“Teach what is inside you..”

I have been struggling with defining MY own version of success for a little while now. If you had been following my writings in the past 4-5 months, you will see this has been the main theme running throughout the past entries. Truth be told, I had been so fixated with the idea of success which I had formed in my early 20s that letting go of this rigid definition of success became a starting point to which I began to question what truly, and absolutely matters to me.

My TTC last September-Oct was not the starting point to reconstructing my own idea of success, but it was definitely an enabler which opens up a floodgate from which passion, interest, and the desire to serve others were rekindled. Since the conclusion of the TTC last Oct, I had been teaching beginners-intermediate Hatha Yoga to a handful number of mostly women. Women who are my close friends, my colleagues, and also strangers that faithfully walked through the door of the multipurpose hall every Saturday to attend the sessions that I lead.

The more I teach, the more humbled I am. I know for sure, joy for me resides in the light that shines through the eyes of these women as they slowly open their eyes from their final Savasana pose. One weekend ago, a woman who had been practicing her shoulder stand with the support of a wall eventually pushed off and held her pose on her own. As I was assisting another person from across the room, she let out a tiny squeak and soft “wheee” as I am sure the exhilaration of mastering something new washes through her.

When she eventually got out of the pose, and 5 breath of Matsyasana later, she rolled back up and told me “I did my first shoulder stand at home this week, and I was so excited I nearly wanted to call you straight away”

I smiled to what seemed like a HUGE grin, as a big ‘WOW!’ moment reverberated through my mind. In that moment, I know everything thing that has brought me to this very moment, was absolutely, and totally worth it.

Maya Angelou once said – Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.

I have not reached that point in which I can crystalize my own idea of success so coherently into one sentence as that. But I know it comes pretty close. And I have this suspicion that it has something to do with sharing what I know of yoga to the masses so that they too can journey through their own lives in the most peaceful & rewarding way possible.

All the same, the more I teach the more I feel that I am learning of the essence of humanity, what drives people? what is important? where are they now and where do they wish to go with their own lives?

I came across a powerful advice from the words of Sri T Krishnamacharya who is also the man responsible for the sparking the birth of Ashtanga Yoga and Iyengar Yoga (both Sri Patabhi Jois & Iyengar were his students). He said “Teach what is inside you, not as it applies to you, to yourself, but as it applies to the other”

Thus serving as a constant reminder that to teach is not always to dump all your knowledge onto the next willing passerby, but to consciously form the understanding of where the other is at that very moment and structuring the next 75-90 minutes of your time together as it applies to them. And if I can do this, and have the same desired effects from every single person that attends my classes, that to some degree, is success to me.

The root of your Dharma

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about what life would be like for me in 10 years time. Not so much in the essence of a 10-year plan but if I was to visualise what life would be like at that point of time, what will I be doing? who do I have in my life? 

Obviously, all of this is sparked from that one conversation I had sometime towards the end of 2012 which I had written of in one of my previous posts. 

The big mother question of “what is my Dharma? what could be the thing that I am meant to contribute to mankind during my lifetime on earth?”

Coincidentally, one of the women who turned up on my Saturday classes that I had been teaching consistently since January told me about an ashram in Nashik, India. Upon further Googling (don’t we all love technology) that night I found out that they offer a 1 month yoga therapy teacher’s training which will place emphasis on healing through yoga.

I thought to myself, perfect! This will be my next adventure!

Just before heading to bed, thoughts filled with excitement, possibilities and imagination it occurred to me that by going through with this plan, I could eventually combine all of the things that nourishes me, and finally come face to face with the desires that I have rooted since young. 

Fascination with dance, movement of the body and desire to express through movement

I have always loved the idea of being a dancer. The grace that all dancers posses and bring to the stage, be it a ballet, or a hip hop performance and the ability to manipulate their bodies in order to express and communicate their emotions to the audience leaves me in awe and pure admiration. Yes, this is where I admit my favorite reality tv show is So You Think You Can Dance. Everytime there is a stellar performance, where the dancer, the choreography and the music culminates to perfection, I get goosebumps.

Someone once commented that I have the body of a ballerina. And I silently added to that sentence, “only that I can’t move as one”. Through yoga though, I eventually found a medium in which I can move according to how I feel, and it is now one of the channels I use to ‘unload’ some of my residual emotions which alone, I could not have worked through. 

The desire to help people be their best self, the desire to heal

As a young girl, my favourite TV shows were Chicago Hope and ER. Not much has changed since then. These days I catch Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice whenever I have the time to do so. I always thought I would be a medical doctor someday. In high school. biology was one of my favorite subjects and I would be one of those annoying ones that gets overly excited on days that we are due to dissect some sort of animal parts. One of my best memories of Biology was seeing a pair of cow’s lungs and watching another classmate blowing through a tube to inflate it. Gross to many, completely fascinating to me.

