Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast Episode #37 – Yoga is Grace, A Way To Converse With The Divine – Yoga in Brazil with Nubia Teixeira 

Welcome to Episode #37 of the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast! This week, I welcome Nubia Teixeira onto the show. My conversation with Nubia Teixeira, a yoga teacher from Brazil, was soul stirring and soul shifting as we took a deep dive into the spiritual sphere of yoga as a way to converse and commune with the divine. I hope that this conversation made something stir inside your being and body. We talked about the essence of yoga being grace and the most vital elements of yoga being listening, feeling, and seeing.

If you’re looking to tune into a podcast episode that is all about the journey at the heart of yoga then this is the conversation for you.

Tell me more about Nubia Teixeira 

Nubia Teixeira, a Brazilian-born yogini, has devoted herself to teaching many different aspects of yoga and dance for the past 30 years.Perceiving yoga as a healing art, Nubia’s refinement and unique style overflows with sacred meaning and heartfelt inspiration. Nubia leads workshops, teacher trainings and retreats locally and around the world.

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

Nubia was “picked up” by yoga when she was 16. The ability to express her feelings and moods was always of great importance to her. Practicing yoga helped her to realize that art and spiritual practices are completely intertwined.  Nubia grew up Catholic, and grew up  knowing about the divine presence and found yoga to be a great shelter. As Nubia describes it, “Yoga is a way to converse and commune with the divine.”

As a Bhakta, a devotee of the Divine Mother, Nubia feels grace move through her and her life live a river. She shares with us the bounty she has received in this life, and about the three most vital practices of yoga— listening, feeling, and seeing. She also shared a powerful incarnation with us which she teaches her students— ““May I see what I need to see in order to do what I need to do. May I hear what I need to hear in order to say what I need to say. May I feel what I need to feel, in order to heal what I need to heal.”

For the skimmers – What’s in the yoga in Brazil episode?

• Yoga is grace
• Yoga is a way to converse and commune with the divine
• Yoga is a space for hearing, invoking, and listening to your intuition
• The most important practices of yoga are listening, feeling, and seeing
• Incantation to the Divine Mother
• “I could not live my life without yoga. Period.”
• Yoga is a homeopathic medicine 
• The commercialization of yoga in Brazil – to minimize the yoga experience is a loss
• Working is a great tool to not be drawn into the fabric of the ego

Favorite Quote From Nubia Teixeira

“I’ll use the word “use” with appreciation. I use my yoga as a homeopathic medicine. For everyday I practice and it’s not to cause any big change in my life, but to keep moving towards the light and to stay balanced.”

Connect with Nubia Teixeira

https://www.nubiayoga.com

NUBIA’S PATREON

https://www.instagram.com/nubiateixeira_bhaktinova/

BOOK: Yoga and the Art of Mudra (2019)

CD: Pranayama: May our Breath Be Our Prayer (2005)

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!

 37 – Yoga In Brazil with Nubia Teixeira – Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast – Transcript

[00:00:00] Lily Allen-Duenas: Welcome. Welcome. Welcome back to the Wild Yoga Tribe podcast today. I am so excited to welcome Nubia Teixeira onto the show today. She is a Brazilian born Yogini who has devoted herself to teaching many different aspects of yoga and dance for the past 30 years. She perceives yoga as a healing art and her refinement and unique style overflows, the sacred meaning and heartfelt inspiration, Nubia leads, workshops and teacher trainings and retreats locally and all around the world.

[00:00:43] So I am so excited to welcome the Nubia onto the show today. Thank you so much for being here.

[00:00:49] Nubia Teixeira: Thank you Lily. Thank you so much. What an honor to be here with you.

[00:00:53] Lily Allen-Duenas: Thank you. So Nubia, could you share with our listeners how yoga first came into your life?

How Did Yoga First Come Into Your Life?

[00:00:58] Nubia Teixeira: I call yoga grace in my life.  When I was 16, I was really into theater and I thought that was going to be my path.

[00:01:08] And I began just to notice how the ability to express my feelings and my moods and all the energies and challenges that we’re going through me moving through me was so important. And I loved theater for that. And when I started practicing yoga, I realized that art and spirituality are completely intertwined. And I used the means of yoga to practice as a fuel, as a way to converse and commune with the divine and see the unseeing and feel that there was a bigger force. I grew up Catholic knowing about spirituality, knowing about that force.

