Leila Sadeghee is a yoga and meditation teacher working across the fields of priestessing, movement, yoga asana, depth spiritual practice and energy healing.
We caught up with Leila to hear more about her practices…
What does a typical day look like for you?
I live by the sea, so I often wake up and spend some time gazing at the sea and the light over the sea. Mornings are time to either go slow, take a tea or chocolate in bed, gaze at the sea & read for pleasure before I start my day, or to rise extra early and go straight to my altar for anywhere from one to three hours of practice. Recently I have undertaken a deepening of my daily practice, so there are more ‘straight to practice’ mornings these days, and will be for the rest of the 2024.
Then breakfast – nearly always eggs (I need the protein) and I start in with emails, ongoing study, development, and computer work. Recently I have been studying some of the Tantric Buddhist texts that I started my practice with in the 90s. I am reviewing them because I am creating a 2025 training for the mind called The Principles of Elevation, and we’ll be working with some of these teachings. I am also arranging a reconnaissance mission to the South of France to prepare for next year’s Divine Mother pilgrimage that I will be leading in Provence. There’s also prep, both study and planning, for my invitation-only pilgrimage to South India, The Secret Pilgrimage.
Mixed in with this are meetings for my energy fluency/non-duality training, Mystery School, and private client & mentoring sessions for my energy work, Energy Weaving. I wrap up by making myself dinner (I love to cook) and either gabbing with my pals or watching a movie.
Two days a week I teach classes in London at Re:mind studio (Energy Weaving, my energy work), Tripspace Yoga and Dance, and Sāmya Studios (Yoga āsana). There’s also workshops on many of my weekends. So those days are more focused on teaching and being with people in person. Between these events I usually go for walks, rifle through every charity shop in the area (I am a bloodhound), and in my London evenings I try to get to my favourite Persian house music party, Diasporic Days (when it is on). I love to dance.
How did your yoga journey begin and what inspired you to become a yoga teacher?
In 1998, I had a massive spiritual awakening, while working at galleries in Berlin in my early twenties. I was totally freaked out – I knew that the voice in my head – my ‘thinking voice’ – wasn’t ME – but if my mind wasn’t me – then who was I?! I knew I needed to wake up spiritually – but I had no idea what that meant or how to start.
Fortunately I had a friend who was devoted to an Indian guru – Gurumayi Chidvilasānanda – and when I called her she said: You need to MEDITATE. So I found a class – this is pre-intenet days, mind you – and went to meditate, praying I would finally feel some relief from this desperation that had woken up inside me. Everyone was so quiet, beatific and peaceful looking – and I felt worse than ever! After the class, I broke down into tears with the teacher. He said – ‘You know, some people find that it’s easier to calm the mind after they practice yoga…’ and he was actually teaching an Iyengar class right before the meditation. It wasn’t my first yoga class – I had been to a few with friends before –
But now I really NEEDED it to work. So for me, āsana practice was always a practice to prepare the vessel for deeper awakening practices. I still teach from that perspective.
Somewhere along the line I started knowing that it was my path to teach the yoga. But I put it off for years before I finally trained, more than 10 years after my awakening. I told myself that it was just for my own practice – but when I saw what Tara Judelle was bringing to her teaching ministry, the artfulness, the care – I knew I had the bug. At that point I had been working therapeutically with the body for 7 years as a bodyworker. It all kind of came together at that point. I knew I had something valuable to share.
What inspired you to specialize in your practice?
I don’t know about specialisation – but I have turned to focus on my energy work, Energy Weaving. This brings together all the energetic skills and understandings of my years of Tantric sadhana, and centres my Avalonian priestessing and other threads of my life practices. I am also leading pilgrimages and focusing on supporting people in non-dual awakening. These shifts – from teaching a large schedule of āsana classes in big studios & my annual boutique yoga immersion & teacher training – to the work I am doing now, in supporting people in cultivating deeper practices – are a result of my on-going decolonisation & frustration with the ‘white wellness’ paradigm of the contemporary yoga scene, which focuses on a kind of spiritualised perfectionism and optimisation, rather than spiritual awakening. It’s also a natural flow of my devotion to the Divine Mother in all their forms.
How have you seen yoga benefit your students?
Many of my students have found the power and presence with practice that blew apart their limited self concepts – and that awakening to a more resonant dimension of life as a place to live from – has been very freeing, radically freeing for many of my students.
Also, holding the profound responsibility of the seat of the teacher has also been life-changing for many of my teacher trainees. I get them coming back, years later, sharing how deeply their lives have changed from coming to grips with such responsibility. It has brought them into a much more authentic and care-driven way of existing.
I’ve said it innumerable times: these practices are powerful. Powerful to do them. Incomparably powerful to share them!
What is your favorite quote or life motto?
First sutra of the Pratjabijna Hrdayam:
Cittih svatantra vishva siddhi hetuh.
My colloquial language riff: ‘Maa is always doing it’
Consciousness, absolutely autonomous, is the true cause of everything.
What’s coming up for you in 2024 /2025?
First there’s Mystery School – a training for energy fluency and non-dual awakening – that’s October 23 (evening) through October 27 – in an amazingly charming venue in central London.
Then personal pilgrimage – to a Black Madonna in Poland, and to Auchewicz. To Provence to research next year’s Divine Mother pilgrimage (I am adding some new Mary Magdalene sites and some other special things.)
January I’m starting The Principles of Elevation – a year-long mind training for stability, clarity, and luminosity of the mind and heart. That’s in-person (and online for folks abroad) at Sāmya Studios, with 6 meetings throughout the year, plus regular group check-ins and meditation online.
End of January it’s The Secret Pilgrimage in Tamil Nadu, South India! I am so excited to go back to these magical temples. I have a great devotion to the forms of Divine Mother there. And the crew who are coming are very special people indeed.
France pilgrimage to Paris & Provence is early June.
Lot’s of juicy things to look forward to….
Find out more about Leila:
Website: https://www.leilasadeghee.com/
Instagram: @leilasadeghee
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