Review of the Book ‘Chakra – Esoteric Yoga’

The closest you get is a book that can teach you to immerse yourself in yoga, regardless of the starting point

By Audun Myskja – author, chief physician, and specialist in general medicine

The author is one of the most experienced and consistent teachers within the rapidly growing yoga movement in Norway. In 1976, I myself took part in one of the first yoga courses in Norway, led by Peo, one of the supervisors who helped with this work. On the sidelines, I have since witnessed that yoga has emerged as the closest we come to a total package for spiritual, mental, and physical health building. That an ancient discipline should have so much to give modern people, says something about the durability of the knowledge the tradition springs from. The author has enforced this tradition with a breadth of experience and depth that few others can point to. He can therefore present an authoritative work based on chakra.

He begins by making it clear that chakras are not absolute sizes on a par with the femur. The fascinating thing about chakras that make them so useful in inner work is that they stand at this strange intersection between the subjective and the objective, the subtle and the concrete, like a door opener or a bridge builder. This is the main reason why I myself have prioritized the work with chakras and taught this tradition for decades: Chakras can be similar to music in the ability to show the meeting point between different dimensions. The doctrine of chakra simultaneously challenges all absolute traditions, such as our materialistic science. At the same time, work with chakras gives experience-consistent results, precisely because they can bind together the various parts that have lost touch in our fragmented and turbulent age.

I have read many books about yoga and chakra, both in Scandinavian, English, and German, and experience that this book is an important contribution in a field where chakra books abound, often characterized by simplifications that give the theme a blunt and abstract feel.

Bjarke has a consistent and authoritative style. I myself have tried to explain exercises in books and experience how difficult it is to make it clear and simple. I have never read a yoga book where the various exercises are presented so clearly, without oversimplifying. At the same time, the depth and weight of the experience lie behind it, which creates confidence and motivation to practice it. The closest you get is a book that can teach you to immerse yourself in yoga, regardless of starting point. At the same time, Bjarke emphasizes that the depth can hardly be learned from books, and therefore provides generous access to a large and elaborate digital learning material, which is tailored to the book’s structure. There is thorough work behind this release!

If the book addresses esoteric traditions, this part is also characterized by the same strength. The author is able to make it easy without trivializing or presenting a deep tradition in an easy way. As someone who has been trained in deep work with chakra for decades, the many stenciled chakra books have been a stumbling block: In an attempt to make a deep tradition modern and accessible, authors present forms that often violate tradition and do not agree with systematic empirical evidence. It is therefore a pleasure to read the thoroughly lived descriptions of chakras, which add new dimensions to the understanding of chakras that I have missed in the literature of recent decades. Each sentence in these chapters seems clear and elaborate: A material that can be tested and built up to an understanding of the chakra as a unique gateway to understanding how spirit, mind, and body are connected and give the many who are struggling today a unique tool in the hands. Bjarke avoids clichés and frivolities and uses a refined language that promotes access to spirit, body, and subconscious in a way that I have previously only found in classic yoga texts. At the same time, the content is updated and available for scientific thinking. The chakra part is a particularly innovative and unique part of this book.

Should I miss something in this book, it is the same as in most other yoga books:

1. Case studies where we get a clearer picture of yoga in everyday life.
2. How to overcome obstacles and what to achieve over time.
3. Instructions on how to adapt to different functional levels.

It is my belief that in our time we need to find our way back to our roots – not stick to traditions, but respect the sources they draw from. In this work, Bjarke does a formidable job of presenting a tradition in a clear and simple way, at the same time as he includes his own experience material so that the tradition comes alive and adapted to our time. It is in itself a work of art and requires the depth of experience and the artist’s creative ability to achieve. Bjarke has written a book of lasting value.

