Viniyoga® & Art Therapy
with Katja Ujcic, Viniyoga & Art Therapist | Ljubljana, Slovenia
Katja Ujčič is a body, mind and spirit researcher. Her programs are based on ancient knowledge from yoga philosophy, subconscious symbolism, Carl G. Jung psychology and modern psychology. She is specialized in working with gifted individuals and people within creative and innovative fields. She has been practising yoga for a long time and also became a yoga teacher. In 2019 she finished the 3-year-long Viniyoga® Therapy program with her mentor Dr Kausthub Desikachar in Brussels.
In this interview she discusses her experience with Viniyoga® and art Therapy.
1) What brought you to Viniyoga in the first place?
My enormous curiosity and passion for learning and experiencing my life through yoga, which is in my case through my subconscious. As an Art Therapist, I perceive yoga as vast deep intuitive wisdom that has a profound impact on subconscious, where all the patterns and programs – Samskaras - are hidden. Samskaras make us dance by the notes that our genes, upbringing, family, culture have written. By knowing our deep hidden patterns we can slowly become conductor of our life. What is so brilliant in yoga is that there is no need for analyzing our traumas or searching for our deepest wounds. Yoga is with its subtle tools talking to our inner world in energy language. The healing is gentle, constructive and somehow mystical. It works on multiple levels, that modern people don’t yet understand.
2) How do you see the connections between Viniyoga and Art Therapy?
I like to explore and merge the two oceans that bring true understanding of life and consequently healing to humanity: the ancient wisdom of yoga philosophy and modern psychology. Art Therapy and Viniyoga are both working on the same goal on how to help heal people by tapping into the subconscious with subtle tools and working with symbolism, energy and transformation. In Art Therapy we can establish direct communication with our wounded parts and by expressing them we can experience true transformation. Similarly, we can experience with yoga therapy. By connecting to our body with Asana-s and Nyasa-s, our inner word with visualization and meditation and our energy with Pranayama we can transform our Samsakras.
3) How do you see the differences between Viniyoga and Art Therapy?
On a very deep level, there is no difference. Both are changing our inner subconscious and bringing awareness of our shadow to light. And there is no bigger joy than to heal a shadow part of ourselves. Art Therapy can be very abstract, creative and spontaneous. It evokes the flow of healing creative energy, Prāṇa, that doesn’t just heals but also puts the individual on his/her true authentic path in this life. Owning true potentials and joyfully serving them it is also what Viniyoga is teaching. Although its tools are a little bit different than Art Therapy, for example, discipline and routine, which are seldom found in Art Therapy, it can be even more abstract than art and even deeper.
4) How has Viniyoga helped you in your work as an Art Therapist?
All my clients get their own individual yoga therapy practice that supports their subconscious processes. This practice helps them on many levels, I will mention just three. On the first level, it gives the energy support to the person so that they can go through process easier and faster. On the second level, it helps to open a new perspective on the person’s reality. My clients have said that they never before felt that another option or perspective exists. We talk about it and analyze it but with cognitive processes only, this other option is never felt and experienced and therefore can never be lived. Yoga therapy with special tools can be very successful and consistently offer a new feeling of possibility and it helps this feeling to stay in the person’s reality. For example, some of my clients that are very successful in business have never felt true, supportive, gentle energy, that is usually coming from the feminine. But with yoga mantra that evokes feminine principle, it helps them to experience this and they loved it. The third level that Viniyoga is therapeutically supportive is the physical process. People in this modern stressful time are constantly in extreme mentally unsafe mode. Basically, it is either flight or fight or what I notice most in all of us is deep freeze, from which we cannot move and we just wait to be eaten – as in the animal world - and die. I extensively use Viniyoga helpful tools to relax a person, so that feeling of safety, of support and calmness, can become a new reality for her/him.
5) How has Art Therapy helped you in your work as a Viniyoga Therapist?
Art Therapy is a wonderful and gentle method to see our broken part, put it into awareness, bring life to it and transform it. Art is speaking to you, you feel it and express it. Being an Art Therapist was easier for me to dive deep into my feelings and my traumas and therefore understand the feelings and processes that people go through on the yoga mat.
6) How do you see the role of Viniyoga in the future of Yoga Therapy in the world?
Viniyoga is a wonderful holistic system that is approachable to everyone. It transforms body, mind and energy to become healthier, peaceful, joyful and successful. Every individual can get a healing Viniyoga practice and practice it at home. And I see it as a holistic human daily hygiene. I hope that this tradition will be embraced as a healing method by many people, but also that its teachings will travel deep in the human psyche and help to make necessary changes in collective subconscious also.
For more information, Katja Ujcic and her work, kindly visit her website - https://katjaujcic.com/