With Love, Always – Jens & Sophia

Jens Keygnaert and Sophia Gomis have spent a lifetime together after meeting in a yoga class. They both walk the spiritual path and study Veda together, realising with each mantra that the divine cannot be achieved without love. 

By Sophia Ann French

“Love is a very ancient topic. Gods, playwrights, musicians and poets have glorified the meaning of the word ‘love’. But love is not like other emotions. It is not that there are many emotions of which one is love. No, it is the only emotion. In certain forms, it is called compassion, empathy and sympathy, but it is the same love alone. It is that love which also provides you the space to understand another person. It is that love, too, that really turns into hatred. It is love that turns into your dislike, anger and so on. It is one emotion, which has these various expressions. This is not something that is to be swallowed, as we have swallowed many things. Love has to be discovered.” 

— Swami Dayananda Saraswati

Jens Keygnaert and Sophia Gomis attend the Indica Veda Studies Teacher Training programme. When we meet for class every week, our teacher, Shantalaji, often jokes about how even though they are on separate screens, their togetherness is apparent despite that. After all, they’re both sitting in the same home, but on different laptops, and sometimes, we can even hear them echoing each other. Most of us students find it funny when Shantalaji jokes about it, but when I interviewed Jens and Sophia (and yes, they were sitting together and, this time, on the same screen!) I see how much truth there is in Shantalaji’s jest. They are the same and yet different, but isn’t that how love should be? So we can be ourselves yet in complete union with the person we choose to spend our life with. 

I cannot write this interview without an allusion to their love story. It is so inherent to both of their lives and also to their spiritual path. “It was love at first sight,” recalls Jens. “I was practising yoga in Paris at the time. I think it was around 1998. Yoga in the West wasn’t as popular as it is now. Back then, mostly older people were practising, and I was the only person in my 20s in the class. Then, one day, Sophia walked into class, and I thought, ‘Who is this amazing woman?’ She was as young as I was and interested in the same things. It was not common for young people in Paris at that time to be into spirituality. I was immediately drawn to her.”

Sophia felt a similar connection when she met Jens, “At first, I was surprised to see this person with the same interests as me. He was vegetarian; he practised yoga, and the more I got to know him, the more convinced I was that I wanted him to be the father of my children.” Jens and Sophia have been together for 25 years and have two children. She moved with him from Paris to Bruges, where they now live and work. Jens is a physiotherapist and applies yoga and Āyurveda to his practice. He conducts a Yoga Teacher Training Programme in Belgium with his mother and Sophia and assists his teacher, Bernard Bouanchaud, at a Yoga Teacher Training programme (in Paris). He’s an assistant teacher at Dr. N Chandrasekaran’s Yoga Therapy training session, and he also teaches Āyurveda with his teacher, Dr. Kurush Kurmi, from Pune, India. Sophia is an assistant nurse, and she teaches yoga, too. Together, they also conduct chanting classes. 

The Journey to Veda

“I found Veda through Jens. He had met Shantala before me and asked me to try the practice. Of course, after that first practice, I wanted to study more. This was before COVID, so we were in in-person classes. Then COVID happened, so the teaching shifted online, and I’m happy to attend classes online, too. I found Veda hard initially because I’m dyslexic, so I struggled, but I loved it so much that I kept at it. Shantala is very patient and thorough, so her notes are very helpful. It also helps that it is an oral practice. So, I listen and recite. My memory and concentration have increased since I started reciting Veda,” says Sophia. 

Jens’ journey to Veda started years ago when he was studying with Sri T.K.V. Desikachar in the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram (KYM) lineage. His first experience of chanting was learning the Yoga Sutras, which are an integral part of the teachings at the KYM. “Sri Desikachar planted the seed of being a chanting teacher in my mind. I had heard a yoga teacher chanting the Yoga Sutras, and it resonated with me. I was part of a Reggae band when I was younger, and the Yoga Sutras reminded me of a similar structure. So I felt the musicality of it. When I met Sri Desikachar, he asked me what I do for a living, and I told him I was a physiotherapist. His reaction was, ‘One day, you will teach chanting.’ He gave me a copy of the book Mantra Pushpam, written in Devanāgarī, so I had no idea what it meant. But, all these years later, I’m in the Indica Veda Studies Teacher Training Programme, learning how to teach Veda recitation, and the book makes so much sense to me because I can read Devanāgarī now. This brings me to how I found Veda Studies. In 2016,  I decided to study Sanskrit and took a course at a university in Belgium. During that course, Sanskrit scholar Dr. Anuradha Choudry and the Co-Founder and Director of Indica Yoga, Dr. Vinayachandra Banavathy, gave us lectures on Sanskrit. They have both also been guest lecturers at Veda Studies. I asked them if they knew any chanting teachers in Belgium, but the first time I asked them, they didn’t know about Shantala. I kept in touch with Dr Banavathy, and after my course, I messaged him again, asking if he knew anyone in Belgium who could teach me chanting, and that’s when he told me about Shantala. That is how I ended up at one of Shantala’s classes and took Sophia with me. Sophia told me after the first class that she loved it and wanted to continue. We have been studying together with Shantala since.”

