Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast Episode #28 – Yoga By Many Names – Yoga in Azerbaijan with Gafar Ganizadeh

Welcome to Episode #28 of the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast! This week, I welcome Gafar Ganizadeh onto the show. He is a yoga teacher from Azerbaijan. He’s an aerial yoga (fly yoga) instructor, and a past studio owner of a yoga studio in Baku. He teaches classic hatha, power yoga, fly yoga, and something very unique, which he calls complex yoga.

My conversation with Gafar was so interesting as we looked at the Azerbaijan culture and how expressing emotion and refreshing the brain benefit his community. I hope that this conversation made you curious about how you could integrate different methodologies and traditions together to make your own kind of complex yoga practice.

If you’re looking to tune into a podcast episode that is all about living a life around yoga, using yoga at any time of your day, or of your life, then this is the conversation for you.

Tell me more about Gafar Ganizadeh

Gafar Ganizade first began to practice yoga in 2009 when he was invited to practice yoga with one of this friends who had just received her yoga teacher certification. After attending her classes, Gafar quickly realized that yoga was the thing that was missing from his life— yoga felt like something he already knew. Gafar’s first yoga training was in 2016 in Hatha, and a year later he obtained his advanced yoga teacher training certificate. In 2017, Hatha became a Fly Yoga teacher as well. Gafar teaches yoga in his hometown of Baku at his yoga studio. He teaches classic hatha, power yoga, fly yoga, and his own practice, which he calls complex yoga.

What to expect in the Yoga In Azerbaijan episode of the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast

Gafar created the concept of complex yoga, this is a type of yoga he describes as melding together of different practices and methodologies including kundalini, ashtanga, and sufism. He used to own his own yoga studio in Baku with his wife called High Fly yoga. He had to close that school down due to the pandemic, though he teaches with his wife and friends at another yoga studio in Baku now. 

As a yoga teacher, when he’s in class, he can feel what his students need for the day. He calls this his superpower! Gafar also shared with us that he estimates that 90% of all people who come to yoga classes in Azerbaijan do so for health reasons, whether that is sleep issues or spine issues. 

That being said, yoga is very popular in Azerbaijan with plenty of yoga students and teachers, as people realize how yoga can help people get their health back.

Something I thought was particularly curious was how Gafar suggested that yoga was in Azerbaijan before, but went by different names. Azerbaijan is a very spiritual country, and he believes that lots of yoga teachers today create their own techniques and practices by tapping into old Azerbaijani traditions and knowledge.

For the skimmers – What’s in the Azerbaijan episode?

• What is Complex Yoga?
• The importance of cathartic emotional release
• Yoga by many names— existing in Azerbaijan in times past
• Traditional Folk music to heal—the Muğam
• All about Azerbaijan
• What is your yoga superpower? 

Favorite Quote From Gafar Ganizadeh

“I realized that the discipline in yoga is one of the important things. If you want to get resolved from your practice and see that you know life is changing. You should be in a good discipline. That’s the main thing.”

Resources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ateshgah_of_Baku

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanar_Dag

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobustan_National_Park

Connect with Gafar Ganizadeh

www.instagram.com/melyamo.yogi

Want more?

https://wildyogatribe.com/thepodcast/

Everything you need is just one click away! Check out all the resources here: https://linktr.ee/wildyogatribe

JOIN ME FOR LIVE-STREAMED YOGA CLASSES!

Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast Episode #28 – Yoga By Many Names – Yoga in Azerbaijan with Gafar Ganizadeh

[00:00:00] Lily Allen-Duenas: Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to the Wild Yoga Tribe podcast. I’m your host, Lily Allen-Duenas. Together we’ll talk about the world of yoga and we’ll talk to people from around the world. I wanted to also let you all know that I will be teaching yoga online. This year, classes will be live streamed on a platform called Moxie and I have $25 off coupons to send you, valid in January.

