B L O G

I’m beginning to really enjoy our pranayama practice. I feel really supported by my breath afterwards. Whenever an asana proves too difficult to hold onto, I can always count on my breath to give me a little support.    I’m now a little more attuned to the slight changes in my breathing, and one thing I’ve come to realise is that my breath is largely influenced by my thoughts. I could never betray it. When all is fine and dandy, I’m relaxed, and my breath is steady. But when negativity sets in, my breath becomes sporadic, shallow, my heart starts to beat faster, and anxiety sets in. As someone with chronic asthma, I’ve come to accept my condition as a way of life. And steroid inhalants are what I turn to for breath support.    But discovering the various ways of breathing, and what it can do for my lung capacity and consequently my health, has opened up a whole new world for me. I’m glad I now have a few tools in the bag to help me with my breath. I especially like Ujjayi, Kapalbhati and Nadi Shodana. Being able to hear my breath, and feel it travelling up my nose and all the way down to my stomach, and then coming up again through my nose, brings me much comfort.    It’s ironic how the one thing that gives us life, isn’t quite visible to the eye. We don’t even notice it half the time, and when we finally do, it’s usually because we could not keep up with it. It’s assuring to know that while I’m alive, my breath will never forsake me, and I can always come back to myself by focusing on it. I wish I could say I’m completely off the artificial support of inhalants, but unfortunately, I’m not. One day though, I will, slowly but surely. And I know that when that happens, I will be buoyed up by my breath.   Weiying 200HR YTT Jul’21 Weekend

Today I managed to do an inversion – pincha mayurasana. What surprised me was that when I finally brought myself up, it didn’t come as much of a surprise. In fact, with all things considered, it shouldn’t even come as a surprise, because of all the prior drills and preparatory asanas we did. In my heart of hearts, I knew I would get up there eventually. I just didn’t trust in myself enough.    Pessimism can be such a disease. It eats away at your self confidence and you think yourself a lesser being. Every attempted kickup into the inversion, I tell myself it’s too scary, I shouldn’t do it, I’ll get hurt, I’ll break something. And this is in addition to all the reminders Jess was lovingly piping from the side – tuck your ribs, tuck your tailbone, remember this, try not to do that…can you imagine how noisy it gets in the head?    But after weeks of failed attempts my mind got too tired of all the noise. One day in class, I simply followed the instructions to align my body – which provided a temporary respite for my frantic brain – I kicked up, and there I was, looking at the world from another angle. A sweet sweet feeling.    I wonder what other goals are within our reach if we just did the steps that led up to it (with intention, of course), instead of letting our anxieties hold us back. If we simply trusted in the process and let things fall how they may. Of course it helps tons to have a good guide in Jess, as well as the support of your mates. No man’s an island, and having a great support system sure goes a long way.   Yoga may not be the answer to everything, but I’m beginning to see how it can offer a source of centering (both philosophically and physically) within ourselves in times of uncertainty.   Weiying 200HR YTT Jul’21 Weekend

The sixth and last stage of my YTT experience can be termed as “The End but not Really?”, which is felt at the last few weeks of the YTT (I really managed to name them all, kudos to occupational hazard). YUP, teaching weeks are here and along that comes with it are exams and graduation! Having completed life’s first ever yoga teaching over Zoom, it is definitely an experience! Not just the practicality of it because you never know how the restrictions are going to be like, but alas, the preparation work that goes into a Zoom class is not any lesser than a physical class. Coupled with the limitations of virtual teaching, it certainly trains you to be a clear and effective instruction deliverer. As the number of COVID cases increase, virtual teaching has replaced physical teaching yet again! While this serves to safeguard our safety, the fact that we are not seeing each other for two weeks is not a welcoming thought (yes, overly attached much). Fingers crossed to be able to have graduation day together!   As I move on to this stage, there is definitely a sense of goal achievement and feeling of progression from Day One. However, all these comes along with this phenomenon of the “Arrival Fallacy” (worth a google) whereby you have this illusion that you will achieve ultimate happiness when you reached your goal. Sure, the thought of having weekends back for sleeping in or any other activities does sounds pretty awesome but there is also this nagging thought that “hmmm, what am I going to be doing during weekends from now on…..” The thought of having more time on hand is tempting but on the other hand, I wonder when I will have such discipline and physical strength again… (**disclaimer: just taking a lil break in between, not totally slacking yea). So yes, this concludes the six stages of my YTT, as I have very much personally coined them. Namaste!   Shi Qi 200HR YTT Jul’21 Weekend

The fifth stage of my YTT experience can be termed as “Adrenaline and Rush”. Adrenaline coming from the recognition that teaching weeks are impending, assignments are soon to be due and more so, the need to switch from current student mode to teaching mode pretty soon (*send some help). Besides sequences that needs to flow, I am proud to say that we have started thinking of regressions and progressions. Something that I never thought I will be doing as I am so attuned to the student role of doing that pose correctly. Yes, the mindset shift somewhat still boggles me but hey, it is possible! What makes all these a lot better is definitely the sessions on understanding different body types, physical adjustment class and starting on the assignments soon to help pace yourself given the other commitments that you may have (I know it is hard!). Procrastination is arguably the greater nemesis at this point in time :S   Well, there is always a silver lining in everything, including this adrenaline rush! Thankfully, being in an YTT with a group of like-minded people and seeing how hard they worked throughout does inspire you to get started. It’s like there is this subtle (or not so subtle) reminder when you see others taking instructional videos, posting on social media and bonus: offering to help you with positioning the camera, pressing that record button, assuring you that it is okay as many shots as you need to or filming alongside with you (thanks ladies <3). Perhaps it is that sense of working hard together; as I type here right now, I am somewhat thinking how am I at my fifth blogpost already.. Isn’t it just moments ago that I was lamenting how long it will take to get these six blogposts out…   Shi Qi 200HR YTT Jul’21 Weekend

