Senay JensenIn July, the Nordic Yoga Festival, organized by Bowspring teacher Senay Jensen, attracted a sold-out crowd of 550 students. This year’s festival in Middelfart, Denmark included 4 Bowspring classes taught by Senay, Sisse, and long-time Bowspring teacher, Christy Punnett from Barbados, who also presented a 5-hour masterclass a day before the festival began. Senay estimated that over 300 students experienced the power of the Bowspring for their first time at the festival this year.Senay shared with me that since she committed this year to fully teaching “100% pure Bowspring” classes instead of mixing with standard yoga alignment (‘Bowsprinking’), her public classes have been full. According to all of the Bowspring teachers who were at the festival, many students would gather after the classes to share their experiences and get information about the new alignment method. A common question among the students was “how come we had no problems keeping our balance in one-legged standing poses in this practice when in our weekly yoga classes it is usually always an issue?”
​One of the most positive testimonials from the festival came from a young women who hadn’t been able to do any form of physical exercise or training without pain or discomfort for the last couple of months since herniating a disk in her lower back.Bowspring is also being presented by Ditte and Signe at other Danish yoga festivals in Copenhagen and in Jutland, so the method continues to spread through the yoga community in Denmark.
Sisse DallAt the Nordic yoga festival, Sisse offered a popular presentation entitled ‘Yoga (Bowspring) for Athletes’, which is based on her yoga book, Yoga for Sports Folk. Sisse started her Bowspring studies with Christy Punnett in Barbados 3 years ago. After that training with Christy, Sisse returned to Denmark and realized that the athletes who she was training, including runners, weightlifters, and soccer players, were measurably improving their performances through the wavy spinal alignment of the Bowspring with bonus therapeutic benefits.
One heavy weightlifter praised the alignment method saying that ‘this is the first time yoga hasn’t felt like torture’. Bowspring worked for him because Sisse taught him how to effectively stretch his legs and hips with bent knees and springiness in his joints instead of doing excruciating static forward bends with straight legs. He was able to immediate find more fluidity in his movements without feeling incompetent in his lack of flexibility.

For the athletes and other students who don’t have the time to train in the Bowspring method in much depth, Sisse simplifies the Bowspring alignment algorithm and offers basic instructions for the most fundamental movements.
Ditte exploring the Bowspring alignment in Crouching Cat
Ditte BykaerholmDitte is renown not only in Copenhagen, but in our global Bowspring community, as a goddess of ‘Bowstorative’ practice. As a yoga teacher for around 10 years, Ditte is one of the more experienced yoga teachers in Denmark. Ditte especially loves to help all those students troubled with injuries, stress, anxiety, or depression. By using gentle breathing in restorative yoga poses using Bowspring alignment, Ditte inspires the students to embody a positive attitude of life, personal accountability, self-respect and love. She says that her brave students feel empowered by the progress they experience in their mind-body health through staying consistent with their Bowspring practice, even though it is particularly challenging to step away from the alignment practice that they were used to in their previous yoga community. It is also challenging for many students to open up with vulnerability to feel and to be aware of where in their body they are closing and hardening somatically. Ditte is especially compassionate and caring to her students, which helps to give them the emotional support necessary to face their fears of looking truthfully into their shadow patterns. It is the increased self-awareness of all levels of ourselves – physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually – that gives us the possibilities of choosing to transform our shadows into virtues. Ditte’s skillful teaching and wisdom are widely respected in Copenhagen.
Both Ditte and Sisse offer online Bowspring classes in Danish at Yogavivo.dk. For Danish-speaking students, these Bowspring training videos are highly recommended!
Senay, Signe, and Desi exploring the boundaries of reversed bound Half Moon pose
Signe Rassmussen Has been teaching popular Bowspring classes for the past 2 years in Mårslet and Aarhus with ages of students ranging from teenagers to seniors, the oldest being over 90 years old! Her classes also include Bowspring for mothers with babies, and Bowstorative for the elderly and handicapped. Signe is a nurse and she says that the Bowspring method which teaches basic functional movements like getting up and down from the floor is so important particularly for the elderly, who commonly lose their balance and fall and then have trouble getting back up standing.
All of the Danish teachers commented that one of the most significant benefits that students claim that they gain from the Bowspring practice is that learn much more about themselves on all levels, particularly of their unconscious patterns and imbalances in their physical alignment, and their emotional and mental habits. Interestingly, according to the teachers, Danish Bowspring students are not interested in doing unconscious workouts anymore, but would rather do a very therapeutic practice in which they are awake. They are most attracted to a yoga practice that is playful, intriguing, and one in which they can grow spiritually.
Thor Lenz
Thor began moving towards the Bowspring alignment in 2015, when enrolled in the Yoga teacher education at Soham Johansen’s Hamsa Yoga Studio in Copenhagen. Soham, an Anusara yoga teacher, has always been very supportive of my teachings through the years, and has helped promote the Bowspring in Denmark since we founded the method in 2013. It was Soham’s positive presentation of elements of the method in his teachings that inspired Thor to go further and further down the path of the Bowspring method, which in Thor’s view is “a kind of secularized movement discipline that is cutting the bonds of norms and dogmas, to target what is needed today in modern world society.”
Thor also comments that Bowspring is growing in Denmark since many Danes are attracted to movements and alignments which are deemed natural in distinction to culturally defined ‘proper posture’. At the same time, Thor reminds his fellow Bowspringers in Denmark to follow the Scandinavian cultural compass of the Law of Jante (Jantelagen), which respects all styles and traditions, and not to express their enthusiasm of their newfound truth of the Bowspring in a way that condemns the old methodologies. In this way, respect and humble honor are offered to the ones who hold the classic traditions close to their hearts. According to Thor, “Danes are very disciplined and faithful to what they have built their identity on, even when it comes to body-mind practices.” So, to maintain social harmony in an culture that discourages elevating one path above another, it is wise advice not to be over eager in promoting one’s special way.Thor assisting Laura Mikkelsen in Square Leg Crouching Cat
Helga Halkjaer LaursenHelga was introduced to the Bowspring method in 2015 and began to study and practice the method right away at home. After using our TINTyoga.com videos and then taking some of our Bowspring trainings in Europe in 2017, she decided only to teach the Bowspring method.
​According to Helga, “the Bowspring has a powerful potential to ‘live’ in other areas of my life besides just on a yoga mat. It provides me a body awareness so strong and consistent that I bring it with me almost everywhere I go, no matter whether I am at work, riding my bike, running, standing in line at the supermarket, cleaning the house or driving my car. Furthermore, the Bowspring practice teaches me to stay steady with uncomfortable sensations and stressful situations. In the difficult moments of life, instead of becoming smaller inside or hardening the outside, I choose now to make and inner expansion of my heart area to maintain my cool.” By applying the Bowspring technique of Radiant Heart in her daily life, Helga says she cultivates the resilience and a positive alternative to cope with her stress.
When asked why she thinks Bowspring keeps growing in Denmark Helga says, “Even though the method seems counterintuitive in the beginning, my students feel like it is a ‘coming home’ to their own body. Regardless of age, pains disappear while the ability to move with more freedom appears.”
CopenhagenA Copenhagen public parkDesi teaching at the 2018 Copenhagen workshop about the power of the Bowspring in a fundamental pose like All-FoursLong-time Bowspring teacher, Christy Punnett from Barbados teaching at the Nordic Yoga Festival in 2018Christy Punnett giving a talk outside at this year\’s Nordic Yoga FestivalChristy Punnett providing resistance to Thor and Signe helping them to activate their posterior chain of myofascia in Crouching Cat