[00:01:52] But I felt this shelter of yoga really gave me what I was here to do in this lifetime. When I was 17, I didn’t want to pursue the theater career anymore. I wanted to become a yoga teacher or at first wasn’t even, that was like, I wanted to learn more about yoga and it led me to a yoga school in San Paolo called Universidad to do Yoga.

[00:02:19] It’s a four year training course, but after one year you can start teaching and that’s what happened. 

[00:02:26] Lily Allen-Duenas: Amazing. I love how eloquently you said that yoga is a way to converse and commune with the divine. How do you feel that your practices help you directly converse and commune with the divine?

Converse and Commune with the Divine

[00:02:41] Nubia Teixeira: I don’t even know how not to live in practice. It’s all yoga from waking up to going to sleep. But that morning moment of silence and connection with the spirit is really important for me. 

[00:03:00] I need that transition between sleep, which is very spiritual. It’s a journey. It’s time to be practicing yoga as well. And it’s just my time between me and spirit, God, goddesses. I choose that space for hearing invoking, open to my intuition. See what are my priorities for this day? And what are the commands for this day? So that time of silence, but it’s not quiet because I don’t do silent meditation. I don’t hear silence.

[00:03:33] Even when I am silent, I’m always hearing the sounds and the voices. And so that moment of silence, meaning just not much activity in the house. I can attune to the activities and movements of my heart and my emotions. And I really pray to hear commands. And I spend some time listening to those. 

[00:03:56] Lily Allen-Duenas: Beautiful. I love how you said that. Being asleep is a [00:04:00] time to practice yoga as well you’re the first person I’ve ever encountered who has said that. Could you tell us more? You definitely piqued my interest.

Sleep Is A Time To Practice Yoga

[00:04:09] Nubia Teixeira: I’m not the first person to be talking about this. If you read the Gita Bhagavad. It says that what is night for the common people is time for practice for the Yogi and what is the regular day, the regular hours that they, for the regular people, common people, is the night for the yoga. While everybody else is sleeping the Yogi is awakened doing its work. And then when everybody’s awake, the Yogi is sleeping because according to this view and this book of knowledge, the material world is not to the priority of the [00:05:00] Yogi, but the spiritual world. And then growing up in Brazil and growing up especially with the family, I chose this lifetime.

[00:05:08] We know that a lot of work is done during the night. I have beautiful Aunties in my life. I grew up going to the Brazilian church Catholic but like a good Brazilian going Fridays to the white to hand, the haidos, places of worship and connecting to spirit is something very common in Brazil. And I will say that I have a few Aunties again that are really important in my life. And I’ll now mention this one, Jezebelle. She told me many times that you are always ready.

[00:05:46] When I come to get you to do spiritual work during the night, you’re always ready. Some of your cousins, I have to work really hard to convince them. You’re always ready. And she would take me in. She [00:06:00] says where we would be doing healing work.

[00:06:03] And I know that when we go somewhere when we are sleeping, our spirit goes somewhere. The body’s there, our spirit soars and a setting, an intention of sleeping and continuing working towards their spiritual evolution and continuing doing your spiritual work is really important. 

The Essence of Yoga

[00:06:21] Lily Allen-Duenas: I’m grateful that you shared that from the Gita and a good point for reflection for me and for our listeners. And so Nubia, could you talk to us more about what you feel like the essence of yoga is? I know you mentioned at the beginning that it’s grace, but I wasn’t sure if there was more that you wanted to speak about on the essence of yoga?

[00:06:42] Nubia Teixeira: The essence of yoga, it is grace. How that reflects in one’s life it all depends on one’s karma and one’s needs, right? There’s this sense of a bounty that is being distributed to many[00:07:00]  at the same time, but it’s not everybody that needs the same type of medicine. So there is not one way of practicing and receiving yoga, but this sense of reconnection, reunion, nourishment, shelter, solace, inspiration that comes with yoga.

[00:07:20] All of this goes into this grace. So grace can be given by the one that holds that bounty and then it’s for each one of us to name or not name that one. So I personally in my personal journey called this One, our Divine Mother, and I know that she is the holder of this bounty, what she offers me it’s quite different then what she offers you. And also what she offered me when I was 16 is quite different from what she offers me now that I’m [00:08:00] 50 and will be very different in the moment of my death. She’s always there giving me exactly what I need. 

