This article is a synthesis of the Yoga Anatman session of September 26, 2026, a morning when the mat turned into a game controller and every breath revealed the secret backstage of the great cosmic game.
It is eight o’clock. Light slides softly across the mats. A cup of homemade chai steams beside you, crowned with a silky foam of coconut and hazelnut milk. Outside, the world keeps racing on. In here, something comes to a stop. 🌅
What if, this morning, everything you thought was a problem was really the secret signature of how alive you are? What if your difficulties were scattered clues in a game far vaster than you ever imagined? 🦋
The secret gameplay of your existence
There is an English word that French still struggles to translate: gameplay. What makes a game worth playing. What keeps you coming back, what you love, what you happily lose yourself in. Alexandre Anatman made it the common thread of this session — and he gently invites you to turn the question back on yourself.
Where is your gameplay? Where is the thing that makes you come alive, that makes you love being alive? The answer, as so often, isn’t where we look for it. It hides precisely where we don’t want to look: in the trials, in the difficulties, in those challenges that make the gears grind. ✨
Because did you know that the dead no longer have any problems? Tossed out with a smile, this sentence turns the obvious inside out like a glove. Having difficulties is proof that you are alive. And what if gratitude began exactly there?
The morning teaching
This morning’s elixir has an English name — because French, Alexandre says with a smile, lags behind on these things. That word is gameplay. What makes the game worth playing. What makes you truly love being alive. ✨
The question is dizzying in its simplicity: where is your gameplay? What truly fires you up in this life? Not what pleases you, not what you quite like — but what makes you vibrate at an astronomical level.
Alexandre suggests an exercise: remember your best moments in this life. Your most beautiful days. The times you were in ecstasy, in euphoria. What was it? Who were you with? In what setting? If you are younger and haven’t lived much yet, let intuition come — parallel lives, those memories that rise to the surface. 🌿
Then comes the reversal. The real one. The kind that brings certainties to tears.
“If you already had everything you wanted in every area of life, honestly, you’d be so bored there would be no game left.”
The gameplay isn’t in arriving. It is in the journey. It is in the delight of resolving difficulties. In the joy of finding within yourself the resources to navigate each trial. 💖
And Alexandre takes the idea right down to its root: what if creativity were born precisely from difficulties? What if you had to dive to the very depths of yourself to solve what seems unsolvable? What if that, exactly that, were the point of the game?
With humor, he mentions “the ragtag army of programs” — that inner voice that refuses: “No, I don’t want problems, I don’t want difficulties.” But that is a misunderstanding of the gameplay. It is failing to see that the game is the solving.
“Gratitude for having problems. Gratitude for being alive. Did you know that the dead no longer have any problems?”
The final realization: you are inside the video game where nobody knows they’re in a video game. It is the great cosmic joke. Someone really had to come up with that one. Step into a game, forget everything, and see how you react. 🦋
The Truman Show, The Matrix, Cloud Atlas, Free Guy, Ready Player One — a few films have come close. But the direct experience is lived here, on this mat, with this cup of chai. And the wonderful advantage of realizing you’re in a video game is that you can customize it. Tailor it to yourself. Why keep playing someone else’s game? 🌟
Then the final mantra descends, as obvious as can be: “I choose my game.” I choose my game. The game of the I and the I of the game. 🙏
Realizations during Yoga Anatman
🎁 This 10-minute excerpt of the session’s realizations (in French) is offered to you by ANATMAN TV.
The session opens with an individual leap, a long sound that travels through the chest. Then comes the first mantra, the phrase that sets the whole scene: “I surrender to my inner yogi, I surrender.” 🕊️
The hands rise, rise, rise. The calves tighten, then the thighs, the glutes, the abs. The body becomes stiff as a board, suspended by the toes, suspended by the invisible hands of the sky. And already, tears come. Already, something overflows.
Alexandre names it right away: “I welcome all emotions, I welcome.” Nothing to push away. Laughter and tears come from the same source. It is the level above — being, life, the soul, consciousness — that laughs or weeps through you. 💫
Next comes the blindfold. Visual reality is removed. The thumbs hook together, the spine arches back, then bends forward. The chest meets the thighs, the hands rise. And with each stretch, this phrase returns like a caress: “I surrender to my inner yogi.” 🌿
Then the right side stretches, long and slow. The left hand comes to massage the back of the neck, the skull. “The head presses quite firmly — the skull isn’t fragile at all,” Alexandre reassures. Tension drains from the neck. A powerful mantra then arrives: “I release with love everything that keeps me from being here and now in my bodily sensations.”
“Our yoga is going to heighten sensations. Sensitivity — it’s going to create hyperesthesia, all your senses will be amplified, and that’s normal.”
