Welcome to Yoga Ommen

In Ommen, the green heart of Overijssel, you can enjoy yoga in a pleasant atmosphere. Come visit, and see what yoga can do for you!

Welcome to Yoga Ommen

Yoga combines physical exercises, meditation, breathing exercises, and other techniques to improve “mental, spiritual, and physical well-being”. “Yoga is based on the harmonization of mind, body, and soul. It’s practiced by young and old, without discrimination on the basis of sex, class or religion, and has become popular worldwide.”

Yoga is for everyone! For young and old. Any shape or size. On your own or in a group, flexible or not, with or without limitations. Everyone can practice yoga to their ability. With the help of yoga postures and breathing techniques, you learn to be consciously present in your body and in the present moment. Step by step, yoga calms your mind, teaching you how to know, understand, and heal your body better. Feel welcome to attend a trial lesson and see what yoga can do for you!

Hatha Yoga is an age-old way of exercising in which we pay attention to breathing and relaxation. Yoga means coming home to yourself. Yoga Ommen also offers therapeutic yoga programs you can practice by yourself, such as Restorative Yoga and Critical Alignment Yoga.

Available now:

Online Yoga: Back Care Basics based on Critical Alignment Yoga

Thinking across the generations – the story of the trees of Oxford

This is the story of the oak beams at the Oxford library dining hall. A mythical legend about what we’d now call green building, or thinking across the generations. I once found it a book and it made a deep impression on me. I think it may impress you too. Read more, please

Meet our visitor from Bulgaria, Joanna

We’re really excited to introduce an international visitor from Bulgaria: Joanna! She joined us for classes at YogaCamp. Read her story here.

I feel inspired to share my beautiful yoga experience.

What a year! In February, I traveled around Hungary, still laughing off the COVID-19 hysteria. At the beginning of March, I traveled to the Netherlands to attend an inspirational youth exchange for storytelling. The first thing I packed was my schedule. I had already planned my entire summer and didn’t know how to live without it. Read more, please

 

Life is Movement

I’ve been active since I was a child. I once wanted to become a dancer, but, “you can’t earn a living doing that,” my parents said. It was the 1980s and I (usually) was a good and serious child. It took me until the end of high school to figure out what I then wanted to become. I briefly considered studying physiotherapy, but there was a surplus of physiotherapists at the time. Many were unemployed and left the Netherlands to work abroad. Unemployment was sky high anyway. I saw the world as I perceived it and my parents’ opinion was important to me. Of course, they wanted the best for me.. read more, please

Using Yoga to Deal With the Unknown

On Friday, March 13, I returned from Kenya and entered a completely different world. When I left the Netherlands two weeks earlier, I thought I was traveling to the unknown, but because of the coronavirus, I found an even more unknown country when I got home. It feels like we’re in a science fiction movie, and the big question is how long the movie will last. The challenge is how to deal with this. In this blog, I tell you how yoga and meditation can help…read more please

Doing Yoga For Stroke Recovery – A Patient’s Story

This article was translated from “Na herseninfarct weer in de benen met yoga” (2017)

In April 2014, Henk Miltenburg woke up in a San Francisco hospital. He had been in a coma for ten days following a stroke. At the time, he was 53, father of two sons, and a board member, responsible for the logistics of a communication devices multinational. He currently works on his recovery, having turned to yoga to regain control over his legs and body. We visit him in his home garden in Ommen, the Netherlands. read more, please

I have a very difficult life

People often tell me I look like Dutch comedian Brigitte Kaandorp. Apparently, we have the same eyes, and my voice sounds a lot like hers. I make good use of that to convey things in my yoga class.

The title of this blog is a homage in jest to a popular, comical song Brigitte wrote a long time ago that’s still relevant to this day, maybe even more so. It’s about those people who can’t seem to stop complaining. Everything is too difficult, too hard, and they’re just too busy and tired to do anything about it. Sounds familiar? 😉 Read more please…

The Africa Yoga Project – Using Yoga to Build a Community

On February 4, 2020, a new issue of Dutch magazine Yoga International came out, featuring an article about the Africa Yoga Project in Kenya. I’m also in it, telling more about my experiences in Kenya last Summer and about my plans for the Happyness, Hugs and Handstands Tour, which is coming to the Netherlands in June this year. I got permission to share the entire article here (in translation). Enjoy reading!