Yoga is Grace 

[00:08:07] Nubia Teixeira: So to define yoga is really hard, but the essence- it’s grace. And that grace is a push that grace is a door that closes and allows you to stay put on your path. Like this huge moment of suffering in our world right now can be perceived also as grace, fierce grace, that is coming to, stop us., In the beginning was so obvious. Like when the airplanes stopped flying and we stayed home more. Nature’s thriving. We were with our families. And we were looking into the issues that we needed to look at and so forth. That type of grace. When I go to practice yoga asana, there isn’t a formula that will always work for me.

Yoga is Not A Formula

[00:08:59] Nubia Teixeira: You always [00:09:00] do the surya namaskara? No, I will not. Sometimes I just need to lay on the ground and do yin pose for 10 minutes, hold a pose and wait for that grace to come in the form of softening my softer tissues and opening my body in a very deep and healing way sometimes. Yes, today’s a day for 10, 12 surya Namaskaras;

[00:09:26] today’s the day to cry. And tomorrow might be a day of doing a big back band and opening my heart and so it’s not a formula. It’s not, it cannot be defined the practice itself in one single way. 

[00:09:42] Lily Allen-Duenas: I couldn’t agree more. I think the practice of yoga is also learning about listening and responding to the needs of your being in body at that time. You can’t just immediately say, oh no, it’s I practice one hour of [00:10:00] us in practice, it’s always going to be a Vinyasa flow every day. That’s my tapas.

[00:10:05] That’s my discipline. I think really it comes from more being in alignment and attunement to what our body and our soul and our energy needs. It’s that listening that, that, that attunement, as I said, that I think really is a gift of progressing and journeying on the path of yoga. 

[00:10:25] Thank you Nubia, for walking us through more about how the practice can shift from day to day or from moment to moment to be more in alignment for what you need. Can you talk to us more about what practices of yoga you currently are practicing or what you feel are some of the more important practices of yoga to incorporate in our lives and in our days.

Listening, Feeling, and Seeing

[00:10:50] Nubia Teixeira: Well, I’ll begin with the practice of listening. Listening to your needs and also listening to the needs of others. And then the [00:11:00] practice of feeling, feeling your emotions, what is rising in your body and then attuning to others as they go through their own emotions and motions as well.

[00:11:13] And in the practice of seeing, seeing what is. And also you can see with her eyes closed inside. What are the areas in your physical body that are not receiving love the areas in your life that are not being loved?

[00:11:36] And then look outside and see what are the people and the things in your life that are not being seen, or being loved and receiving attention. So hearing, feeling, seeing I think it’s really important. So I have an incantation. I teach my students. May I see what I need to see [00:12:00] in order to do what I need to do. May I hear what I need to hear in order to say what I need to say. May I feel what I need to feel, in order to heal what I need to heal. So these are my three main focuses in my own practice for my own self. So it can be better serving her will— the divine mother, and to be more helpful to others and to myself.

[00:12:29] I am a Bhakta, a devotee to the divine mother, so we’ll always refer to a higher source outside. 

[00:12:38] Lily Allen-Duenas: That was incredibly beautiful. And I’m so grateful that you shared the incantation with us. I think that’s something our listeners will hopefully be able to really feel those words and then hopefully learn to incorporate them and use them as that incantation and invocation, when they seeking [00:13:00] guidance because in these times of uncertainty, I think having mantras or a nice sankalpa or something that we can really carry with us, I think having that feels really vital right now to have those little seeds planted, to keep watering daily. I know it’s an important part of my practice.

[00:13:22] So Nubia, I’d love to learn about what challenges do you think that yoga has helped you to overcome?

I don’t know how I could live my life without yoga. Period.

[00:13:29] Nubia Teixeira: I don’t know how I could live my life without yoga. Period. And I started practicing so early. That is so integrated. So part of, so much part of my life. And to this time, to this day, I haven’t. Yeah, I will say, or I have not experienced any major loss, that I can say I needed yoga at this time.

