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Carolina Benzi

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Carolina Benzi

Welcome to my page! I am a yoga teacher, yoga and meditation mentor, and yoga teacher trainer.

I founded NEREYA Yoga School, a yoga education institution offering trainings, courses and mentorship for yoga practitioners.

14/02/2026

Post for me so I don’t forget 🤍

08/02/2026

This is not my whole life, but a lot of what I love in my life looks like this.

(The shoes are absolutely dreamy, the most princess shoes I have ever bought)

03/02/2026

Lately I keep thinking about the desert. Especially because I chose to live in one and it’s not necessarily a random choice for sure.

People either love it or hate it, and it’s such a strong scenario, one that has a lot of spiritual meaning too, very prominent in the Bible for sure.

I think about it not as an aesthetic thing. Not as a “spiritual vibe.”
More as a place that tells the truth: it strips you, it exposes you, it certainly doesn’t negotiate.

And then it hit me: in yoga, that “desert function” is almost never about geography. It’s about consciousness.

Stripping isn’t a landscape: it’s vairāgya: the moment you realize how much noise you were calling “life,” and something in you quietly says: enough. That’s not me.

Crossing a threshold isn’t a journey across sand: it’s viveka. That sharp, sober discernment described in the Yoga Sūtra as viveka-khyāti, the highest discriminative discernment, when you start seeing clearly what is real, what is reaction, what is habit, what is story. Then, it’s life-changing. Nothing looks the same anymore.

Silence isn’t the absence of sound — it’s mauna and ekāgratā: attention no longer scattered, the mind no longer constantly “reaching,” and for the first time you can actually hear what’s underneath your preferences. It’s silence beyond all of that. A silence that is offered.

And the test isn’t “can I survive out here?”
It’s tapas: can I stay honest when it’s uncomfortable? Can I keep choosing clarity when no one is watching, when practice feels dry, when the mind wants an exit?

Probably this is why the desert is such a strong Biblical symbol: because it externalizes what spiritual work feels like.
And yoga points to it very directly: it takes that same minimalist wilderness and turns it inward.

I am so happy that I am going to host my students in my little piece of desert: I hope you will experience it just as deeply. Next retreat & 50h TT is happening in September and you find the link in my bio 🤍

20/01/2026

This year didn’t come gently.
It came wet, cold, demanding.

And still — things bloomed.
In places that weren’t supposed to.
On an island that looks like it’s going through an identity crisis.
Inside a random tea tag which I could have written.
On a random ceiling in Brussels, mapping cities that somehow map me too.

I don’t believe in magic solutions.
I believe in attention.
In patterns you only see when you stay long enough.

Even the desert blooms.

Ps. I’ve seen enough rainbows.
We can stop with those now, honestly.

30/12/2025

And if not, change it.

Love can be reshaped, restored, resignified. We are, ultimately, it. In all of its forms. Coming to love will always feel like home.

And precisely because it’s in our nature, we can explore all of it.

In the yogic and bhakti traditions, love is not one thing: it ripens.

It arises from śraddhā (faith and trust),
to be infused with reverence (śānta),
to act as sevā (loving service),
to spread as sakhya (friendship),
to show as vātsalya (care and devotion),
to expand in mādhurya (intimate love),
until it dissolves into prema - absolute love, non transactional, love with no agenda, no fear, no demands.

Prema is not even an emotion.
It is love that no longer asks to be returned.
It simply is.

This is the arc of bhakti described in the Bhagavad Gītā and the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, maybe the most beautiful texts on love ever written.

If you don’t feel good about receiving how you love, change it.

With love, always.

20/12/2025

There comes a moment in practice when something subtly shifts.

You are no longer waiting to be told what to do.
You are no longer searching for the “right” cue, the perfect instruction.
You begin to sense… something listening back.

At first it’s unsure.
You don’t yet fully trust it — but it’s there.

In yoga, this moment belongs to a very subtle layer of our being, the Vijñānamaya Kośa: the space of inner intelligence, discernment, and intuitive knowing. Not the mind that thinks, but the intelligence that recognises. The place where guidance arises before words.

As Donna Farhi writes so truthfully:

“We may not be able to see just yet where we are going, but we’re willing to take a chance on ourselves. We might not lead ourselves through our practice with the same smooth assurance we experience when guided by a teacher… but through flexing our inner muscles we start to become more adept at doing so.”

This practice is an invitation into that territory.

The Inner Teacher Practice is a complete and powerful sequence from the Himalayan Tradition, created by senior students of Swami Rama, and passed on to me by one of my former teachers. It is designed to gently but clearly point toward the inner guiding light — the inner guru, the inner voice that does not shout, but knows.

Sometimes this sequence is also called the Kālī practice.
Not Kālī as fear or destruction, but Kālī as truth made luminous. The light that begins to dissolve the ego not through force, but through clarity. A light that, once seen, cannot be unseen.

This is how I choose to close the year.
By turning inward.
By honoring what is ready to awaken.
By ending with something that is, in truth, a beginning.

🤍Practical details
• Open level · fully accessible
• Invigorating, grounding, confidence-building
• A sequence you can learn and carry with you
• Deeply wholesome and complete

All students are warmly invited.
Come not to be led —
but to remember how to listen.

15/12/2025

What was meant to be a 3-week freediving training stay turned into five and a half — thanks to flu, shifting training goals, and storms… both external and internal.