What do you do when you are not able to be in Africa? Well, you let Africa come to you!

Together, Africa Yoga Project and Yoga Ommen organize the very first HHH-Europe tour. We start in the Netherlands, in June 2020!

Special note

Lovely people,

Perhaps unnecessarily. Given the current situation, we decided to cancel the Africa Yoga Project HHH tour in NL-BE. We will first wait for developments in the world before we make new plans.

I would like to thank you all for your contribution and / or registration and trust!

We need each other. When we work together and are willing to share, we create a new world.

We keep in touch and never give up, warm regards, Irene Vos

Join us in the first HHH-Europe tour in the Netherlands-Belgium

Hugs. Hand (stands). Happiness. We can’t think of three better words to describe walking into to the Africa Yoga Project Shine Center. There, in our community-based yoga center, hundreds of people practice yoga weekly in Nairobi, Kenya. We want to bring the contagious energy, enthusiasm and talents of AYP Teachers to communities across the Netherlands and also Belgium with our HHH-tour.

This tour is the first of its kind! Read more

Host AYP-HHH tour Netherlands-Belgium

 

In the end of February I will travel to Kenya again. It feels like my second home. After visiting Lamu Yoga Festival I come back to Nairobi and will teach at the Shine center again. It is a honor and a privilege to teach at the the AYP Academy. Mach 11th and March 12th at 9.00 AM-16.00 PM I will teach the AYP TT’s  ”Anatomy practicing and teaching”.

This TT is for AYP Academy students;

To improve your knowledge and using your asana practice as a starting point. Irene Vos yoga teacher guides you through the principles of anatomy and physiology, providing proper names and terminology for what you already know. Engaging and empowering this two days program helps you experience anatomy in your body on and off the yogamat. So you return home with vital knowledge to practice with awareness and teach with confidence.

 

You can learn more about me by reading my personal blogs:

Trusting Life’s Coincidences

Life is full of surprises. You never know what can happen. Yet, it’s not my style to let life run its course. I plan, set goals, and pursue them. I can always rely on my perseverance. It’s a quality of willpower and not one of surrender. Perhaps you can relate.

My yoga business coach Corine van Zoelen taught me to do a year-end review read more..

 

Your true heart’s desires

Our hearts first start to beat in the womb, around 5-6 weeks. Your heart never takes a vacation. It beats 60-80 beats a minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Year after year, for as long as you live. Your hands connect straight to your heart. With them, you massage and caress, prepare food to feed yourself and others, you care for a child, a neighbor, a loved one, a family member or friend. You use your hands to greet someone, touch someone. It’s a necessity of life. We communicate with them. Even now, when I type this on my laptop….read more

 

The urge to grow

In school, I had difficulty learning. Reading wasn’t my strong suit, neither was math. I was, however, an eager child, with a need for… well, what was it, really? Ambition? Or was it an urge to grow? To reach my potential? I aimed all my energy toward my head… read more

 

Everything Passes

It’s been a year since I gave up my day job as a nurse, and it went by so fast. The first months were a bit awkward. It felt like I was playing hooky. Little by little these feelings decreased and around the start of the new year, I genuinely began to enjoy my freedom and space… read more

 

 

Listen to the whispers of your Body

I lay on the ground and cried out in pain. Something was very wrong. I was drenched in sweat. People gathered around me. Someone told me to breathe slower. Apparently, I was hyperventilating. I folded my hands into a small bowl and, slowly, breathed in and out.. read more

The power of your thoughts

There I was, at the poolside, near the East African coast, about 7000 km from home. Just one month ago, I worked as a pediatric nurse, making long hours at the child health care center and going on house calls. Now my life was completely different. It felt like a dream.

I suddenly realized what had happened… read more

It all starts with a wish

It was late August 2006, our car was loaded with camping gear, and, once again, we were on our way to France.

We were approaching Zwolle, when my husband asked: “Can we make a quick stop at the bookstore?”