[00:13:56] I’ll use the word “use” with appreciation. I use my yoga as a homeopathic medicine. Everyday I practice and it’s not to cause any big change in my life, but to keep moving towards the light and to stay balanced.

[00:14:14] And I think that itself has helped me just to go through whatever happens. Of course I’m challenged in many ways, but nothing major has happened. Yet.. I’ll say again- by her grace. 

Yoga is My Prevention

[00:14:28] Nubia Teixeira: So far yoga has been my prevention, I would say I started so early. Practicing yoga, I never smoked pot. I never drank alcohol in my life. I’m not saying that is good or bad.

[00:14:43] I’m just saying I didn’t. And when I compare my life with my brothers and sisters, meaning my sisters from the same mother, my brothers from the same mother, they all are really amazing Brazilians, drink as part of their daily life and do [00:15:00] other things I never needed to go there because I had been rescued by this grace of yoga..

[00:15:07] So I been using yoga as a prevention and I never done like intense practice to get tapas, to getting to the next level of yoga because I am brought everyday a little closer to that refuge, I’m not in a hurry. And so I’m giving you an answer without an answer, but just a different perspective, different point of view.

[00:15:35] I feel like in the moment of need, when I need it. I will just again, be given from that bounty, what I need. 

[00:15:43] Lily Allen-Duenas: I feel like it’s so special to hear from someone, from you, saying that yoga is your prevention method, your way of moving closer to the light and how much light it has brought into your life. I often get to [00:16:00] speak with yoga teachers who share that they’ve hit rock bottom and yoga brought them back, or that after a very serious injury from years of dancing or from a sport, then yoga was a therapy for them, a homeopathic medicine as well to help them come back to wellness and wholeness. So I feel like it’s a very special treat for me to hear that there’s been so much beauty and joy and light that yoga has brought you from day one as this preventative, as you said. So thank you for sharing that. I feel very grateful that you did.

[00:16:39] Nubia Teixeira: Like water, you don’t see them moving. A river is just following a path. So I feel that in this lifetime, so far, it has been like this river that is following a path, but is deeply influencing the earth beneath, influencing the places and the plants that if it touches on the way. I feel [00:17:00] like I’m going along with this river, touching the rocks and modifying the rocks and vice versa. The rocks are modifying the river. The river keeps going without a hurry to get to its destination. So I feel like that so far. And because I did not approach yoga at first as an exercise, then I received it as a gift or having all of those embodied shapes, but I don’t do it for an anatomical alignment. I do it for spiritual alignment. So I don’t even do hatha yoga, I’m practicing hatha yoga and it is steering my body, but I’m not really doing to get to the next level of the pose although I can do whatever I want pretty much with my body because I started doing so early.

[00:17:48] So it’s there’s again, the sense of the water that over time affects the rock, creates a hole in Portuguese would say ……. and the water drips year [00:18:00] after year, decade after decade, and eventually creates this hole in the rock. So I feel that it’s more like that. And I don’t have an urgency to do any more complicated poses as well because it doesn’t serve my 50 year old body anymore. 

[00:18:17] So there’s nothing wrong with the shapes. And with the beauty I love shape, I love to see the poetry of nature in my work, and I try to express that, but that is priority versus the superfluous. And so there are a lot of yoga teachers in Brazil as well that are carrying the torch in that way, making these beautiful offerings with the depth, with the connection, to the source of connection, to something that is, I will just say for lack of a better word higher in that sense, sometimes I’d like to [00:19:00] say lower because it’s also depth of the earth and her nourishing qualities that are very bountiful, very giving. 

[00:19:09] Lily Allen-Duenas: Amazing. That’s so amazing to hear and Nubia, I’d love at this point of our journey together here on the podcast. If you could share a little bit about Brazil?

What Is Brazil Like?

[00:19:21] Nubia Teixeira: Brazil is very spiritual. And there are all these many different confluences. There’s a lot of light in Brazil, so much light, and there’s a lot of darkness in Brazil that is very clear, like the violence and the passion. So big, and I personally love that dichotomy, I would say, or that paradox or reality of darkness and light that is lived in daily life. And it’s so palpable. And evident. So I see that very clearly and I feel very comfortable with that. Two ways, two sides, because [00:20:00] I’m honoring both to me is really important. And I grew up in a very simple family. So there was not much time to be depressed.