I can’t begin to express the gratitude I feel, in every cell of my body, for every minute spent here. Radazul is a bubble — a safe space, a cocoon for those who love freediving. Time dissolves. Space softens. Wonderland, every single time.

After a few days, I slip into athlete mode: early nights, clean food, yoga by the ocean, stretches, dry apnea. I start talking about things only a handful of humans truly care about (rightfully so 😆): reverse packing, mouthfill. I feel mildly judged for morning caffeine. Neoprene everywhere. My lanyard dries on the balcony next to my mask and snorkel. Sinuses and middle-ear clearance become a life mission.

The Ocean.
The Blue.
The great teacher — the only one, really.
My body feels strong and exhausted, surrendered to that post-dive fuzziness.

The people. Faces full of care, ready to do anything to keep you safe. Freediving is a solo sport, yet your safety depends entirely on others — on a code of honour, trust, devotion. The diver–buddy bond is one of the strongest I’ve ever known. Sharing a buoy changes you forever.

There are rest-day pizzas and jokes that stop being inappropriate once you’ve p*eled off a suit full of p*e (yes, we all p*e), coughed up mucus together, and laughed anyway.

I love you all. Thank you. Without you, this would have been unbearably heavy.

I didn’t meet all my goals. I hit the same wall for weeks. I achieved something — but not the barrier I’ve been chasing for a year. This weight is heavier that the lead that pulls me into freefall, and I’ll need time (and rest) to digest it.

Still, light and devotion show up everywhere. I’ve never felt happier for others, nor more touched by the smallest things. I felt other people’s joy as my own. And just like that, I remembered the vastness of human hearts.

I needed this reminder.
And this is the real gift.

I come home fuller than ever.
Thank you for loving me the way you did.

📸 First 3 pics by .fiedler

02/12/2025

November you have been so good to me (apart from the flu, that, let’s not do it again any time soon).

25/11/2025

Karma and reincarnation are profound, ancient teachings - present not only in Sanātana Dharma, but also in many mystical religious thoughts such as Kabbalah. Many traditions hold that the soul is eternal, that it returns again and again to continue its unfolding, its learning, its duty.

But we need to be extremely careful with how we speak about these concepts.
Because when they are oversimplified, they can become harmful.

I recently listened to a remarkable teacher speak about this: yes, reincarnation exists in many mystical lineages; yes, the soul moves through many lives; yes, there is a continuity to experience and responsibility.

And yet - none of this means we can look at someone’s suffering and draw linear conclusions.
None of this gives us permission to assume that a difficult life is “what they deserved,” or that harmful actions are “part of their soul’s path.”
This is the slippery slope: using mystical ideas to judge people, to justify evil, or to dismiss suffering.
That is guilt based, spiritual abuse.

Even the traditions that speak of karma and reincarnation insist on humility. They remind us that there are dimensions of reality we simply cannot grasp from the human vantage point. We may intuit the logic, but we cannot fully comprehend it. How or why a soul incarnates into certain circumstances - or why cruelty or violence unfold in the life of one person and not another - is not our role to understand.

The mystical is larger than our interpretative tools.
It refuses to be reduced to a neat equation.

So before we rush to explain someone’s trajectory, or to make sense of evil, or to place guilt on a person who is already enduring more than we can imagine - we must stop.
We must remember that *we are not here to play God with other people’s stories*.

What we can do is take the seat of the witness.
To stay open.
To cultivate compassion, not commentary.
To honor mystery alongside accountability.
And to recognise that the most honest spiritual posture is most of the times silence, presence, and love.

19/11/2025

Joy is not something you reach, it’s something you return to. Happiness is context dependent, Joy is always there. Is your attention there too?

12/11/2025

Every time I hear teachers—or corporate managers—call their students or employees “family,” something inside me tightens.

I already struggle to call my students friends. In long-term spiritual or educational settings, the boundary between teacher and student is sacred. It’s what allows learning, trust, and safety to exist. When that boundary blurs, something essential gets lost.

Calling someone your family—especially in a professional or spiritual hierarchy—adds an entirely different layer of complexity. Families are not neutral. They are some of the most emotionally charged systems we know. Anthropologically and psychologically, family is the space where we first learn about care, love, loyalty, but also about conflict, projection, and boundary-testing. It’s where roles are negotiated and often where we unconsciously repeat patterns of attachment and control.

And yes, I am a big fan of the idea of non-blood families and I do have people who are family without sharing ancestry. But they are not my students, nor my employees. And yes, I know that these things can happen as life is organic and non linear, but let’s at least say I do not encourage it directly.

So when a teacher refers to their (often also paying) students as family—or a boss calls their employees family—this can create a dangerous confusion of roles. It implies emotional reciprocity, loyalty, and intimacy that cannot ethically or realistically be expected in a professional or pedagogical context. It romanticizes power, while obscuring responsibility.

If an employee is your family, what happens when you need to fire them?
If a student is your family, what happens when they question you—or righteously need to leave? Will they feel the same level of freedom to do it lightheartedly?

These are not small implications.

I will never call my employees or my students my family.
And that’s precisely because I respect them.

Boundaries and “no’s” more often than not protect love, trust, and professionalism.
And if I ever make a mistake—as humans do—at least it won’t be within the confusion of calling something family that was meant to be a space of guidance, learning, and, last but not least, freedom.

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