A luminous realization emerges: the earlier you go to sleep, the more you feel the yoga, and the more you create a rhythm, a structure in your life. Yoga is not an isolated exercise — it is an invisible architecture that holds everything else upright. 🌱
The Five Tibetans arrive with their energetic healing for the lower back. Then the pelvis draws circles, slow and wide, like a forgotten ritual. Alexandre points out: “When you do it every day, it’s easy, it’s fluid, you’re balanced all day long.”
Then the squat shows up, preparation for the frog and training for skiing this winter. Laughter ripples through the room. “I release with love everything in me that doesn’t like physical effort.” Then comes the frog itself, three minutes of breath of fire. Options: push-ups, half lotus, or keep going with the frog. Everyone adapts; everyone creates their own practice. 🙏
Then comes the sacred moment of the strap. The right leg lifts, straight, perpendicular. The lower back embraces the floor — Alexandre insists on the word: “Feel the meaning of the word embrace.” Not even a trouser seam’s width remains between the vertebrae and the floor.
And there, a dizzying mantra settles in: “I link delight and stretching.” Then: “I allow myself to feel good, I allow myself.” 💖 The heart opens. The gratitude of starting the day in a state of ecstasy, of euphoria, spreads like a fragrance.
“I start the day in a state of ecstasy, of euphoria, and then I’ll keep that state all day long.”
Alexandre then shares a major physiological realization: what you are experiencing is a cellular cocktail — oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine, endorphins. Every cell in your body laughs with you. Every cell holds that signature for twenty-four hours. Studies on laughter yoga confirm it. 🌟
The left leg takes over. Then comes a deep invitation: observe the nostrils. Are Ida and Pingala open? Sushumna too? This is the yogic science of pranayama surfacing, discreet and precise.
The arms stretch backward. And suddenly, a naked truth: “I let go so much that I may stop breathing for a while, and that’s okay.” Consciousness observes the body. Each exhale becomes a rehearsal of the last breath, each inhale a celebration of the first. 🕊️
“Feel the sacredness of this last breath. The end of a cycle.”
Then the seated posture. The cup of chai arrives. The elixir ritual unfolds. Alexandre shares a realization that comes from far back: as early as 2015, he had created a morning ritual with green tea to write the book Who Are You?. Structure, a beautiful habit, the sacredness of the morning — it is a thread running through the years. 🌅
Then the mantra drops in, self-evident: “Gratitude for creating my practice.” Not copying, not imitating — drawing inspiration, adapting, personalizing. Everyone is different. Everyone has different needs.
Then comes the realization of the non-localized. You can do this practice at any hour of the day or night. As a replay. At five in the morning or at ten. It makes absolutely no difference. Why? Because what you are is not localized. ✨
“Scientists keep trying to find identity in the brain — they can search for a long time. It is consciousness that creates the illusion of location.”
Mindful walking arrives, a gift to Alexandre from François after his ten years with Thich Nhat Hanh. The blindfold goes back over the eyes. You spin around. You lose your bearings — “the idea is to no longer know, since we are non-localized.” And then: “It walks. It walks all by itself.” 🦋
All consciousness in the feet, in the sensations. The body moves without a director, without a captain. It meets others, shares hugs blindfolded, in the non-localized. Then comes the magical moment: the blindfold comes off, the eyes open, and it keeps walking all by itself.
The final realization then settles in, quiet and immense: this way of functioning — as an observer, a channel that lets things happen from bodily sensations — can be kept all day long. It is no longer the unconscious programs calling the shots. It is the flow of life. 💫
“Practice is life. At first, I do an hour or two of yoga in the morning. In the end, yoga is the whole day.”
That is this morning’s quantum leap: the session doesn’t end when you roll up your mat. It infuses. It carries on. It becomes you. 🙏
If you already had everything you wanted in every area of life, honestly, you’d be so bored there would be no game left.
I have problems, therefore I exist. I have a life, therefore I have problems — oh, wonderful.
Practice is life. At first I do an hour or two of yoga in the morning; in the end, yoga is the whole day.
Voices from the We
Morning greetings 🌅
The tribe gathered with the simple, luminous words that open every session:
- “hi there, tribe, hugs and kisses” — Shakti Anne
- “hello to you all” — francis
- “Hello everyone” — Valérie
- “Good morning, everybody” — Cécile
Shared gratitude 💖
At the end of the session, the same word came back again and again, voiced by several people — like a silent choir:
“gratitude I love you” — Shakti Anne
- “grattitude” — francis
- “Gratitude” — Valérie
- “have a lovely day” — Shakti Anne
- “have a lovely day” — Rafaël
These messages, understated yet full, are a reminder that the Anatman We is also woven from short words, between two breaths. 🙏
Themes: gameplay · video game · non-localized · gratitude · mindful walking · morning ritual · surrender · realizations
This article was originally written in French: Yoga Anatman : Et si la vie était un jeu vidéo dont vous étiez le créateur ?
