When Freideriki Papastavropoulou started to combine a passion for visual art and a love of yoga, she couldn’t have imagined the wealth of balanced synergies she’d establish just a few years later.

“Exercise and meditation clear the mind and give well-being and, as a result, your view of the artworks changes, you achieve greater depth and connection with them because you create space and time beyond the dust of everyday life.” When Freideriki was a student at the School of Fine Arts at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh), she met Naya Karnava, who teaches Yoga Science, and the way she looks at art and life itself changed forever.

In 2019, Freideriki joined forces with another four female artists and a curator to create Yoga Science & Art of Life, an organization with charitable character and action. From the second floor of the Teloglion Fine Arts Foundation of AUTh to the “Navel of the World,” Delphi, they have organized two exhibitions so far as well as parallel events and a performance. She notes that we will soon see more, all centered around experiential art.

The group aims to deliver cultural and artistic contributions through arts education, expression, and creation, as well as promote spiritual development with activities such as yoga retreats in Delphi and yoga classes in a museum. In yoga, the six women have found a path full of tools that expand their perception which, as Freideriki explains, helps an artist overcome limitations and see themselves unlock more and more of their potential. “Art and yoga are two paths to exploration, self-awareness, and connection,” she says, noting that yoga means union, linking. “I connect myself to the Self. Myself to the world. My matter and my spirit. What I Am with what I think, say, and do. From this comes healing. It’s the opposite of fragmentation and segmentation.”

Freideriki may be a visual artist but didn’t take long to throw off that label, because she found it limiting. She explains that the fewer internal limitations we have, the more we understand that life is much bigger and freer, provided that we remember why we do what we do. “There came a point in my life when I didn’t want the label of the artist because it became a barrier. It certainly helps you articulate and it’s a tool to advancement and useful, but the path of the Teaching of Yoga Science that I experienced along the way was what opened up the way and gave me a vehicle to that deeper thing that wanted to express itself through me. It reminds me of the reason and purpose of making art. It takes me back to the essentials when I forget.”

In her early creative years, the path to making art was very confrontational for Freideriki. But then, “Through spiritual Teaching to broaden perception, I realized that art is not only what we call art but every aspect of our everyday life, big or small. Before yoga, I battled myself. Now I’m making peace with myself.”