Beata
“You are good just the way you are and how you are is good enough!”
Beata’s passionate energy shines through in all that she does. As a lifestyle influencer, breast cancer survivor, and yoga instructor, her online platform focuses on the beauty of aging while continuing to live a “vibrant life of color and quest”, covering topics such as health, wellness, fashion, and design. She is no stranger to immersing herself in unfamiliarity, becoming multilingual and well-traveled from a young age. Her inquisitive nature and positive perspectives have allowed her to experience and overcome so much, giving her the necessary tools to share her wisdom with others. Meet Beata. This is her story.
K: Please introduce yourself!
B: My name is Beata Wiggen but in the Kundalini yoga world I am also Sita Dasjot Kaur.
K: Describe yourself in your own words
B: I am a 65 year-old “best_age_rebel” (and that’s my IG handle, too). I am a wife, mother, grandmother, sister, friend, avid traveller – and a recent yoga teacher whilst just ending a 30-plus years career as the personal assistant to a well-known German literary author and filmmaker.
Only 4 more weeks and I will be a pensioner, wow! Then I can focus on teaching more yoga, doing even more travelling, and gaining more traction as an older influencer with the goal to inspire others to live a “vibrant life of color & quest in their silver years,” focusing on health, wanderlust, Kundalini yoga, and a bit of style and design.
K: What is your favourite thing about yourself?
B: I am a positive and curious person and a life-long learner about all facets of life, loving languages (I speak five), cultures, and people in general.
Many moons ago my curiosity led me to leave Germany at age 16 for a year as a highschool exchange student in Cleveland, Ohio. After that fabulous year I had to finish school in Germany but returned to do my B.A. in psychology in Ohio, working in newspaper publishing after graduation.
After 8 years in the U.S. I returned to Germany for a brief stint, then went on to live in Italy for 2 years. At age thirty I kind of settled in Germany for a while to become a single mom of Jonas, now 35, and a dad himself.
I was married to an American first, right after college, then lived with an Italian partner, had my son fathered by a Swede, and have been happily married to a Dutchman for the last 16 years (in a part-time marriage, as I work half the week in Germany and then come back to our Dutch home). And then there’s my love for Nepal, my home-away-from-home where I helped build a little school and roam in my circle of friends in the modern art world of Kathmandu.
I surely wasn’t made for sitting still or immersing myself in one culture only!
K: Tell us a story. Have you had an experience that has defined you or made you stronger?
B: … I overcame breast cancer in 2007 and felt like I had a lot in my “backpack” to tackle that hard time because of all I had learnt in my many trainings (like biographic therapy, NLP, Sivananda yoga and mindfulness).
After my recovery I did additional trainings in encouraging work and Yin Yoga (a meridian based yoga balancing form) and am now a formally trained Kundalini yoga teacher. Yoga has been my go-to place of strength since my early 20s and I now finally love to share it (after having been illogically scared to teach for decades!).
But even more than this bout with serious illness it was the very first challenge of going to the U.S. at 16 that made me the open, flexible, and positive person I am today.
To let myself dive into this whole new experience and enjoy the newness of American - alternative and traditional - high school life in a Jewish host family, of participating in the McGovern campaign – the coming to terms with a new culture, a new language, a whole different life and to actually love every minute of it, that’s what made me ready for the many later moves.
K: What is one piece of advice you’d give to your younger self?
B: You are good just the way you are and how you are is good enough! (This is something I only really learnt in the breast cancer recovery group, after having been a bit of an over-achiever for too long!)
K: What does being a woman mean to you?
B: Being a woman means trying to find the balance between being all- nurturing and going for your own dharma, for what you have been meant to do here on earth beyond being that great mother, partner, and all-round support person. For me that is bringing light and cheer into the world, sharing my positivity!
K: Who is one woman that inspires you? What would you say to her if she were here now?
B: I am inspired by Dutch editor/author Inez van Oord. She is the founder and former editor-in-chief of HAPPINEZ magazine and a fascinating mixture of down-to-earth media entrepreneur and spiritual seeker. In another life I would have loved to create print magazines myself as she did, while travelling as much as she did for her work and diving deeper and deeper into religion and spirituality as she has done with her more recent books.
If she were here now, I would ask her how it feels for her to be –almost - “retired” (she is three years younger than me) and what she is busy with these days.