[00:00:35] And I would love if you could join me for a class to help you feel centered, refreshed, and filled with ease, ready to dive into the show. Let’s get started.

[00:00:53] Namaste family. Welcome back to the Wild Yoga Tribe podcast. Today, I am so excited to welcome Ghafar Ganizadeh onto the show. He’s a yoga teacher from Azerbaijan, and he first began to practice yoga in 2009. When he was invited to practice yoga with one of his friends who had just received her yoga teacher training certification, after attending her classes, Gafar quickly realized that yoga was the thing that was missing from his life. Yoga felt like something he already knew. Gafar’s first yoga training was in 2016 and Hatha. And a year later he did obtain his advanced yoga teacher training certificate and then went on to become a fly yoga teacher as well.

[00:01:39] So Gafar teaches yoga in his hometown of Baku. And Azerbaijan and he teaches Hatha power yoga, fly yoga, and his own practice, which he calls complex yoga. So thank you so much Gafar for joining me today. 

[00:01:54] Gafar Ganizadeh: Thank you. Hello, Namaste. 

[00:01:58] Lily Allen-Duenas: So I’d love to ask after that first yoga class that you did with your friend, how do you feel after that class and how do you feel that it influences and impacts the space that you create for your students?

How Do You Feel After You Practice Yoga?

[00:02:11] Gafar Ganizadeh: The first thing that impressed me was my feeling after meditation, because of, I use my brain a lot. I used to use it in my computer engineering world, like I was working on and I felt that the brain needs to relax, to maybe stop to refresh. And after that first meditation, I realized that this is what I need to learn more and share with people because.

[00:02:51] For now I have lots of students who used to, I work with their IT guys working like internet engineering, so they needed, and I share it with them. They love it. They can combine yoga and their work. So they have been, I’m happy also. 

[00:03:12] Lily Allen-Duenas: Oh, that’s wonderful, yeah. I love how you said the brain needs to stop and refresh as a computer engineer. That seems like a little play on words. 

[00:03:21] Gafar Ganizadeh: Yes. Yes. I use it a lot. To explain the person I used to like examples for computers, so it is better and the person gets information better. 

What Is Complex Yoga?

[00:03:37] Lily Allen-Duenas: And so I was wondering if you could tell us what complex yoga is. I was really excited when I read that in your bio… 

[00:03:43] Gafar Ganizadeh: As I started my spiritual journey. Let’s call it. I realized that I met lots of different people who also do yoga and the people I met, one of the people I met, they were like, maybe. People like that, they’re fanatics who like to access only one type or style of yoga. And for example, coffee yoga, they don’t accept the other yoga or styles or other techniques or any other knowledge that can help you on your way, yourself, your soul, your mind, and your body.

[00:04:24] That got me to find other ways of other styles of yoga. And I found things that I was shocked about, like there is a book called Kazan yoga. It’s like yoga or countries, really old book practice loops like, three regular hot styles, or like Kundalini, you know, but they use colors that use special seating techniques and lots of practice with eyes. And took something from that then met people who practice the Sufi techniques. That’s how I did complex yoga. There’s techniques from Hatha, from Ashtanga. So another practice there is Kundalini yoga. Especially breathings, it’s like a whole throat breathing if and it helps to get clear of emotions or to refresh your mind, your brain. Mix it all up and call it complex yoga. 

[00:05:37] Lily Allen-Duenas: Wonderful. Yeah. I love the idea of just mixing everything together and really creating something that you felt aligned and resonated the most with you. And of course, offering that to your students because it is beautiful to pull from different traditions.

[00:05:53] Whether that is Buddhism or Sufism, like you brought up. I think there’s so much that can be offered when we’re willing to pull from different traditions. So you mentioned Sufi breathing. Can you talk to me more about how Sufism or the different practices from the Sufi tradition are incorporated? I would love to hear more.

The Power Of Emotional Energy

[00:06:15] Gafar Ganizadeh: Okay. There is one breathing technique that I use often. There is no actual name for it. I just call it the breathing that helps you to believe your emotion. Absorb them and let them go. There’s people in our country. There are lots of people who don’t like to share their emotions.