I looked at him, with questioning eyes: “What kind of book do you need?”

“Well, um, a management book,” he said.

Me: “But you already own every management book there is!” Somehow, I didn’t believe his answer read more

Safari Kenya – Africa Yoga Project

Safari means journey in Swahili. Together with three other (adoptive) moms, I traveled back to the land of our children. We met in 2009 when we were all in the midst of our adoption processes and became friends. For all of us, a long-held wish came true. Ten years have passed since then and our children are now around twelve years old. We still see each other and remain close read more

How the Journey of My Life Began

The journey of my life began in the Summer of 2005. A few things had changed in the years prior. I no longer worked at the hospital. We had moved to a new house and I drifted from one temporary job to the other. We were halfway through IVF treatment because we had trouble conceiving. I didn’t want to go through with it. I knew the time had come to face fact: we would stay a family of two. Read more

 

“Karibu sana” means “welcome” in Swahili

Many of us make resolutions. The trick is to keep them. For a long time, I had a wish, and in 2016, I put my money where my mouth was.

Yoga Ommen has close ties with Kenya, the country where our daughter is from. From the moment I first heard about the Africa Yoga Project (AYP), I knew that I wanted to get involved.
The aim of AYP is to create employment and wellbeing in Africa by teaching and practicing yoga. In june I will visit AYP in Nairobi, Kenya Read more

 

Articles :

Can you use the backbender to solve complaints in your neck, shoulder, and back? Yes, you can! Let me explain…

The backbender is one of the props we use in Critical Alignment Yoga. The backbender serves as a bridge, guiding you to a feeling of space and lightness, the way life is meant to be. Read more

Back to Lightness with Critical Alignment Yoga

Moving as smoothly and lightly as a child again, could that be possible? Yoga teacher and writer Gert van Leeuwen is convinced: “Dissolve obstructions and your energy will flow.”

The Happi-boddy section of Happinez magazine introduces its readers to Critical Alignment Yoga. Gert van Leeuwen developed this type of yoga after years of research. Gert now travels around the world to share his method with others. Read more

Critical Alignment Yoga: The Crooked Upper Back

People are often unaware of their posture. When practicing Critical Alignment Yoga, you are confronted with tension that you have unconsciously built up over time, and with how this has influenced your mobility. Read more

Critical Alignment Yoga: How Stress Can Affect Your Shoulders

People are often unaware of their posture. When practicing Critical Alignment Yoga, you are confronted with tension that you have unconsciously built up over time, and with how this has influenced your mobility. Read more

Critical Alignment Yoga: The Connection Between Your Arms and Back

Life is happening in front of us. We reach out to embrace it. Eager to reach our next goal, we round our backs and stretch out our arms, away from the upper back. When you lose the connection between your arms and back, you also lose strength in your upper arms. Read more

Critical Alignment Yoga: The Stiff Lower Back

When it comes to chronic pain, low back pain is THE number 1 complaint. Something frequently goes wrong when we use our backs. Your lower back is hollow by nature. When it flattens, your back can’t properly transfer energy and movement from one part of your body to the other. Read more

Critical Alignment Yoga: More Stability in Your Lower Back

Chest forward and tailbone toward the floor: it’s a posture often advised to women. But according to Gert van Leeuwen, this advice can have disastrous consequenses for your lower back. Read more

Critical Alignment Yoga: Bending Down and Forward

Bending toward the ground is a movement we habitually make. We have all developed our own ways to do this: a pattern. How do you ensure bending in a way that is anatomically justified? Read more

Critical Alignment Yoga: Heart and Stomach / Space and Relaxation

The feeling of relaxation and space that you experience when your stomach and chest area are in balance. Your breathing provides the connection between these two important points. Read more

 

Interview with Gert about Critical Alignment Yoga published in Wild Yogi Magazine

Gert van Leeuwen (Amsterdam) over the last 35 years has been working on a new style of yoga, which he calls “Critical Alignment Yoga”. Read more

 

Share this article:

From Back pain to back gain

 0 meer informatieIn winkelmand

Back Care Basics

 159 meer informatieIn winkelmand

Contact form

Please fill out our contact form and we will get back to you as soon as possible.