ABOUT ANETTA
My name is Anetta Tiara Hartono. I’ve been walking on this earth for 27 years now being a daughter, a sister, a friend, a lover and a free woman with big dreams, spirit and much love inside of her.
Recently, in my fourth year of medical school, I decided to take a break from university. Knowing everything has its time and space, I am now focusing on my two big passions: Yoga as a transformational healing tool and Modeling as a way of self-realization.
Click here to read my resume.
My mission
My mission, or what you call Dharma in Yoga’s philosophy, is to guide people back home to their self-love, to inspire them to accept and embrace themselves for who they are totally. To be brave and feel all of their emotions. To re-connect with their body, their physical, emotional and spiritual body.
I encourage people to follow their intuition and heart’s calling, to elaborate their unique gifts in this world and lifetime and to believe in their capability of doing magic: to make the unbelievable things happen, to live a life where every day is so beautiful and mind-blowing and feels like a firework inside the heart.
I hope to inspire you to live a life of your dreams until it reaches a point where you cannot differentiate anymore between your life and your dream.
Because when I could do it, you can do it, too.
My Years before Yoga
Most of my life I have been disconnected from myself. Especially after high school I have gone through dark days, totally disconnected from my body, caught in sorts of negative feelings and thoughts. I played myself very small. Thus, I was in a relationship where I truly loved my partner, but completely lost and drained myself by living for him and not for myself. I was not aware of my own worth.
Some days I felt I could hardly breathe. As emotions are strongly manifesting in my body, I could feel my heart aching almost every day as if a knife would stab in. I cried myself to sleep almost every night because I couldn’t bear that heart pain. I even got sick for real, diagnosed with anemia, loss of blood, that didn’t have a medical explanation. Looking back I know I was drained in my spiritual body so much that my physical body suffered too (link between mind and body).
By this time I was studying Medicine at University, but the teachings of Western Medical School was not very satisfying nor resonating with me and my beliefs of how true healing works. Finally, I lacked deep connection with human beings.
I know that people that know me today from real life would never believe that this was my reality as I am now living a life I am so in love with. It is very shocking for me to think back of that time.
Meditation and Yoga found me
I would have never expected that meditation and Yoga would take such a central role in my life and they would actually become my magic, my therapy, my cure.
During my dark days after high school I got interested in spirituality, meditation, yoga and all sorts of holistic health as they were helping me to handle my situation. I have educated myself though books and especially a podcast that impacted me tremendously: “Happy, holy and confident” by Laura Malina Seiler.
I started doing Yoga in my first year of medical school when I was very weak in my body and also drained emotionally and mentally.
You wouldn’t believe it neither, but I had always made fun of Yoga as a teenage girl: I had always been a slim, unsporty, stiff girl with weak muscles and with low endurance and flexibility. Please, believe me – Yoga transformed my body totally.
Spiritually Yoga has guided me through a process of unfolding and understanding: becoming more and more my true self and at the same time realizing that we are all one in this life, connected and intertwined.
Through Yoga I learned to really love myself and to act out of this self love. Understanding I am worth it. This was the key to miracles happening afterwards.
Yoga teacher training
Finally realizing that I am worthy of living the life that I dream about and that my potential deserves to unfold, I acted upon my bravery and decided to absolve a Yoga Teacher Training, not knowing how to finance this and also knowing I would worry my parents with this decision.
„You will get in life what you have the courage to ask for.” (Oprah Winfrey).
This sentence led me.
In miraculous ways I got a well paid job my the health department of my city during the lockdown and in this way financial support that enabled me this journey of the Yoga Teacher Training which enriched my personal path on many levels.
Miraculous times after my Yoga teacher training
Returning home to Germany from the wonderful 200-hours Yoga teacher training in Vinyasa and Ashtanga Yoga at Alpha Yoga School in Evia Island, Greece I felt so much gratitude that the only way expressing that gratitude was through sharing everything I have learned to my environment. I started a Whatsapp Group with my friends to teach them Yoga online (there was still a lockdown back then).
