This interview is officially published in Strøm Spa Magazine Autumn – Winter Edition 2019.
She offers retreats at Six Senses Resorts, St. Regis hotels and Soneva Group resorts around the world. She teaches yoga and meditation overseas. She is known for having founded Intimi yoga (The yoga school of women’s health), a health program dedicated to women – the yogic way. An alternative health care routine focusing on the intimacy and sensuality of women, in a setting of openness, emotional security and trust.
Meet Sandra Laznik, a woman of courage and light who is not afraid to do things differently.
With your Intimi Yoga project, you explore the world of women’s health, yoga and sensuality. How do you think all these spheres are intimately connected?
Imagine you have the healthiest body in the world, you drink many big glasses of celery juice per day, you make sure you sleep well and yet still you’re unhappy.
These days most women I work with are obsessed with the word health, yet many cut / forget / ignore the sensual part. I’ve met hundreds of women who on the outside look like (and are) superstars yet on the inside there’s no stars.
I feel the missing part is that deep intimate connection with yourself, with your most intimate body parts and most intimate areas of your life and that’s why I emphasise the sensual wellness.
You accompany women in an effort to reconnect them with confidence, awareness and sensuality. When did you start this and what do you particularly like about this practice?
I started incorporating a more sensual way of living when I realised I’m pushing my feminine qualities down (softness, gentleness, sweetness, surrendering) thinking that only strong things work in life. But they don’t. And if you have a male partner (who majors in masculine qualities) you learn they don’t wanna date “another man.” They admire us for our feminine things, right? 🙂
What I love about this practice is that it feels like you’re in a spa centre when you’re doing it and that most of the practices can be easily done on the bed. I love comfort, especially cause I want you to go deep with your breath and not deep with hurting your tendons, trying to show me on Instagram that you mastered a yoga pose.
I like it when you close your eyes and open your inner eyes, and stretch your mind and breathe into your womb. You get me where I’m going with this? I want you to feel yourself and not run away from yourself. The only way out is through. And you’ll never go through if you don’t feel yourself. And you’ll never go through if you compare yourself to others (hello social media). My simple advice to reconnect: stop numbing out, start visiting spa centres on the regular (hello Strøm) and start doing more yoga (hello Sandra).
What is your background? How did you become interested in women’s health?
I’m a professor of sports education, multiply-certified yoga teacher, facilitator of taoistic and tantric arts and a visiting wellness practitioner at the world’s most famous hotels, resorts and spas (Six Senses, Soneva Group, St. Regis) where I offer tailored massage treatments and private sessions.
Well, I’m a woman and I’ve always been egoistically interested in keeping myself on high levels of happiness. I’ve just decided to re-design my health one practice at a time instead of one pill at a time. Don’t get me wrong I support medicine, I just feel there are many things you can do before you decide to swallow it.
Through your work, do you encounter certain myths about the status of women in our modern societies? Are you trying to debunk these myths?
Of course. Mostly that being feminine is weak. That ageing is bad. That pleasure is slutty. That sensuality should be hidden. My whole life is dedicated to debunking these nonsenses.
Describe your mission in a few words.
Elevating women’s health – one pleasurable practice at a time.
What inspires you to create on a daily basis?
As a yoga master said, there are only two ways of living: either you live in a victim mode or in a victorious mode. So I just decide daily that I’m gonna live a victorious life and that automatically sparks daily creativity.
And also the fact that I’m gonna die one day, so why not make a living fun, full, creative and joyful while breathing here on earth?
How would you define the sacred feminine? Do you think that the idea of the sacred feminine is generally used in a correct and consistent way on the scene of well-being and spirituality?
My definition of a woman who allows herself to express sacred femininity is a woman that is:
- mysterious on the outside but totally knows herself from the inside,
- liberated from guilt, shame and regret,
- owning her unlimited sexuality,
- wild thing yet equally a wise thing,
- deeply vital through yoga dancing and visiting spa centres,
- never afraid of being “too much”
- walking like she owns the place.
I’m not so sure that the idea of sacred feminine is used in a correct way. Either is sold out as some esoteric idea or miscommunicated like it’s some thing far away, being hard to reach.
You know, I once vomitted on words like goddess and sacred. I attended a training where I vomited (literally) every time a teacher mentioned “goddess”, “sacred” or “energy”.
I wanted to leave cause the teachers’ attitude towards me was not even close to the letter G in the word goddess but there was no money-back guarantee for this training (and these were my few years savings)! So that experience taught me – that no matter how good something sounds – if people who are teaching you are not living what they are saying or are making you feel less than, that’s wrong, that’s cheating.
So this experience gave me so much fire to lift me up and make me swear to myself to never ever make another woman feel like I felt there. Oh, and I stopped using the word sacred. I now prefer words like grace and dignity and victory as they describe way better who and what a woman is.
How do you think the manifestation of the sacred feminine can have a concrete influence on women’s lives in 2019?
Let’s get a bit poetic here and let Muriel Rukeyser reply for me here, while I allow you to create your own image of this influence:
“What will happen when one woman writes the truth about her life?
The world will split open.”
And for the future: What are your dreams and upcoming projects?
To visit Canada and do weekend Intimi yoga retreats at your Nordic Spas for your amazing guests.
To learn more about Strøm Spas visit https://www.stromspa.com/en/
To learn more about Intimi Yoga visit https://www.intimiyoga.com