St. Petersburg and started on an entirely different spiritual journey exploring esoteric practices within Kabbalah, the teachings of the Russian Mystic Gurdjieff, and finally found her teacher in Tibetan Buddhism, and eventually began practicing Ashtanga yoga.

With all this in her personal history Anna has given us a beautiful book the titled: “Space and Bliss: Yoga and Buddhism for Life in the Modern World.”

The title of her book comes from a Tibetan monk’s conversation with her. He was telling her about the evolution of her spiritual practice and offered her this exotic mind-blowing gem.

Anna Guryeva is the Founder of the Ashtanga Yoga Shala in St. Petetersburg, Russia and Authorized Ashtanga Yoga Teacher.

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