Meet Brandi, Founder of Oshana Yoga Project

One of the first things you’ll notice about power yoga teacher Gergentia ‘Brandi’ Shoombe is her walk. Regal, light-footed, intimating perhaps faded days of ballet.

All this is elegant and enviable as she bends seemingly without effort, teaching yoga at Virgin Active or in the sun dappled Warehouse Theatre’s The Loft where she recently expanded Oshana Yoga Project.

As one watches her lunge, stretch and twist into impossible positions, there is no visible indication of the truth.

That one day while driving alone at Swakopmund, she was in a massive car accident. The severity of which catapulted her into a coma, then a wheelchair and finally crutches before forcing her to relearn how to walk.

Thirteen years later, that walk and the notable straightness of her posture is no result of ballet but a quiet, unsung triumph of will. Each step a mantra in which Shoombe reminds herself to keep her ankle straight, keep her left leg straight, steady her hip.

“Many people don’t know this story but that’s how I came to yoga,” she says, recalling her accident at the coast and her gruelling two-year recovery.

“I was told by the doctor ‘you’ll never be able to walk straight again. You’ll never be able to run. You’re gonna have one leg shorter than the other’. And the whole time he was telling me this, I thought ‘God, it’s only one broken leg, why so many limitations?’”

Nursing a fractured femur, lower back paralysis and the pain of the metal installed in her hip and thigh, Shoombe looked doggedly forward and towards the power of the mind.

“I started to do things like Qigong meditation here in the park with Günther Martens. I did a lot of meditation and read about mind power,” Shoombe says, adding that it was around the same time ‘The Secret’ came out and her friends brought her the book and the movie because they realised she was living it.

“I was like oh my God, this is exactly where I’m at. I’m not accepting these injuries. I’m just seeing myself doing it.”

Years later, still recovering and continuing to work on her mind, a friend invited Shoombe to Swaziland to take care of her son while she gave birth in South Africa.

Here, Shoombe visited Serendipity, a wellness centre, where she saw a poster for yoga and meditation, called the number and ultimately met a black Hare Krishna monk who introduced her to Bhakti yoga in the rain.

“Bhakti yoga is selfless love, living in service of the community and being the extended hand of God,” says Shoombe, who found purpose in the black God of the Hare Krishna movement, the chanting and emphasis on selfless love.

“I have noticed we are living in the ego most of the time and not in tune with the selfless self where we realise we are actually not living for ourselves but for the community as a whole,” she says.

After leaving Swaziland, Shoombe focused on Niyama (the second limb of yoga) before becoming versed in Asana, which includes the physical postures many are familiar with.

“My asanas came many years later. I was doing my internship and I opened my laptop and there was this Africa Yoga Project,” says the former advertising production manager. “The application for a teacher training scholarship was due in 24 hours. I eventually got an interview and I got it. I then went to train in Nairobi, Kenya, having attended less than 10 yoga classes in Cape Town.”

Describing Africa Yoga Project as an initiative offering yoga teacher training scholarships to youth from marginalised areas in Africa with the aim of having them go back to their communities and become a leader and teacher, Shoombe, who admits being a difficult student, embarked on this journey not knowing it would break her open and set her free.

“After the first class I did before the training started, I was so sore even my ears were hurting,” she says. “It was so intense. The only way through was through breathing. I had to find my breath. I was cursing half of the time in class. It was therapy on another level.”

Eventually coming to the realisation that what had happened to her, her stubbornness and her injuries were intricately linked to her mindset, being an exile child and being stubborn as a defence mechanism, Shoombe struggled through the training that seemed to reveal more of herself each day.

“All these things started showing up on the yoga mat and I was just shocked how the true me just popped out,” she says.

“There I was, exposed in front of everybody through yoga poses. How I respond with my stubbornness. How I hide behind ‘no, I don’t understand it, I can’t do it’. How I’m judging and filtering and deciding this class is too hard. And one of my teachers came and said right in my face: ‘The way you are showing up on the mat is the way you usually show up in your life’.”

This broke her down further.

“I was in Savasana (corpse pose) and I just broke down and cried. “Realisation came with the yoga poses. And I said I want more of this. What more shit is out there? That evening I threw up all night. I was throwing up emotions. Who knew a simple pose, a simple inquiry and an honest answer can crush walls?”

Back in Namibia after some deep healing in Kenya, Shoombe packed up her life and moved to the north where it took some time and great effort to recall all she had learnt.

“What I learnt in my teacher’s practice is to know if you have really worked and you are dealing with your issues and triggers, after you have gone to the mountains, to the churches and temples, pack up your bags and go home. Because that’s where your triggers and pressures are. It is easy to pretend around people you don’t know,” she says.

“During this time, I learnt how personal practice can make you become more of you and that’s how the Oshana Yoga Project popped up in my head. I wanted to be there for somebody. I wanted show up for somebody the way Africa Yoga Project showed up for me.”

“They need a lot of inspiration, they need yoga mats and all kinds of stuff,” she says. “I really wanna show up big for them this year,” Shoombe says.

“One of the goals of the Oshana Yoga Project is to take yoga to all the 14 regions of Namibia and so far I’ve reached out in Oshana, Omusati and now we’re in Khomas and Kavango. Four regions. If I can have a yoga teacher in every region that is my dream.”

In Windhoek, Oshana Yoga Project currently lives at The Loft where Shoombe offers cheap lunch-hour yoga classes as well as a pay-what-you-can Saturday donation class at 11h00.

In an age of information overload, Sunrise is The Namibian’s morning briefing, delivered at 6h00 from Monday to Friday. It offers a curated rundown of the most important stories from the past 24 hours – occasionally with a light, witty touch. It’s an essential way to stay informed. Subscribe and join our newsletter community.