Nune Rojas:
“Hormonal yoga saved me from the surgeon’s knife”
Nune Rojas is a chemist, a yogini, a Kundalini yoga teacher and the creator of her own method, YogaHormonal. She could not accept a diagnosis whose resolution called for surgery. Nune adapted her yoga practice, shifting the emphasis onto the endocrine system, and within three months there was no trace of her former condition. Now she helps anyone who wishes to restore their hormone levels without medication. Vegeterian spoke with the yogini about the birth of yoga in the country, the effect of hormonal yoga therapy on the body, spirituality, nutrition and women’s practices.
How did you find out about yoga? In Soviet times the necessary books did not exist, there was no YouTube, and yoga itself was banned on ideological grounds
– My first encounter with yoga happened in Armenia, when I was still at school. My father got hold of a book from a friend who had smuggled it in from Syria. It was a set of black-and-white pages run off on a photocopier, with smudged text and pictures, but that did nothing to dampen his delight in it. I still remember his words: “Look, Nune, this is yoga. Practise it and you can live a long life.” Sadly, my father and I never did become yogis back then. It is a shame the book was lost — it was funny, full of comical yogis sitting in lotus pose with unnaturally bulging eyes.
Yoga appeared in my life a second time during my student years. One day my room-mate in the hall of residence brought back a tear-off notice that had been pinned to a tree, with an address and a time on it. That is how we ended up in Yakov Marshak’s classes.
Could you have imagined that yoga would flow into your life like this?
– At the time I did not think it would become my life’s work, but there were clear signs that it was not a passing interest. Family tradition led me to a degree in chemistry, but throughout my studies my father would say to me: “Nune, you are not a chemist — you are an alchemist.” The soul, the subconscious, spirituality — all of this was closer and more interesting to me than the world I saw within the walls of a laboratory. It seemed more important to explore the laboratory inside myself. My father turned out to be right: all my life I have been searching for my philosopher’s stone, the one that legend says turns mercury into gold. And suddenly my reagent turned out to be yoga, with its whole philosophy. That is where I began to draw knowledge and answers from.
Your first teacher was Yakov Immanuelevich Marshak — grandson of the well-known writer Samuil Marshak and “the father of Kundalini Yoga in Russia”
– I am happy that he came into my life. Like my other teachers, he arrived at the right moment and filled me, like an empty vessel, with my very first knowledge of chakras, energy, awareness and yoga. We are friends now and work on joint projects. He studied Kundalini Yoga under Yogi Bhajan, the man through whom America and the whole Western world came to know this tradition.
Those were very interesting times. After 70 years of atheism, a desire to explore something else, something unknown, had built up in people. Spiritual teachers and movements were appearing — Tibetans, meditation, vipassana, Buddhism, Osho; a shop called “The Path to Yourself” even opened, and meetings with masters and gurus were organised there. I would draw a parallel between that period and the search for an oasis in the desert: a spiritual tap suddenly appeared before the thirsty, and everyone drank avidly from that source.
Yoga now looks like something of a mainstream that sells well. What was people’s aim back in those years?
– There were many of us from the very first classes. Yakov Immanuelevich specialised in yoga therapy and the rehabilitation of people suffering from drug and alcohol addiction, so people with addictions came too.
Over the Soviet years an extraordinary amount of energy had built up in people, and they poured it out in class. Many emotions and inner experiences that until recently had only found expression in one’s own kitchen could at last come out. Yoga was becoming a kind of symbol of release, both bodily and mental. Sometimes it was even frightening to walk into the room; a powerful emotional and energetic charge hung in the air.
For a long time a certain tightness persisted in the classes; many people glanced around, trying not to stand out from the crowd. That Soviet spirit of levelling everyone was slowly displaced by a desire to listen to and observe one’s own body. Today that is the foundation of modern yoga teaching; back then it was new. I remember a woman at Marshak’s classes who helped with the organisational side, and beyond that she considered it her duty to keep order in the room; her supervisory gaze bored right through anyone who performed an asana wrongly or breathed incorrectly.
Although by 1991 there was no longer any need to meet in secret, public opinion still regarded yoga as something strange, so you could not talk freely about your new interest everywhere. The few people around me who knew often gave me a knowing look. Except that the understanding in it had to do with pity for my life, which was assumed to be less than bright and happy if I was reduced to attending classes in some yoga or other. And I had to travel into the centre for them, incidentally. There was only one place, and it infuriated me. I believed yoga should be within walking distance for anyone who wanted it. My other teacher, Sasha Kulikov, laughed and said, “oh yes, yoga in every neighbourhood”. Now, whenever I see yet another yoga club sign in the next building or the next block, I smile. It came true after all!
Looking back over the years, what was yoga for you and what has it become?
