Who Moved My Yoga Mat?
With yoga now part of mainstream exercise, it’s important not to lose sight of what it really means.
Throw a stone these days and there’s a good chance it’ll land on a yoga mat. From personal yoga trainers to independent studios in shophouses to fitness chains, yoga is everywhere. It’s become so widespread that it’s almost rare to meet someone who hasn’t tried it at all in some way, shape or form. Certainly, everyone has heard of it.
Yoga
Taking Off with Bikram Yoga
Few things help us get better as we get older. Bikram yoga is one of them.
A longtime friend of mine, a lovely gentleman well into his 70s, once explained to me what he thought entering a new life stage should be feel like. So many people, he said, are scared of going from one life stage into the next, particularly as they get past a certain age. They see the stakes get higher, the opportunities lessen and sense their own decline.
Have You Lost Your Mind?
Reawakening the mind-body connection with yoga
How many times have you heard people talk about their mind as if it were a separate entity from their body? When they say things like ‘I don’t know where my head is today’, ‘my mind is wandering’, or ‘it’s in all in your head’, they are portraying the mind as something that bubbles away in its own space, hived off from the body.
How to Choose a Hot Yoga Studio
Roll open a yoga mat these days and you’ll touch a yoga studio. Yoga is more popular in Singapore than ever before and there seems to be studio in every other mall and shophouse corner. Different styles of yoga are on offer and amongst those hot yoga is growing faster than any other kind right now. ‘Hot’ and ‘Non Hot’ versions of yoga are available in more and more studios.
If You Asked Me Then
I took my first yoga class in the mid-1990s. It was an Iyengar class. I had heard of yoga but knew little about it and certainly never practised it before. I was wowed. What is this practice, I thought? All the stretching, bending, holding and breathing left me wiped out but also invigorated, and settled my mind. I was very attracted to the practice but at the time lacked the discipline and understanding to stick with it. I attended class for a while, then stopped, then started again, then stopped—and continued in this off-and-on fashion for many years. More off than on. But I never left it completely, and deep down in my heart kept going back to it, searching for more.
A Meant to Be Moment
You know how some things in life are just meant to be. If life is a giant quilt made up of all different kinds of patches—some bright, some dark, some blending right in, some sticking out, some that came from within us, others that we picked up along the way—these things are the pieces that make the quilt more complete, better and more beautiful. And you know when you’ve found find one of these precious pieces because it feels just right for you. Like it’s meant to be.