[00:06:45] Like even if they want to be, to feel happy emotions is stays the straight base or you don’t let them the emotions to go and they, one day they just realize that they have some stress have problems with sleeping problems, with motions, having conversation with other satanic attacks and all that goals that they just keep emotion in themselves.

[00:07:18] The emotions, if you open that road. Energy motion. Like the emotional energy and energy should always go with the, if it sucks teller 100 percent their problems starting to like in our lives. So that breathing helps. Can we quickly let those emotions go from your body? Yeah. After the breathing people, someone starts to cry.

[00:07:47] Someone starts to laugh, someone starts to scream. Someone wants to break something and we tell people that please don’t stop. If you want to express your emotion, just let go. That’s about it. 

Sufi Breathing Techniques

[00:08:04] Lily Allen-Duenas: Okay. How did you first learn about this Sufi breathing technique? 

[00:08:08] Gafar Ganizadeh: There was one guy who was traveling and I think he lives in the United States, but he’s who goes to Iran and they have Sufi traditions there. He should have shared that there with me. 

[00:08:28] Lily Allen-Duenas: Oh, that’s beautiful. So I love that we’ve talked about your practice and I would love to hear, why do you teach, like what makes you want to teach and share yoga?

Why Do You Teach Yoga?

[00:08:38] Gafar Ganizadeh: The main reason, I’ll be honest with you. The first thing is, why do I teach myself to be disciplined? One day I realized that if I don’t teach, I start to be lazy and my own practice goes down. Like I do. It’s not like everyday, or a few times a week. So by teaching I’d spend myself and I share that with others because I realized that the discipline in yoga is one of the important things. If you want to get, get resolved from your practice and see that you know life is changing. You should be in a good discipline. That’s the main thing. 

[00:09:29] Lily Allen-Duenas: So you teach to continue the discipline to keep you showing up on the mat, going deeper, studying more. So you’d say it’s so that you continue to go deeper and deeper on your own journey? 

[00:09:41] Gafar Ganizadeh: Yeah, because my, the horoscope sign, I’m a pisces. Chill, relax, and just catch the flow. I didn’t have enough discipline in my life. So yoga was brought to my life and I love it.

[00:10:01] Lily Allen-Duenas: That is a gift that yoga can give. Absolutely. And I love how the discipline of showing up on your mat every single day, how that can change over time or through the seasons or even the moon cycles. I love what I’ve learned too, that I don’t have to do the same practice every single day. It’s more about just showing up and saying, okay, what do I need today? What does my body need? My emotions need. 

[00:10:29] Gafar Ganizadeh: That’s exactly what I do. I feel. 

[00:10:32] Lily Allen-Duenas: So you definitely change your practice everyday too, you’d say?

Change is Vital

[00:10:36] Gafar Ganizadeh: Actually, yes, this is one of the things I was up there teaching my students in my classes. If people laugh and practice, change every day. And what was interesting and funny after I got my yoga certification. One of the teachers in the studio, she was moving to the United States and she had to do it real quick. So the student invited me to teach there. And when I started to teach, I saw that, when you practice every time, it is the same thing, they just get bored. I started to switch the flow, changing the requirements and with some interest. I have that, I dunno, maybe it’s my wife called super power when I’m in class and the students sitting in their spots, I just come down. I just, I know, I just feel what they need for today right now. What their body needs. Every time before practice, I sit down and take paper and just put some tasks on us that I will, I should give them today.

[00:11:56] And every time I go to the class they will use that paper because I just sit down and prepare myself for meditation, telling the blessing, the thanks to the universe. And the preparation before class. After that the flow opens, and I just know what I need to give them today. And that’s how my practice everyday changes.