– In the early stages I wanted, like everyone, to learn to control my mind and my thoughts, to concentrate on a single object, to think and live within a positive range. In time, other horizons opened up to me. Yoga gave me the chance to look behind the scenes of life. To see the whole wheel of Samsara and find answers to all the questions that mattered to me: “Who am I?”, “Why am I here?”, “Which way should I go?” Certainly, what yoga gives the body physically, and what a person gains from learning to be a detached observer, to control their thoughts and to concentrate, is an enormous step towards knowing yourself, towards spiritual growth and self-development.
Having tried many schools, you nevertheless stayed faithful to Kundalini yoga for a long time. Why?
– Kundalini Yoga drew me in with its speed, its fire and the powerful energy present in that tradition. It seems to me that people come to Kundalini when they want rapid transformation and are determined to find everything out for themselves. Back then I had a passionate desire to act and to see results. Kundalini energy speeds up every process in us — the good and the not so good. It nourishes a person the way fertiliser enriches a garden. Without it the plants wither, and weeds easily take hold in an exhausted garden. They multiply there until one day it withers away. Rather like the malicious baobab seeds in “The Little Prince”.
But even with a practice in place, the weeds still get in, and they are very hard to get rid of. And to my mind this is the other side of Kundalini’s powerful energy: generating it, the ego develops and grows, and at times even the most advanced yogis can fall under the influence of ignorance, with certain distortions — angry, greedy, grasping, self-centred. I taught it for a long time, and all that while my endless “I” was present in me.
And how was the inner conflict resolved?
– Three years ago I started having health problems and turned to specialists for help. I was diagnosed with endometriosis; I was told I needed surgery to clear the uterine cavity and then injections to stop my menstrual cycle completely. What the doctors offered me felt so remote and alien. My whole being resisted; I could not believe that I, an experienced yogini, would be unable to manage on my own. You see what an ego I had (laughs). But even setting aside our modern medicine, surgery would not have guaranteed me a full recovery. Of course, during that period I was searching. And to jump ahead, I will add that among the women I know there are some who did go through with that intervention. In their case the consequence was rapid ageing of the body.
And so some time later I found myself in Berlin, at a centre for alternative medicine. It was there that I was advised to shift the emphasis of my yoga practice onto the endocrine glands — that is, to choose precisely those asanas that engage the hormonal system, and to use intensive breathing, which massages the internal organs. I began experimenting straight away, adding things of my own and trying to listen to my body. Three months later not a single painful symptom remained — and it was those symptoms that had made me seek help in the first place. I shared my positive experience with those around me and a whirlwind started up: women with hormonal problems began coming to me.
Where did the confidence come from that you could manage on your own?
– I trusted myself and listened to my own sensations. Then online I came across a woman from Brazil, Dinah Rodrigues, who talked about yoga for hormone production. I tried more than once to organise a seminar with her in Russia, but she never responded, so I had no choice but to start studying the subject of hormones closely myself and bring the method to a wider audience.
Besides your own recovery, what other examples are there?
– The women I have had the chance to work with were pleased with their results. They are still practising yoga. At first the group consisted of women over 30–35 with problems such as early or difficult menopause, excess weight and insomnia. But when a young woman with a diagnosis of amenorrhoea came to me wanting to conceive, I saw it as a challenge from fate. I understood the process that needed to happen, but I did not know whether this practice could help her body produce the right hormones.
Six months into the practice her cycle was restored, and she was able to conceive, carry and give birth to her long-awaited child. That experience showed me that hormonal yoga therapy works for everyone.
The effects of hormonal yoga are not exaggerated. Dinah Rodrigues’s experimental group showed excellent results — 75% of the women saw their hormone levels restored, and they also began to look younger, with more hydrated and elastic skin.
Together with Yakov Marshak and Yuri Vedov we want to run such an experiment in Moscow. Recruitment of women for the group is already under way.
Which techniques are used during the practice?
– Hormonal yoga is aimed at hormone production; it puts the female body in order and relieves particular problems in the endocrine system. Through specially selected asanas and kriyas, hormone levels begin to rise where there is hypofunction, or fall where there is hyperfunction. Approached correctly, it affects the body like a natural hormone and fully replaces drug therapy.
In my method we work not only with special asanas and intensive breathing (bhastrika pranayama, ujjayi), but also with body locks (mudras and bandhas), relaxation technique (yoga nidra), visualisation and healing meditation. Besides yoga, speeding up the natural restoration of the hormonal system calls for work with the unconscious. I gained this knowledge at Professor Belkin’s psychoneuroendocrinology centre. Once hormonal yoga appeared in my life, all the pieces came together. After all, our instincts, behaviour and defensive reactions depend directly on hormonal compounds — and we can influence how those processes unfold through yoga practice.
Why do so many people today suffer from one hormonal disorder or another?
Hormone levels begin to fall with age, leading to consequences such as reduced energy, concentration, memory and libido, drowsiness, mood swings and early menopause. But it is not only age: the modern way of life of young women, with constant stress, poor nutrition and hormonal contraceptives, also disrupts the body’s harmony, which shows itself in irritability, dissatisfaction, painful menstrual cycles and difficulty conceiving.