When I started to teach Yoga I had sometimes thoughts inside me asking me „Who am I to think that I would be able to teach Yoga? How do I dare to even begin to teach after just passing 200hrs of Yoga teacher training as there are so many other Yoga teachers that are so much more skilled and learned longer than I did?“
But after teaching my first classes I felt so fullfilled. It actually reminded me of the reason why I started to study medicine. The feeling of connecting with humans and making them feel home in their divine being. So I kept teaching, I kept going and I kept being me. Simply like that. The resonance was enormous and beautiful. After a short time my Yoga group got bigger and bigger, as people invited their friends, flat mates, families. At the end the Pantiara Yoga Whatsapp Group contained over 150 people all over Germany and Europe, most of them I didn’t know. The group started with my friends and ended up with strangers that became my friends. Our weekly online classes have been the weekly highlight during the lockdown. It was a very beautiful, strong, energy-filled space that we created together.
Through that experience I learned to accept and embrace my gift of teaching Yoga, there was something that made people come to my classes. And so it happened that I surrendered to this flow state, feeling fulfillment like never before by being in service.
Even though they were donation-based classes I have earned money – more than I ever had before working as a waitress in a restaurant. I was even able to stop my credit loan for my studies. It was beautiful to feel how I could attract abundance by doing what I love. It showed me what happens when I am in flow with life, living my purpose, my Dharma and vibrating so high from being in service, in harmony of giving and receiving that every day feels like a miracle.
Why Medical school is (now) not for me
I feel so much gratitude towards my life that as a consequence I often ask myself: how can I serve best, how can I give back to the universe? How can I live out my gifts for this world in the best possible way? One day I woke up knowing that the answer to this question is not attending the Medical School of the Western World. Their teaching of healing was not very satisfying nor resonating with me and my beliefs of how true healing works. Finally, I lacked deep connection with human beings. I cannot see me prescribing drugs, working in a hospital and having barely time for my patients, looking superficially at their symptoms.
This is not where I can share my talents and gifts and reach people the best way. I actually never played with the thought of quitting med school, but with my journey of getting to know myself better and better I realized that my gift is to inspire people to re-connect with their self-love and their emotions. To make them realize that they have everything already inside them, that they have the ability to heal themselves.
I have the biggest respect for our doctors and scientists, and I am thankful for their work. But I know myself and I know that this is not the path I am supposed to walk. So I left this path that was once right for me thus far but no longer.
Sometimes the unknown scares me, too, but as long as I follow my inner guidance, my intuition step by step, trusting, creating safety from within me, I am walking a beautiful road where I learn to enjoy the journey, meeting like-hearted and like-minded people.
I hope my personal story encourages people to stop thinking they need to be a certain way or to achieve society-made goals, certificates or degrees, that go hand in hand with harmful bulimic learning approaches. I want to encourage people to start seeing this life as a never ending journey of loving, learning, discovering one self. I hope people understand that their time and energy on this earth is precious and they deserve to spend it on things they are passionate about.
Modeling
To model has been my big secret dream since forever. As a little girl I have been very shy and made myself very small when deep within I actually craved to break out and show my light… I daydreamed of walking runway shows and to be in the spotlight, in front of the camera, embodying different kind of emotions. When I was 18 and brave enough I applied to modeling agencies, but none of them wanted me. Looking back I know I wasn’t ready. There were still plenty negative beliefs inside of me (beliefs of not being good enough or beautiful enough…) and as mentioned above I was very unstable, not confident and not connected to my body or self worth.
So I buried my dream, but it was more a seed that I buried inside of my heart which kept growing inside of me over the years when I studied medical school. With a deep hope and some sort of inner knowing that it will happen at some point. Now thanks to my yoga and meditation practice, transformed in my body and my mind, I feel beautiful and confident in my whole being. Looking back I am so happy for how things unfolded. Now I feel I have all the skills and tools to work well in this industry that can be very tough physically and mentally. Again it is Yoga and Meditation that teaches me how to create stability from within me and to always re-connect with my core-trust.
It is insanely beautiful for me to witness how my childhood dreams are coming true: working with an A-Modeling-Agency, walking the runway shows at fashion weeks, being creative in front of the camera, working with professionals that are passionate as well and being spotted on international websites and posters.
I am living a life where it feels like thousands of little shooting stars are flying in my heart. Being more and more myself attracts more and more miracles. I am making a living out of simply being me. I am so happy and grateful that I kept going even though it was hard and the path wasn’t clear. It all led me to where I am now.
Today it al looks so simple. Though, it has not always been easy to speak and live out my truth – it required bravery, confidence and trust. Which I gained through experience and learnings. Yoga and Meditation.
The answer to a „How?“ is always: „Trust”.