[00:12:24] Lily Allen-Duenas: Oh, wonderful. Yeah. I think that’s an incredible superpower to have the ability to just walk in sense the energy of a room, and then create the sequence or the offering to the students for what they need. That’s also how I really like to teach as well as not come in with an, already with my plans or with my paper, with anything.

[00:12:46] I love to let it organically come about. Cause throughout the class too, like sometimes I don’t know it the minute I walk in, after a few minutes and I’m seeing and sensing the energy or the skill level of the students then I can keep going. Is that how you feel like you just observe and transform like that too?

[00:13:05] Gafar Ganizadeh: Yes. Yes, exactly. And after classes, students give feedback and you know that while five students had pain in lower back and it, all the practice was to the first and second chakras and, I just got to the point. 

[00:13:26] Lily Allen-Duenas: I know your wife is also a yoga teacher, so I’d love to hear about what it’s like to have two yoga teachers as married partners. And also, I know you used to own a yoga studio together, so let’s talk about that. 

Perfect Partners On The Path Of Yoga

[00:13:38] Gafar Ganizadeh: Yes, that’s right. This is a perfect combination. I think, because I think that each yoga teacher needs to visit the other teachers’ practices and I got lucky that my wife is also a yoga teacher. So we always talk about practices, improving our practices, giving advice to each other and with yoga.

[00:14:06] We got more calm and we just felt each other without no words. That’s the gift that we got from yoga to have business. It was just perfect. We made it not like a regular studio when you come and there’s a reception guy or a girl, there was no reception. We had an online platform where you just control your yoga studio. Online was easy for teachers, for me and for my students, because every single one was online.

[00:14:40] Then we, when we were opening to the studio, we were thinking. And not like a business people that all we need to make that studio so brings money. We were opening needs, like the yoga people. 

[00:14:57] Lily Allen-Duenas: Very cool. So I’d love to ask too. Gafar what is yoga in Azerbaijan? Like what’s the yoga scene and has it been popular for 20 years? For two years? What is the story of yoga coming to Azerbaijan? 

What Is Yoga In Azerbaijan Like?

[00:15:12] Gafar Ganizadeh: Yoga in Azerbaijan now it’s popular. You can, yeah, you can say that it’s popular now, but in 90s maybe there were few people about like maybe 10 people who are, who have information about yoga, who can teach yoga and, or part of USSR.

[00:15:33] And as I remember the books and all that stuff related to yoga were not allowed in the country. And about 15 years now, we can say that yoga started to be popular in Azerbaijan. For now there are lots of yoga studios, lots of teachers and people. Now they realize that yoga can help them to get their health back there.

[00:16:04] There’s a stereotype that when you say that you practice yoga, people think that you are sitting with crossed legs, eyes closed, gyan mudra the mudra knowledge you just sitting and this and yoga it’s about this. And when you tell them, no, it’s not only about sitting with eyes closed. There’s breathing.

[00:16:29] There’s asanas. There’s philosophy. They just won’t expand that. Really, we never heard about that. So now there’s lots of people who know what yoga was, chakra sports mantras. As I see it, there’s a lot of doctors who send people to yoga. For example, someone came excited or something for problems with sleeping. He said there was no need to take any medicine, go practice yoga.

[00:17:05] It will help you. Now. Mostly people come because of health problems. Most people come with some problems, both. Maybe we can say about 10% of people, they just come to give peace. He’s a spiritual way, or to find himself or to get balanced in chakras or something like that. Most of the people come to become healthy.

[00:17:39] Lily Allen-Duenas: That’s very interesting that you think most people think of yoga teachers or yoga practitioners as just sitting cross-legged with gyan mudra because I think most people in the U.S. think of yoga. People practice yoga more like acrobat, pretzel, bendy, they picture these very, flexible, so I think it was very fun for me to hear that it’s more of the meditation that there.

[00:18:04] Gafar Ganizadeh: Sometimes some people here think it’s a religion or something. Close to Buddhism or something. But mostly the people think that you just sit cross legs. 