If you dig deeper, it turns out that hormones are not merely chemical compounds produced by the endocrine glands and released straight into the blood. Hormones are far more complex than we think. They conduct our body like conductors. They have a binary structure: possessing a “memory of their own”, based on a person’s past experience, they also act as intermediaries — between the person and the situation. They read information about what is happening and release a particular chemical cocktail into our blood. It is in the endocrine system that soul, mind and body meet. Everything depends on which hormone the hypothalamus sends to the pituitary and how the pituitary interprets that signal — our wellbeing, our mood, our flow of energy, our joy in life, our sense of fulfilment.
Beyond this, hormones serve our evolution. Our highest aim is to move forward, to develop ourselves. Everything that happens in the higher glands — the hypothalamus and the pituitary — is necessary for a person’s evolution. Drawing on the knowledge of the East, the placement of the hormones corresponds to the informational-energetic spectrum, or the system of 7 chakras, in which the sixth chakra, Ajna, the “third eye”, is responsible for consciousness, the inner voice, knowledge and intuition, while the seventh, Sahasrara — the pituitary — influences every area of a person’s life. If these chakras are not open, if a person is not evolving but degrading, then the hormones begin to register a fault in the system. And so it turns out that the effective working of the hormonal system depends on our spiritual and intellectual growth. That is precisely why it matters to keep them in order, especially for women. We are more sensitive and susceptible to hormonal swings than men. Throughout their lives women undergo changes at the physiological level — the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, birth, milk production, miscarriage or abortion.
Do you think women are better off focusing on women’s practices?
– Absolutely, yes. Geeta Iyengar writes about the importance of a specifically female practice in her book “Yoga: A Gem for Women”. Yoga was created by men for men, and in India there are still more male practitioners than female ones, while in the West it is the other way round. So it seems reasonable to me that a woman’s practice should be built differently, taking account of both different physical needs and a different psycho-emotional level. Even though women have won equal rights, we should not forget that we are entirely different — we run on different programmes. Looking at it more broadly, when the masculine and feminine principles are levelled out, everyone suffers, men and women alike. So do not forget your female nature; better to strive to do as much as you can precisely in this incarnation
There is a lot of talk now not only about femininity but also about spirituality and purpose. How do you understand these two ideas?
– In me these two ideas coexist perfectly; one flows from the other. By spirituality I mean following your soul. Some things are predetermined — we do not choose our parents or our place of birth. Or rather, on a subtle level we did choose, and were born in exactly the place our soul needed for its experience. So understanding this in theory is our purpose, while putting it into practice, growing and evolving — that is spirituality.
I believe that every soul is given some role, and its aim is to play it on the stage of life as well as it possibly can.
I once dreamed of God in symbolic form, blowing soap bubbles. He was amusing himself, absorbed in the game like a child, as though these were a million tiny galaxies rather than transparent spheres. On waking I thought: if a person wants to be the author of their own destiny, they must take life lightly, playfully.
And what role does nutrition play for the endocrine system?
Not a single process in the body takes place without the hormonal system, yet for all its potential it is highly vulnerable to the toxins contained in every modern food product — undigested residues of animal products, preservatives, antibiotics, colourings, flavour enhancers, endless E-numbers. There is no avoiding them nowadays; food has to keep and it has to sell. But we can change this: no demand, no supply.
I follow a vegetarian diet. Although a few years ago my husband and I had a café serving meat dishes. My decision to change coincided with a circumstance that put everything in its place — the building housing the café was condemned for demolition. So we closed one page in our story and opened a new one: we now have a bakery with 100% genuine bread made from spelt or rye flour, on a natural starter and without yeast.
In summer I try to eat raw, and through the year to observe Ekadashi. I am convinced that a vegetarian diet changes your sense of the world and cleanses body and mind. A person moves to a different level of consciousness. For me it brought an incredible sensitivity to everything. I think it is fair to call vegetarians kinder people, because they stop seeing a cut of steak in an animal and begin to notice their faces and sense the presence of a living soul. I like to quote Kafka: “I can look at you in peace, because I no longer eat you.”
Moving to a plant-based diet is the first step. Afterwards people discover a creative potential in themselves that had not been revealed before. What would you say — where do you draw inspiration from?
– I draw inspiration from travelling through inexhaustible India and my beloved Armenia. Everything there is always spontaneous, and I see the point in that — stepping out of your comfort zone and trusting life. It gives me pleasure. After a trip I can catch a creative wave and paint a picture. And yes, the urge to pick up a brush first woke in me during my yoga years. Good books can be a source of inspiration too. The most recent one I read was Dolnik’s “Naughty Child of the Biosphere”.
What would you wish for our readers?
– Be a better human being. To be the best version of yourself means to keep improving and, in any situation, to do the very best you are capable of. There are words passed down in our family from generation to generation that capture our whole outlook — “Do a good deed and cast it into the water.” In other words, do good and forget it. What could be better?
ALINA SHIDLOVSKAYA
