The Journey to Self-Realization

Amina used to draw the curtains against the summer, and as a teenager she sulked whenever she got her feet wet. Today she can sit down by a tree and ask it for advice. Pål-Esben once had a student so anxious that she began by stepping outside her front door for a single minute. A year later she celebrated by spending the night in a hammock in the forest.

Amina once sold cakes, and any cake that wasn’t completely perfect went straight in the bin, so the whole project ran at a big loss. Today, when she forgets to bring something important to an event she is running, she simply uses what she has and makes something new out of it.

For years, Amina needed the people around her to believe what she believed, and with a partner, preferring jelly babies to her Haribo could almost be enough for a break-up. Today she finds it deeply liberating to hear someone say they disagree, and to feel that it’s still fine.

Standing in a queue at a petrol station, stressed and in a hurry, Amina felt a strange attitude rise up in her: that the people in front of her had no right to be ahead of her in the queue, because of where they came from. She had always seen herself as someone who accepts everyone, and the discovery showed her how much can lie hidden in our own depths.

What does gratitude feel like when it’s more than a list you write in the morning? One day, as she was driving somewhere, Amina suddenly felt an enormous gratitude for life itself welling up from deep inside her: a natural high that didn’t depend on anyone saying something nice to her.

What happens when you change and the people around you don’t? When Amina stopped reacting the way she always had, a former boyfriend turned violent, and family and friends asked whether she didn’t care any more.

Why is it so hard to do absolutely nothing for half an hour? Before she started at the Yggdrasil Shamanic School, Amina lived in a constant rush: chronic stress, one burnout after another, and an endless hunt for happiness through weight loss, cake baking and bodybuilding. None of it made her happy.

What if the darkness you fear is not dangerous at all? Amina came to the Yggdrasil Shamanic School with a childhood marked by violence and fear, a borderline personality disorder and a head full of esoteric chaos. Six months later she no longer had the diagnosis.