[00:18:18] Lily Allen-Duenas: And so did I understand correctly that you said that books on yoga weren’t allowed in the country like 15 years ago or something? 

Yoga Books Banned

[00:18:26] Gafar Ganizadeh: Not 15 when the USSR. Georgia is close to our country, then Belarus and all those countries that are inside of the USSR and the books like any other religions or the philosophy or spiritual knowledge books, also the yoga. Yeah. It will not allow it. Okay. Sell it in normal libraries or like bookstores, but it was in the USSR, like in Soviet times, not now.

[00:19:06] Lily Allen-Duenas: Okay. So yeah, that probably would have been the USSR I know dissolved in 1991. So it was after 1991. And now, after that was dissolved, everything’s, it’s all on the internet books are allowed. Amazon sells it. Everything is normal. 

[00:19:21] Gafar Ganizadeh: Yeah. Yeah, you can now easily find that we have like my teacher or I’ve seen, he is writing yoga books in Azerbaijani Lang, which he can share steps. So now you can easily find any information. 

[00:19:39] Lily Allen-Duenas: Wonderful. And do you feel like your culture and community in Azerbaijan, do you feel like it supports yoga or challenges, yoga, the philosophies and methodologies of it?

Is Yoga Popular in Azerbaijan? Does The Government Support it?

[00:19:52] Gafar Ganizadeh: Yeah. This is supported now. The government’s support. We have a yoga Federation in Azerbaijan. And we make a yoga festival, international yoga day.

[00:20:12] Me and my friends who used to own a studio together sold 1,017 yoga festivals. It was about like three or 4,000 people. There were different types of yoga. There was like a massage, there was astrology and knowledge, things that cause yoga, there were different people who are just sharing information. It’s supporting 100 percent. 

[00:20:48] Lily Allen-Duenas: Awesome. In terms of the, you said people really struggled to release their emotions or let them show. Do you feel like that you, do you feel like that kind of calls for more yoga as a way of expression and alignment with emotions and body, mind, and energy and all that? Is there anything about how people are that they need yoga more or do they respect it more or something? 

Respecting Yoga

[00:21:15] Gafar Ganizadeh: Yes. Yes. They get the respect more when they would just practice one time and feel the results, feel the difference, feel the changes in the body. They respect it more. They are becoming more open minded, like more young guys, teenagers 15, 18, 20 years old. They already have yoga classes in school. And you have people starting to be more open minded, they’re accepting that knowledge people you in Azerbaijan used to like long, long years ago a secret, like if you go back to history, we had that culture of meditating. I don’t know. Have you heard any cultural music, like ethnic music or Azerbaijan? 

[00:22:14] Lily Allen-Duenas: No, I haven’t heard any before.

Ancient Azerbaijan Practices

[00:22:16] Gafar Ganizadeh: That we used to be a meditation technique. That brought people to heal others. Like the Theta healing or the rating, it’s a special technique using music vibration to heal people.

[00:22:32] But I think the young population now remember and have knowledge of yoga in Azerbaijan. In our past and our history, we, eh, we had knowledge about yoga maybe called differently and had different cultural names and practices, but it was the goal of, it was the same as in yoga. The young population now they started to like, remember there’s lots of young teachers who like to create their own or use their own  asanas or something to create something new. I think that it’s not music. Just finding that information, that knowledge in the universe.

[00:23:26] Lily Allen-Duenas: I think so. It sounds like in history, in Azerbaijan, just in the history, in the knowledge and old traditions, it seems like there might’ve been…

[00:23:35] Gafar Ganizadeh: It’s very spiritual. We have a place called. And it’s a place, it’s a place where one of the pros like people living there, they would have images or calls and people haunting the mountains and it’s a very integrated place.

Burning Mountain 

[00:23:59] Gafar Ganizadeh: You can like it if you go sit there. Meditation, you can feel the energy of the mountain very energetically. We have spiritual places, one of the places we call it, burning mountain and just that natural gas coming under the ground. And it just always burned. And there’s a tradition. People go there and make wishes. Just you can come and we used to go there and practice with the sound of fire burning.

