un dia kada momentu

(One Day at a Time)

This winner of best short documentary at Harlem International Film Festival, tells the story of Yoga Master Leo Floridas, who in the seventies, started the first Yoga School on Curaçao. Gabri Christa started out to make a small portrait of her teacher with whom she started studying at age nine and discovered while making this film, how his impressive background and knowledge of Yoga truly was. Besides his “Guruji” his mentors included the important Kriya Yoga founder Paramahansa Hariharanda. 

PERSONAL CONNECTION

I never thought having a strong black man as my yoga teacher was strange or rare when I started studying Yoga at age 9 with Leo Floridas. Through yoga, I became a vegetarian at age 14 and started teaching yoga to the kids in our Ashram in the Penstraat at the same age. Yoga brought me to dance, as my first dance solo I choreographed and performed, before I had any dance training, was a series of Yoga poses set to music by Pink Floyd, a music choice by another strong black man in my life: my dad Marcel Stomp. (My dad also taught me to dance salsa and other local dances and turned me on the Led Zepplin, but that is another story).

When I started taking classes in the US that were led by mostly white young women (often very good, don’t get me wrong, but never with any of the deep knowledge and guidance of Leo), I started to reflect back on my own journey into yoga and the continuing influence of my yoga master Leo Floridas, his guru and his lineage.

Leo Floridas’s asana classes were always combined with Pranayama and meditation and were not “just” asana. When I set out to make a short portrait of him, with co-producer and DP, Hester Jonkout we discovered his incredible lineage and history including his travels to India and the fact that Paramahamsa Hariharananda, a realized Kriya Yoga master, came to Curaçao.

Leo Floridas started the first yoga studio on Curaçao in the seventies, a health food store, a radio and tv program and wrote several books all in Papiamentu, the local language. His influence and transformational power is undeniable. He himself always was “just” Leo to all and never wanted to be a guru for others. In fact, he was to so many of us, our Guru, with his loud laugh and upbeat persona and strict teachings.

Although we would never say that to him.