Through the years, I find the things that leaves me feeling strong are when I can positively add value by helping another person to feel better, be it about themselves or about a specific challenging situation. I realised I liked helping people. And I realise to a certain extent that has been the one common thread that has been guiding me through the all the critical life decisions I’ve had to make concerning my education and my career. It explains why I was obsessed with the kind of work that United Nations Development Program are involved in, why I spent 2 summer breaks interning with them, why I got a Masters in Social Development. It is what that has guided me into a job as a public health consultant, and now, a change management consultant. 

People fascinate me, helping them and seeing positive changes in them, enlivens me. So the thought of being able to combine my love of movement on the mat together with the possibility of helping to influence people to make healthier, better choices towards a more empowering life felt like I had just discovered the solution to a very complicated algebra question.

Which then brings me to my next realisation, your dharma should not necessarily be something that you have to search for, sometimes it is already there, always have been a part of you, just waiting for you to piece it all together and come to a realisation that this perhaps could be what your life’s purpose is. 

 

“Everything that shines ain’t always going to be gold”

Growing up, the thought of making money and becoming exorbitantly rich never really crossed my mind. And then those teenage years came and when I entered high school I was inducted to a world where my friends were being dropped off at school by their chauffeurs , where their parents were members of coveted golf clubs so we got to dine there at a great discounted price and where every girl I knew wanted to look like the girls that appear in the Seventeen magazine.

Sometime in Uni, determined not to bend to this delusional demands of the crazy society, I remembered telling myself that I will always do what I love, and the money will come. Do what I love, and the money will come. And so came my first job with a reputable bank, the money then to a young 21 year old seemed plenty, the bonus, jaw-dropping. Then again looking back, I’m convinced it was due to the novelty of going from a student who earns zero income to a 4 figure sum that suddenly appeared in my account one day.

But I came home crying to my parents, I remembered sitting in the living room and just balling my eyes out telling them how unhappy I was whilst the both of them look on with the most bemused expression on their faces. A year shy of employment, a partial scholarship offer from the University of Queensland and after a fateful meeting with R, then the Resident Representative for United Nations Development Program, I handed in my resignation letter.

Then came my second career path as public health consultant. The people were great, and I got paid what I had asked for. The job were various, and meaningful. I was even given free reign to construct and conduct my own social research. But I could never shake off the tinge of worry that perpetuated every time my mum brings up the fact that the employees I chose to work for is NOT a large, world renown MNC,  hence how can I be possibly building a promising career track that will bring in recognition and status? On occasions relatives or family friends asked her where I work, I would always detect a tinge of embarrassment in her answer and quick diversion to a different topic .

2 years into it, and at a time when I began to questioned every single thing that forms my system of beliefs, I wrote my second resignation letter. This time to join a global consulting firm, at a 15% paycut and a slight demotion. Why? These days I believe it was mostly driven by the need to make my parents proud, so that they can answer with pride and a beam in their faces when someone asks them about their first born daughter. At that time though, I was driven by the need to learn, to achieve, to be someone. I was drawn by the 2 months bonus (which ended up having me tied down to the company for 2 years, a move that in hindsight always gets me shaking my head wondering why I was so gullible). I endured 2 years of long, gruelling hours that sometimes stretches beyond midnight, zooming down the Federal Highway because everyone else is already home and probably sound asleep in bed, being screamed at for a whole 2 hours in a glass room that obviously was NOT sound proof, and eventually finding refuge from a lookout point in a women’s toilet at a client’s site.

I am still here though. Enduring still, long hours and perpetual feeling of having completely no idea what I’m doing and why I’m doing it for. Just recently I had gotten the promotion that I felt I had sacrificed many mealtimes, shed many tears, and swallowed many antibiotics for. Never in the history of my career had I fallen sick so often. I have made the responsible, young adult decision that this is stability. This is safe. This will lead me to a house ownership and financial freedom. But will it? And at what expense?

Yesterday I wrote to my friend on BBM – “I always thought more money will mean a little bit more happiness. But I am SO unhappy right now. Why is this so??”

Last week our annual bonus was credited into our accounts. I took a look at the sum, and though for the first time I saw a 5 figure sum that actually wholly belonged to me, I felt nothing. Except perhaps a deep sense of dissatisfaction. Not because I am ungrateful for what I got and what I have, but because I felt what I had given up, is not being compensated as equally. My health, my sense of wellbeing and the confidence of being sure in what I am doing, how do you compensate any of that with a figure in your savings account?

And yet again I confided to my dad, that even with all this supposedly “good” things that are happening to my career,  heading to work in the morning feels like a march towards my grave. I know what I want, and it is what I had felt while I was away in Koh Samui. It is what I feel now when I lead a yoga class with clarity and peace. It is true, that everything that shines will not always be gold. Sometimes it resides in the simplicity of just being in the moment.

I did. I’ve done. I was here.

Beyonce performed “I was here” at the United Nations World Humanitarian Day, and let me tell you, this is one of those rare songs that gave me the chills AND made me tear at the same time. Click on the play button and you’ll see what I mean.