Integrated Spirituality

I often ask students of Veda recitation how reciting mantras has enhanced or added value to spiritual practices they were already doing before Veda recitation. Most students find Veda through yoga, even though the former is the source of the latter. However, Jens feels that you can’t separate the two because, at least for him, both practices are always simultaneous. “I was never taught asana without breathwork and mantra, which has always been integrated into my practice. At KYM, for example, even when we started a class with Surya Namaskar, we always chanted with each breath; there was a mantra with each movement,” says Jens. Sophia agrees, saying, “Practising yoga asana alone is like gymnastics. It is impossible to practice yoga if you are so attached to your body — its strength, mobility and suppleness. Even just adding the layer of Prāṇāyāma can enhance the way we approach yoga.” Jens further adds, “Asana is on the body level, Prāṇāyāma is on a psychological level, and when mantra comes in, that completes the practice. Mantra is the connection to the source — to the divine aspect of all spiritual practices.”

I loved this observation from Jens. I only started practising Veda recitation recently, and the first decade of my spiritual practice was asana-centric. This made a lot of sense to me and also put into perspective the role of the ego when we practice yoga only on the body level. This can sometimes be harmful because it fuels the ego and makes students competitive. I asked Jens about this, and his wise advice is, “Keep your practice integrated. It is ok to have a strong personality and want to achieve perfection in everything you do. Just don’t turn your puṇya into pāpa (laughs). It is ok to be competitive, to compete with yourself, to be the best version of yourself, and to hold yourself to those standards. Don’t let it become external, though.” This is sound advice. Perhaps this humanity is something that we address before every Veda class. One of the opening mantras imperative to Veda recitation is the śānti mantra Saha Nāvavatu. This well-known mantra from the Taittirīya Upaniṣat is often recited at yoga classes and in Vedanta schools, and it is important for all students and teachers of spiritual practices. 

oṃ sa̱ha nā̍vavatu |
sa̱ha nau̍ bhunaktu |
sa̱ha vī̱rya̍ṃ karavāvahai |
te̱ja̱svinā̱vadhī̍tamastu̱ mā vi̍dviṣā̱vahai̎ ||
oṃ śānti̱ḥ śānti̱ḥ śānti̍ḥ ||

This translates to:

Together, let us be protected and nourished.
Together, let us work with vigour and determination.
May our pursuit of knowledge be luminous, devoid of animosity.
May peace reign at every level.

We begin every Veda recitation class in this spirit of togetherness and unity. Hearing Jens’s advice on addressing our humanity and dealing with it reminded me of how well Veda is designed to address the human condition and help us practitioners be the best we can be.

Keep it Light to Receive the Light

To end, I always ask practitioners what spirituality means to them and what advice they would give to new practitioners who wish to begin their Veda recitation journey. On spirituality, Jens feels that “I always believed that every human being has good in them. Our inherent nature is kindness and love, and this may sound naive, but it is what I believe about all people. Yes, sometimes we do ugly things and hurt people, but this happens when our natural state of love and kindness is interrupted. This is why I feel spirituality connects us back to goodness through God. When I say God here, I don’t just mean religiously. We can’t just go to the church or a temple and expect God to do the work for us. All humans must take responsibility and understand that God works through us. Our Dharma makes the divine happen, and that is spirituality to me. I love this about Indian culture — they make God approachable.”

As for advice to new students, Sophia believes it all comes back to how you choose your teacher. She says, “To study anything well, you must find a good teacher. A good teacher is someone I can surrender to — but not blindly. It is important to find a teacher with high standards who aims for perfection but doesn’t set a ceiling for perfection or impose it. What I love about studying with Shantala is A) She is a woman. B) She is a very strong woman but knows how to love a lot. I want to be a teacher like her. She has this balance of very high standards but also knows how to keep it light. She is so strict about the techniques and rules of Veda recitation, but she knows that Rome wasn’t built in a day. She teaches with laughter, allows us to laugh at our mistakes and nurtures our learning. But she won’t stop till we get it right. This is the best way to learn and to teach; keep it right but also light.”

To get in touch with Jens and Sophia, email them at [email protected] and [email protected]