My journey has helped me understand that I am here to guide women from darkness to the light. Whether it’s from a life which might just feel pointless and boring or from a life that is so dark that nothing seems to help to navigate towards a meaningful life filled with joy and happiness.
I am here to support and guide you- I am here to show you the way to your inner landscape to help ignite that fire within you. Through tools such as: breathing techniques, visualization, and meditation I will help empty your cluttered mind and still yourself. Through yoga asanas (exercises) you will connect to the wisdom of the physical body, and you will tune in with the intelligence of the breath through different breathing techniques. With these tools I started to heal my body mind and soul from a very dark place. Through my daily sacred yoga practice, I started to build my dream life.
With a strong commitment and a powerful intention I started my own company with the mission to guide women of all ages to heal and connect with their body mind and soul.
Here is my story:
As long as I can remember I’ve been looking to get high! As a kid I was getting high on sugar – my mom had to hide candy from me-in my teenage years I started to exercise as a maniac to get that adrenalin kick. In senior high school I started to drink alcohol and after I had taken that first sip of alcohol it was as if the spirit had moved in my body and to stay.
When I moved to the US to study it all started to go downhill. I fell in love with a man – a very complex artist. He was handsome and mysterious, and I started to use alcohol and weed as a gateway to connect with him. He taught me how to draw and paint. To pay for college tuition I worked in the restaurant business and every drug you could imagine was available. I was offered drugs left and right. With the search to get high and experience expansion one thing led to another.
Me and the artist got married but not for the right reasons. I was in love and in need of a green card, meanwhile he needed my love and free rent.
My husband started to cheat on me with other women. I was hurt. I confronted him. We had horrible fights. I didn’t know how to deal with the pain and needed to escape. My drug abuse increased.
I couldn’t get the love that I needed from him and I didn’t love my self and the black void inside got bigger and bigger. I gave away my power to the drugs. I greeted every morning with my weed pipe. The pipe was always with me. Everywhere I went the weed pipe was either right beside me or in my purse.
Smoking weed numbed me out. Weed was the fast track to another dimension. I felt free with weed. When I look back, I see it from a clear perspective, I was a slave to the Marijuana plant. The plant was in control of my life. I continued these behaviors for 10 years, until I got hit riding my bike to work high. A NYC city bus knocked me of my bike, and I hurt my back really bad. To deal with my physical injury a wide range of pharmaceutical drugs was introduced to me. Now I had access to more drugs-I wasn’t only addicted to weed and alcohol. I started to carry around a little “drug-purse” with amphetamine- valium – tramadol- Vicodin – oxytocin and other strong painkillers.
I went to physical therapists, chiropractors, and pain management doctors to get help with my injured back – nothing helped.
I continued with numbing myself with all the drugs and alcohol until I one day got burned out and couldn’t function at work. I forgot orders and the customers started to complain. I got a black out and fell in deep depression. I had no choice to fly back to Sweden to my parents. They welcomed me with their open arms. My dad who was a physical therapist started to treat my damaged back with his healing remedies – and my mom bought me a Kundalini Yoga Course. There were no drugs no alcohol. Just me my mind and my breath.
My healing journey had begun.
My first Kundalini Yoga class was very tender. I remember it so well. It was as if I stepped into heaven. It was a white room with off white wool mats and the room was lit with many candles. The room was white and pure. I felt as if I was too dirty to be in there. The residue of drugs and dirt from the streets of NYC was still sprinkled all over me.
My mom came with me to class. We did it together. It was a nice bonding experience. After class I felt a sense of calm that I had never yet experienced.
I had no idea if this yoga would ease my back problems- but I liked the calm that it brought me, and I felt connected to my breath.
I went to class every week for 2 months. During these weeks I picked up painting again I had a local art-show and sold most of the paintings. I used the money I earned from the paintings and bought a return ticket back to NYC.
I got my old job back, got a small room in an apartment and within a week I had looked up a Kundalini Yoga studio at Union Square. I became a member and started practicing yoga every day. I also started to smoke weed again.
I started to get downloads in class. I heard a strong voice inside. I learned about myself and I felt connected to something higher. This was a new high. I felt at home.
