Listening Became My Path...

Since childhood, I have been searching for alignment...

Perhaps it began with that clumsy lotus adopted as a teenager on the beach with friends, or simply with a desire to feel good, to feel centred. At the same time, nourished by the films of Tsui Hark, Bruce Lee, and Akira Kurosawa, I was drawn to martial arts.

The call of the right gesture, and of a body moving towards greater openness (I was very stiff), led me in 2007 onto the tatami and into the practice of Aikido. I trained under the guidance of my teacher Fabrice Croizé, then Christian Tissier Shihan. Through the repetition of gesture, and later with Yoko Okamoto Shihan in Kyoto and Tsuruzo Miyamoto Shihan in France and Japan, I discovered far more than a martial art.

I learned how to situate myself. How to understand exchange. How to gradually move from physical performance towards relaxation. Through its work in pairs, Aikido becomes a form of body dialogue. We do not repeat gestures for their own sake; we develop abilities, and then learn to let ourselves be shaped by the practice.

Each keiko, each training, becomes an exploration: listening, humility, precision of axis, felt points, balance and imbalance, learning how to enter force through placement. Movement, through repetition, transforms. It gradually reveals unexpected dimensions: a compression of time and space, a sense of right timing, explosiveness, and above all a feeling of expansion. As if precision, through repetition, continually opens the body, bringing more relaxation and touching something wider.

Ashtanga Yoga arrived unexpectedly when I was thirty-six. 

I was not looking for anything, and yet I discovered another system. It was love at first sight. The Ashtanga practice, demanding and complementary, offered an alignment with oneself that felt immediately obvious. It was another search for the centre, expressed through a different language.

Standing still, calm, watching agitation settle, feeling the fundamental centre and subtle movements, I entered into a new relationship with my body: inward, attentive. The supports, lines, segments, and weight transfers echoed those of Aikido and became fertile ground for exploration. And then, of course, there was the breath.

Breath, prana, this bridge between the body and the outside world, binding all things, gradually imposed itself as a guide. It gives momentum and measure, creating space between gestures, between thoughts. In each asana, it reveals a space of well-being.

Along this path, I was fortunate to meet inspiring teachers, including Petri Räisänen. His gentleness, his listening, and his way of holding space through presence deeply marked me. There is a rare ability to feel the other even before they move, to adjust without forcing, to accompany and gently go beyond what we think is possible.

Through him, I understood that intention can precede gesture, and that intention itself can create a path.

Practising Ashtanga today is a way of inhabiting the body differently. This body remains the same, of course, with its limits, tensions, memories, and trauma. Yet it becomes more aware, more informed, more alive each day. It is no longer about going fast or far, or achieving an effective posture, but about being there, within a presence that is built and nourished.

This discipline has taught me to step out of immediacy and reaction, to slow the constant flow of external information, and to return to myself. And perhaps most importantly, Ashtanga has helped me accompany those I love. It has taught me what listening truly means. How to offer space, silence, and presence, whatever the state of the other, whatever their health or path, and how to find the right distance.

This practice has become a support for me, a way of being in the world that is more open, more stable, and also softer.

I dedicate this text to Alzennyr, my wife, who left too early. 

She knew how to welcome everyone without judgment. Her unconditional love, her spiritual faith in life, her way of supporting without expectation, all remain within me and continue to guide me. She offered a message of hope, discreet yet powerful, like a deep breath in the face of struggle. She was a light for those who suffered.

Today, through practice, I continue. In every fluid movement, every conscious breath, every moment of calm. I walk, breathe, and open myself, not to escape or to fill, but to continue, humbly, to weave a link between body, heart, and space, and to create an opening towards life.

"The intention precedes the action, which precedes the pure gesture."

Christian Tissier Shihan

"As long as we are alive, let us remain flexible, because we are alive before being stiff."

Tsuruzo Miyamoto Shihan:

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