Where Do You Teach Yoga?

[00:24:37] Lily Allen-Duenas: Oh, that must be, yeah, a very powerful place to do meditation or to do a practice. So where are you teaching these days? What’s the name of the studio? And are you offering anything online still? 

[00:24:50] Gafar Ganizadeh: Now, there’s a studio called Mantra Space. Actually it’s also an arts studio. It’s also a vegetarian cafe and a yoga studio. All in one place. I teach there, I have two classes for knowledge. Just classic hot yoga and power yoga. Oh yeah. And also I have the flyover classes there. I also have individual students. It’s like why I did yoga, coaching them. That’s about it.

[00:25:27] Lily Allen-Duenas: Awesome. And so if some of our listeners, Gafar, hasn’t, haven’t really heard much about Azerbaijan before, or they don’t even really know anything about it. How do you describe your country to people who are unfamiliar with?

Let’s Learn More About Azerbaijan

[00:25:40] Gafar Ganizadeh: Azerbaijani people were famous for their hospitality. Like people, they’ll know that you’re like foreign or just visiting our country. They will invite you in, they will give you a tea hundred percent. They will give you food. It’s really warm in the summer. We have, Caspian Sea near where there are also mountains. We have places where we can rent skis and snowboards.

[00:26:13] Again. If you go back to history, Azerbaijani, the back road, the silk way goes through other Azerbaijanis. And that’s why the people from all different countries visit us. And also, I forgot to tell you the main, the people who know other Azerbaijanis, they will tell you that the main thing is that we oil our country. We get oil from our planet. And 

[00:26:42] Lily Allen-Duenas: My last question. I think I’ll ask, I always ask every single yoga teacher, what is your personal definition of yoga? 

What Is Your Definition of Yoga?

[00:26:51] Gafar Ganizadeh: My, my lifestyle, it’s I don’t know. It’s my life. It’s a part of me. I think not only about not only the use of yoga in practices. I use it any time in my life when I wake or when I am resisting someplace or I’m sinking. It’s my life, I can say.

[00:27:20] Lily Allen-Duenas: That’s beautiful. And I remember when you said, when we talked before that, when you first had that class, the very first time, it felt like something you were remembering and that your body was really quick to mold itself into the asanas. Is that true? 

[00:27:37] Gafar Ganizadeh: Yes. Yes. It’s true. Muscles, my muscles were elastic, never practicing yoga. I was able to do some twisting some too hard  asanas, like not hard, advanced  asanas as let’s call it. And yeah, that’s why one of the things that told me that men, you have to continue that, you have to make yoga part of your life. 

[00:28:08] Lily Allen-Duenas: Got it and it’s beautiful. Thank you so much. Gafar for joining me on the podcast today, it has been a joy to be with you. 

[00:28:17] Gafar Ganizadeh: Thank you. It was a pleasure for me to share.

Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast Outro

[00:28:22] Lily Allen-Duenas: Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Wild Yoga Tribe podcast. My conversation with Ghafar, a yoga teacher from Azerbaijan was so interesting as we looked at the Azerbaijan culture and how expressing emotion and refreshing the brain really benefits his community. I love that this conversation was so filled with different elements and aspects of yoga and of the Azerbaijani and culture. And I hope that this conversation made you curious about how you could integrate different methodologies and traditions together to make your own kind of complex yoga. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Wild Yoga Tribe podcast. Be well.

[00:29:10] Thank you for the gift of your attention today. If you feel called, please share this episode with someone who you think could benefit from it. Leaving a review would also be so appreciated. Also, I hope you can join me for a yoga class on Moxie and take advantage of that $25 off coupon here in January. I’m doing morning yoga classes, five times a week, including rise and shine, yoga classes, and even classes for people who say they can’t do yoga. Links are in the show notes or on my website, wildyogatribe.com. See you there. And as always be well, dear one. Be well.

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