The fourth stage of my YTT experience can be termed as “Disbelief and Reminiscence”. By now, we have downloaded and accepted Sanskrits into our system and teaching as part of our lives. As we go through drills and morning sequences, we started to laugh at some novel ways of pronouncing the Sanskrits as well as discovering how hard it is to differentiate left from right. But alas, the teaching of sequences became smoother and now, we start to expose ourselves to the other different poses that we never knew existed. They say “too many cooks spoil the broth” but not in this case! It was definitely so much of help learning new poses and sequences from one another rather than going through each of them ourselves. It definitely felt super surreal to go from learning one single pose to teaching a sequence to learning other poses to coming up with my own sequence that I will be teaching.   And as we progressed into all these exciting stuff, someone commented during lunch that: “Oh my god! We are more than half way through YTT!!”. Yes, it suddenly dawned on me that excluding teaching, exam and graduation week, we actually do not have much of practicing time together. Not sure who it was, but someone begin reminiscing about the past few weeks of YTT during lunch and other chipped in. initially in my “hey-guys-its-too-early-for this” mode, but I soon joined in the fun and oh boy, we did went through quite a fair bit together huh? We laughed, joked, related about our first impressions of one another in the first few weeks so naturally that if felt like we just enrolled in this YTT.. In this sense, I don’t think I will need to additionally explain how this fourth stage is being termed yea?   Shi Qi 200HR YTT Jul’21 Weekend

The third stage of my YTT experience can be termed as “Surviving and Resolute”. Accepting COVID to be part of our lives and adapt accordingly to it seems to be the way to go so moving on with the third stage! This stage of the YTT would be when most sequences comes together to make your life more tor…ture…. I mean exciting. Just when you thought you nailed the instructions for the standing and seated sequences, here comes prone and supine sequences plus inversions… It is also a period whereby the main goal of every practice weekend is to survive till break time (which we pretty much did, minus the zombie-fied mannerisms afterwards)!   So, what is the resolute part, you might wonder? Throughout the process, I think the resolute comes from how everyone turned up for practice, made the effort to remember each of the sequence, teach it and improve on the poses despite the weekday commitment. It comes from trying to practice a particular pose again and again despite falling multiple times. It is also the realization that: “mind over body” and “no emotions” when you are in some poses. The practice of yoga transcends beyond the physical component and having the mental capacity is equally important. At this point in time, the phrase “you are stronger than you think” comes into play.   What makes this process even more worthwhile is definitely having a group of like-minded people go through this with you. How everyone celebrated the small or big wins with you, how you learn by observing each other and how you have your personal group of cheerleaders is such a booster for you to continue nailing the poses. And even when you fail, you know these people will always be there to catch you when you fall (figuratively and literally).   Shi Qi 200HR YTT Jul’21 Weekend

I was going through a really difficult time as I felt like I didn’t know who I was. I felt so lost in the idea of who I am, and I couldn’t even recognize myself anymore. That was when I found yoga, or rather, yoga found me. Yoga became a compass, a beacon of light in my life, that began to guide me back home to myself. My yoga practice does not distract me from the difficulties I’m going through, but rather, guides me to hold space for myself to sit with and feel my emotions just as they are. For me to say my yoga journey has always been rainbows and sunshine, would be a big fat lie. There were countless days where it felt like the darkest nights filled with torrential rain would never end. But even then, my practice taught me that I could always come back to the home within myself. That my body, my mind, and my soul is a safe space where I can surrender to the journey that we call life.   In all honesty, I would say I’m a pretty chaotic person. Kind of weird and slightly crazy as well. And yoga became the silence and stillness I never knew I needed. With yoga, I started to become more aware of how and where I am restricted in my body, mind, and heart. My practice taught me to work on releasing these blockages and freeing my energy. I started to feel more harmonious and at one with myself. I feel more and more aligned with my body, my mind, and my soul than I have ever been in my life.   Yoga is truly a lifelong journey where I’ll always be a student. I thank my body for being a vessel filled with enough strength to allow myself to crumble down and yet rise back up again. I thank my mind for all that I’ve learned and for being open to what I have yet to learn. And I thank my soul for slowly but surely, learning to feel at home with myself and in turn, everything else.   Phyllis 200HR YTT Jul’21 Weekend

Jessica taught us about the different types of elements in our bodies, as well as the seven main chakras in our bodies. This is a relatively new learning field to me as my practice has always been dominantly physical and mental. As I learned more, I started to become slightly more aware of the energy within my body, as well as the energy in my surroundings. The first time I experienced my chakras being activated was during morning meditation. I tried out Jessica’s suggestion of meditating in a kneeling position as she told us that the discomfort would help us to better focus on one thought. True enough, all I could think of then were the discomfort my toes were feeling. It was and still is, a pretty unexplainable experience. However, I do know that spirituality would be an area I would like to continue exploring.   Before the YTT, the only type of energy I felt was more so the kind of vibes that people gave off them, or the types of energy I learned in secondary school (LOL). I was not even aware that spirituality and religiosity were different. I know, right? So, I had a chat with Jessica about what I was experiencing, and she advised me to focus on the energy within myself and that spirituality would come to me when I am ready for it. Spirituality, she said, is a journey that is best not to be rushed. And I agree with that.   Weiying 200HR YTT Jul’21 Weekend