[00:20:11] We had to work really hard. I started working when I was 12. I left my home when I was 16 to live by myself. So working, it’s a great tool to not be caught into the fabric of ego. You just don’t have time to feel too deeply. I’m not saying that’s good, but that’s how I see that many Brazilians live in the realm that I grew up with. You just wake up really early before the sun, way before the sun, you drink your little coffee, you’ll go to work. And then you work all day and then you come back. Just life is work and there is something about that. That is very refreshing to me, to focus on the work.

[00:20:58] What is the work that needs to be done? [00:21:00] So then I’m not lost in despair because there is always work to be done. And that is just one side, later on when I started teaching yoga, somehow I was brought to the wealthiest people in San Paulo. My students were very wealthy. And I was able to contribute with my waters in those places as well, because then I started noticing, wow, there’s so much richness here. And so much despair. There is so much doubt. There’s so much fear. There’s so much need to, confirmation to have confirmation about your identity and to the identity was so far from the reality of that soul, that spirit.

[00:21:43] So I was able to see that other part I’m not criticizing, I’m just saying my experience. And then I was able to also see, oh, it’s some other reality here in Brazil, there is this happening. A lot of pain, a lot of [00:22:00] pain along with a lot of possessions. So Brazil is like that. There is a small group of people that are living with a lot of wealth and that are lost, spiritually and a huge group of people that are living to just meet their basic means. And they have so much joy and so much mission in the daily life, which is very basic. Does that explain a little bit? 

[00:22:29] Lily Allen-Duenas: Beautiful glimpse into Brazil. Yes. The darkness, the light, and everything in between. I feel grateful. You didn’t just talk about the beaches or the animals, but instead went more into the heart of Brazil. So thank you for taking us there with you. And Nubia, I would love for you to share with our listeners what online offerings or retreats or things that you have so that they can get in touch and know where to find you.

Where Can You Get in Touch with Nubia?

[00:22:57] Nubia Teixeira: Thank you so much for offering that. First of [00:23:00] all, I recommend that you get my book, Yoga and the Art of Mudras. And then I have an audio CD that is available on iTunes. It’s a pranaya, I recorded in 2005. I was pregnant. And you can just access that on also Spotify, the name of the CD is: May Our Breath Be Our Prayer. And my husband Gyra Taull, a beautiful musician and Bhakta he did all the music for my CD and our friend Ben Lane Back was the engineer. And sometimes he would correct me say world war, world. Cause I couldn’t say that word. It was so hard. 

[00:23:44] So that’s free access. And Now I have just for now, my Nubia Teixeira website is down, but I have a NubiaYoga.com, which is my, where I’m putting all my offerings, [00:24:00] online offerings for now. And lastly, I would love for you to join me on Patreon. This is where I’m putting my love, my attention. And I have my Devotional Yoga School. It’s called Bhakti Nova like Bossanova on Patreon. Every week on Monday, I take a yoga Bhakti Nova yoga class. 

[00:24:21] Lily Allen-Duenas: Thank you so much for sharing that, Nubia, and for all our listeners, I will link everything in the show notes, wherever you are listening to podcasts. And it will also be all linked on my website, Wild Yoga Tribe.com.

[00:24:36] So you can head on over there and have everything you need to get in touch with Nubia as well. So thank you so much, nubia for the gift of your time today, it has been a true joy to be with you.

[00:24:50] Nubia Teixeira: Thank you. Thank you so much, Lily. I love the name of your podcasts Wild Yoga Tribe and I really love the work you are doing. Very grateful. [00:25:00] Thank you for the opportunity for sharing my little story on yoga.

Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast Outro

[00:25:04] Lily Allen-Duenas: Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Wild Yoga Tribe podcast. My conversation with Nubia Teixeira, a yoga teacher from Brazil was soul stirring and soul shifting. As we took a deep dive into the spiritual sphere of yoga as a way to converse and commune with the divine.I hope that this conversation made something stir inside your own being and body as we talked about the essence of yoga being grace and the most vital elements of yoga, being listening, feeling, and seeing. If you’re looking to tune into a podcast episode that is all about the journey at the heart of yoga, then this is the conversation for you Thank you for tuning in to the Wild Yoga Tribe podcast. Be well.

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