In the Kundalini yoga classes I started to learn how to breathe. It was as if I had never been breathing before. Lots of anger and tears started releasing and I learned that all the emotions that I had been covering and numbing out was still present in my body. I started to see things from a different perspective, and I became more attuned to my physical body.
I learned how to embrace the pain and the emotions, and I started to actually feel them. Greet them. I started to understand. I faced my fears and learned that my self-destructive behavior was from self-hatred. I faced my shadows and accepted them and learned that they are part of who I am. The darkness started to lead me to the light.
In class I felt great, but the real challenge was outside the studio.
I started to surf on the wave that was separating the light and the dark.
After getting my old work back in the dangerous world of restaurant and still had a roll of being the “Party Girl” I started to live 2 different lives. The first part of the day I would smoke weed practice yoga paint and drink green juices. The second part of the day I would drink alcohol smoke more, work at the restaurants and be barhopping. I still took some painkillers, but I was more careful with them. My pain management doctor also stopped prescribing me with anything strong after I came in too her office high on coke one day.
I realized that I needed to leave NYC for good. A friend told me about a meditation center in Guatemala by Lake Atitlan. Even though I had no idea about it I decided to go.
The first 2 weeks in GT I felt lost. With no drugs no alcohol it was like I had no identity. I didn’t know who I was, where I was or what I was doing.
After a month in Guatemala, I met a Kundalini Yoga Teacher. He offered me to do a teacher training in KY with him another guy, so I did. For a whole month we would rise at 4 am and practice yoga until 3 pm every day with one day off a week. It was super intense but exactly what I needed. I needed structure and discipline.
I learned all the essential tools I needed to know on how to continue on my healing journey. I learned about sadhana- the daily practice and the importance of repetition and finding your own biorhythm.
I completed my training and left GT. I came back to Sweden and I started to teach KY at a local yoga studio. I felt there was more training to do. I bought myself a ticket to India and did a teacher training in Hatha Yoga. I was eager to go deeper with KY and signed up for another 6-week teacher Training in KY in Bali.
The Bali training came to be such an important training for me. It was the first time I worded my addictive behavior and I had 60 women listening to my story. It was so scary to admit. So much shame about it. But all the teachings in KY had thought me to be in my Sat Nam- Truth is my identity.
The teacher for this training was able to foresee what I needed and gave me a challenge at the end of the training. She gave me an intense exercise to do for 40 days. Archer Pose.
What she really gave me was a real life-changer. This pose is excellent for strengthening the nervous system and after all the years of drug addiction my nervous system was really weakened. I started to practice the pose and every day I struggled.
For weeks I struggled. Slowly the 40 days had come to an end and I’d experienced many benefits. I could focus better, and I started to feel mentally stronger. I decided to continue for 90 days – 90 days came to end and I wasn’t ready to stop, so I continued.
It’s now been almost 3 years since I started with this pose. I haven’t missed a single day. Archer pose has given me so much. I am able to trust myself. I show up for myself.
I am forever Grateful for Sat Siri Dougherty that introduced me to this challenge.
In 2018 I started my own company – Harisant Harmony. It was time to bridge all the teachings from my travels and my life abroad to my life in Sweden.
I started teaching yoga in at gyms, from my home and I held women workshops around northern Sweden. I traveled to California where I taught woman yoga at festivals and retreats. I shared my story with Archer pose at events and workshops and big festivals such as Womans Camp and winter solstice in USA.
I started to cook vegan food for retreats in Sweden and the USA. I was now traveling most part of the year teaching yoga and cooking vegan food at different events.
In 2019 I met Sukhdev Jackson. She is the founder of Shakti School, a woman facilitator training based in Kundalini Yoga and other ancient practices. The mission of Shaktischool Is to heal women of all colours around the world. Sukhdev and Shakti-school has allowed me to dive even deeper into my trauma and limiting beliefs about myself.
I am currently deeply involved with Shakti School and I work closely with Sukhdev Jackson. Sukhdev has been such an important teacher in my work and from the deep work with Shakti school Women In Harmony was birthed.