Review of the Book ‘Chakra – Esoteric Yoga’

Yoga’s hidden wisdom and the discovery of yourself

By Christian Paaske – social debater, author, and meditation teacher

A rarely beautiful yoga book has seen the light of day. Bjarke is one of the veterans in the yoga community. He started with yoga already in the 1970s when yoga was new, exciting, and exotic. Reserved for those who ventured off the beaten track to explore new opportunities that large sections of the youth generation did at the time. Many freaked out, let their hair grow, and the bumblebee hiss. Others ‘flipped in’ through discipline, asceticism, exercise, and withdrawal to discover the deeper secrets of yoga. Not in books and theory, but through concrete living experiences in direct contact with the original Indian yoga tradition.

After several years of such intense training and education, Bjarke opened in 1983, among narrow small, and white-painted wooden houses in one of Bergen’s modest alleys, this city’s first yoga center. Later, together with his partner, they expanded to the Ask Retreat Center on the island of Askøy outside Bergen. Here, thousands of students over the years have experienced in-depth and intensive yoga training only possible in secluded surroundings adapted for the purpose and under the guidance of mature teachers. 40 years of continuous yoga teaching provides such a qualification as few other yoga teachers have. Chakra – Esoteric Yoga, is the essence of this teaching, compressed between two thick binders and 168 colorful pages in between.

Bjarke is originally a visual artist. It was the desire to expand his creativity and go deeper into the art that led him to yoga. In 1976, he also met the Danish yogi Swami Janakananda with an artistic background before devoting himself to yoga life. Rather than focusing on art, his point is that yoga is perhaps an even greater art because it provides tools to increase the ability to experience. In addition to a balanced body, a calm mind, sharp concentration, and richer life. The book clearly shows that Bjarke, in addition to being a full-time yoga teacher, has maintained his art. Many of his paintings reproduced in the book show a meditative depth, intensity, and clarity and make the whole book an aesthetic journey and meditation in itself.

The book begins by making it clear that yoga is about being yourself. It is not like in religion and in the self-development environment in general that you get to know that something is wrong with you, and here you get methods to get rid of your guilt, pettiness, and limitation and become a new and better person. You are already yourself, so how can you become something you already are? Yoga is therefore not to make you anything other than what you are basically, but to help you ‘remember’ and learn everything you have mistakenly thought about yourself and discover your own naturalness.

This is also where the theory ends, and is content with this summary of yoga in a nutshell. The rest is your own inner journey and discovery and where yoga’s arsenal of techniques is to awaken clarity and gradually remove the veils of ignorance. There may be an inner guidance that often takes care of itself by having confidence and attentively approaching the process of self-discovery. The book is therefore first and foremost practical with a wealth of techniques, in addition to QR codes for audio and video instructions on a number of different internet platforms. The techniques include all the well-known classical steps of yoga in an integrated whole of physical poses, breathing exercises, relaxation, concentration, and meditation.

The book’s common thread is the seven chakras. There is an esoteric anatomy in what is referred to as the body’s etheric or energy body. Through this energy field, mental and physical processes are controlled and regulated, and where the chakras are seven central energy points. Especially the tantric branch of yoga has added this knowledge. Here are a number of techniques for activating and exploring the chakras and opening seven magical gates in an inner journey of consciousness expansion and self-discovery. The book shows the way and gives ‘keys’ to these gates. How to open them gently and at your own pace. The book refrains from describing or revealing what you can expect to experience inside for several reasons. The mind is most open without preconceived notions and expectations, and perhaps even more important and wisely not to deprive the student of the joy of discovering it for himself.

This is a mature yoga book. It has been 40 years in the making. As a ripe fruit, it can now be picked. It is a gift for anyone who is ready to eat the fruits of yoga’s manifold, lush and life-giving tree. These are the fruits of such a branch of classical yoga from an experienced yoga teacher who now generously shares his knowledge and many years of experience. When the student is ready, the teacher comes, it is said. Maybe this is the book for you who want to move on, even if you are perfect already, – because everything yoga will show you is just that.