#023: Kia Naddermier | The Practice of Pausing

Stillpoints: A Podcast with Scott Johnson

#023: Kia Naddermier

Scott talks to his dear friend and colleague Kia Naddermier on their friendship and her life as a renowned yoga and pranayama teacher. They talk about the ability to pause being a key component in the evolution of yoga in your life.

We'd like to invite you to join our growing Stillpoint Online Ashtanga Yoga and Mindfulness community. We live stream beginner classes, Ashtanga Yoga assisted self practice and guided classes with evening mindfulness sessions over 6 days with Scott Johnson and the Stillpoint teaching faculty. It's a beautiful way to navigate these times...

Kia Naddermier is the main teacher & director of Mysore Yoga Paris and an internationally renowned teacher of yoga and pranayama. She is a dedicated advanced practitioner with over 25 years experience of and teaches Ashtanga Yoga, Pranayama, Kriyas and adjustment techniques. Kia has studied extensively within the traditional lineage of Ashtanga Yoga, and continues to practice, research and explore this vast tradition.

She is a devoted, long-term student of Shri O.P. Tiwariji and his son Sudhir Tiwariji in the lineage of Kaivalyadham. Kia is one of the first few in the world to receive Kaivalyadham´s highest teaching certification in advanced Pranayamas and Kriyas. Kia teaches with careful adherence to the authentic teachings of Ashtanga Yoga and Pranayama whilst encouraging each individual to explore the beauty of the practice for themselves.

She is dedicated to the growth and development of her students, and her way of teaching integrates her profound knowledge of the breath and Pranic energy, subtle and physical anatomy, with yogic principles. Her deep love and years of dedication to all aspects of this practice shines through in her attentive, insightful and inspirational teaching.

She lives with her husband and two daughters in Paris where she upholds the daily Mysore-program at the Shala.She mentors teachers, runs long-term apprentice programs and gives workshops, trainings and retreats internationally.

You can find out more about Kia’s teaching schedule here.

The Practice of Pausing - Kia Naddermier

Scott and Kia have been friends since 2015, sharing similar yoga shala's in London and Paris. They are dear forms and colleague, teaching together annually at the SYL Spring Gathering since 2015 and at Purple Valley in Goa since 2018. In this warm and intimate conversation Scott talks to kia about her life and evolution as a highly regarded teacher of yoga and pranayama. Kia is deeply honest and shares personal stories about where she finds herself today.

In this personal and intimate conversation Kia shares:

• About her first Ashtanga yoga class in the early 90’s, where she encountered John Scott while working as a photographer in London.
• The immediate sense of homecoming, of landing in her body, that she felt after that first class.
• Her experience of working as a model as a teenager, and how yoga helped her to realise for the first time that her body could be felt and appreciated, rather than being judged externally for its appearance.
• The evolution of her practise from that first class; how she struggled to find any Ashtanga classes in Stockholm, so began with Iyengar yoga before going to see Radha and Derek Ireland in The Practise Place.
• How, after initially coming to the practise through asana, deeper layers of practise have opened up to her.
• Her interest in spirituality, which started from a young age, and how yoga presented a non-dogmatic way to explore the bigger questions in life.
• About meeting her Pranayama teacher Shri O.P. Tiwariji, and his humble way of sharing profound teachings.
• How Pranayama transformed her Ashtanga yoga practise.
• About the loss of her sister, and how practise helped her to cope with that loss, while giving her the resources to stay strong for her family.
• That sharing the practise with others during that time became a sort of self-healing, which is why she began teaching.
• About how she knew that she wasn’t ready to teach when she was invited to in her twenties, and how going through different phases of life while practising has given her the life experience necessary to share in a meaningful way.
• How practise always happens in a wider context of a messy and unpredictable world, and that the fruit of the practise is learning to sit down and pause in the middle of it.
• About slowing down to remember the truth of who we are amid the business of our lives.
• How raising a family has helped her to soften and bring a sense of humour and lightness to her practise.
• That Mysore Yoga Paris was formed through community, and how the sangha isn’t connected to one particular place, but to each other.
• How she has adapted the way teaches has in response to the covid pandemic, and how teaching online has allowed the international Mysore Yoga Paris sangha to come together in a ‘borderless shala’.
• That for her, living a contemplative life is when formal practise manifests as a pause in everyday life, giving space, a sense of choice in how we react, allowing us to drop in to a deeper sense of who we are.

I've often said, 'There are yoga teachers and then there's Kia Naddermier...'It still rings true...I love Kia's teaching so much. She has this beautiful and magnetic way of landing the teachings of yoga so deeply in people. I never get tired of seeing how she can create magic in a yoga room and have been honoured to teach with her since 2015. I've wanted to talk to Kia since I started the podcast and am so happy this particular conversation is now out in the world. A must listen...

Scott Johnson - December 2020

If you enjoyed this podcast then you might also enjoy Scott’s conversations with Josefin Wikström, Greg Nardi and Ann Weston