Kirsten Berg is an artist—a builder of massive, beautiful, surreal, art installations, and is well known for her displays at the ‘Burning Man’, an art festival held in Nevada every year.
She talks about how the artist and yogi in her feed each other.
By Valerie Lee Figueira
Art and the early seeds of a yoga practice were very much a part of me growing up. As a child, I was artistic, could draw easily and always made random things—from a toaster out of coat hangers to paper sandals. I kept painting and drawing all my life. I also had a mystical streak as a kid and really wanted to visit India, so I found my way to books on yoga and Eastern philosophy. Yoga took precedence over art in terms of my personal journey. But while practising yoga in Mysore, India, I did also take part in the occasional art exhibition in the city.
My yoga journey began, when after having traveled to India a few times already, I decided to take the plunge and headed there with a one-way ticket, enough funds to last a few years, and the intent to find a yoga practice that felt right to me. I studied with a few teachers, also at the Iyengar Yoga Study Center in Rishikesh, but eventually was led to an Ashtanga class in Goa, which I felt was the right practice for me. That was in 1996. I then moved to Mysore and studied under the guidance of Pattabhi Jois, and received his blessings to teach in 1999.
When it was time for me to dive deeper into the world of art, the reasons were just as compelling. I had been to ‘Burning Man’ for the first time in 2005 and was utterly blown away by everything about it. I felt a sense of reverence about the way the artists had worked so hard to manifest their expressions on such a large-scale. That impression took root, catalyzing the creative embers sparked during that first visit.
Art and yoga are not separate for me because I feel I am the intersection for both these expressions, and they reflect the same thing—a deep, clear connectionto a stream of inspiration that expresses many forms. With yoga, one experiences an internal reflection, while with art, it is externalizing objects—but the form of experience is within the same space as yoga. When I’m finished with my yoga practice, I see a bright place of forms and patterns of light that the body is a component of, and this is what I create.
My go-to healing pose is Halasana (Plow pose). I love the upward-moving quality of Pincha Mayurasana (Forearm balance), and the compressed, efficient feeling of Urdhva Kukkutasana (Lifting Rooster pose).
This article was first published in the print edition of Yoga Journal Singapore, which is now Yogahood Online.