The song has since received 4 million hits, and it was put on Youtube a mere 10 days ago. It reminded me of the very simple fact that every one of us has the ability to create change, be the change and contribute towards a better world. Even in the smallest gesture.

But more importantly, and oddly enough, this song brought forth all the things that I forgotten from my early 20s. The desperate wanting of achieving something important, doing something remarkable and meaningful, and the yearning to have a direct association with the United Nations as my employer. Yes, almost everybody who is involved in the international development and non-profit work knows the breadth of influence United Nations has these days is questionable. Gone were the days when Kofi Annan would deliver a convincing speech, and developed nations would willingly join forces towards peace. Heck, even Kofi Annan can’t seem to stop the Syrian conflict these days. Ask the general bystander if they know who Ban Ki Moon might be, and a blank look will follow suit.

Still, you cannot deny the awesome feeling that entails (or maybe it’s just me, nevermind, let’s just pretend you know that awesome feeling I’m talking about) when you answer that all too familiar small talk question – “Where do you work?” or “What do you do for a living?” with “I’m a programme officer for [insert any one of the UN bodies here]”

I remembered a time when my attempts to get one foot into the UN door kept failing. And a heart-to-heart conversation with one of my mentors made me realise that getting into the UN was the ultimate for me. Sure it was a goal, but it should never be viewed as a Point B, the be all and end all of everything else. So what if you are not in United Nations, or you don’t work in the office that manage Global Fund and Bono is on your speed dial? That does not mean you can’t make the life of a single mother in your town happy by dropping in for a chat, or the child esteem a little better by helping him/her with their homework.

S, my lovely boss and mentor who cried and sobbed through her farewell speech for me when I left 2 years ago once told me “It is how you feel about yourself on your deathbed that matters. Before you leave this world, you want to feel like you have given your everything to have a life that you are proud of leaving behind”

I was here,
I lived, I loved
I was here,
I did, I’ve done everything that I wanted

Nevermind that you have had heart breaks, disappointment, and a lot of people saying “No” to you. You might not be helping to provide clean sanitary drinking water to the children in India today, but that does not mean that you will not ever do so in this lifetime.  Nevermind the tears and the frustration that sometimes follow a burning ambition that is not quite met. It does not mean that it will never be met. The very fact that you are here today, right here, right now, allows you the power to do something about it. To do everything that you have ever wanted, and to do it with all your heart.

 

How old is your soul?

Children grow up believing in things that transcends the reality we live in. In Santa, fairies, unicorns, elves and angels. And even if the latter may raise debates (though I believe that angels really do exist) somewhere along those years, these beliefs somehow disappear. Perhaps from repeated disappointment, or maybe from the simple error of believing that other people knows best.

I think we are all equipped with our own intelligence, and it is sometimes the trust that we lack in ourselves which brings us to make choices that entails less risk but equally less than desirable outcomes.

Why do people stop believing in angels? or Santa Clause?

Or Love? or the possibility of being able to love and be loved in precisely the exact way they have always wanted?

Perhaps the safer route is indeed the smarter route. The path of least resistance that quiets the nasty uncertainties about the future, and our own capability to overcome these. Contrary to what many seem to say, it is not hard to let go of your desires, those desires that fuels you at the very thought of it (whether that be a passion, a dream job, an object of desire or even a person), it is in fact easier. Because the path to attaining those desires is often characterized with a boulder-sized of uncertainties and possibilities of disappointments making it far more easier to opt out, and adopt the status quo. It is that much easier to come up with a list of excuses of why it will not work than to truly confront your heart’s desires even if the effort required is equal both ways.

But then, where is the fun and adventure if we always opt for the safety of what we know? And how do we begin to even try to remain young at heart, if at every time the road ahead of us forks into two, we choose the less bumpy road without ever knowing that the end of which could be attaining something less than what we really deserve?

We’ve got a lot to learn, god knows we are worth it – Jason Mraz

The language of the world

A week in Italy made me realize there are certain things about the human life that is common across the world, irrespective of culture, skin colour, religion or where you come from. It’s like the world speaks to you in its own universal language through human behavior.

M. Scott Peck in A Road Less Travelled began the first chapter of his book admitting that “Life is hard”. True that our life’s struggles come in many form and shape but in Rome, I learnt that these challenges are more often the same no matter where you live.

On the third day of our trip, I caught up with a colleague whom I met at training in Chicago last year. We were brought to a trendy, recently-launched lounge which operates a health spa during the day where I met his tall gorgeous redhead of a girlfriend and a handful of his other friends. We got down to talking about everything that makes Italy home to them. A group of twenty-something commiserating over getting life into momentum in a mix of English, Italian and a lot of expressive hand gestures. For a while, they were bantering in Italian to what seemed like a heated debate. I got another one of the girls to help translate for me and it appeared they were discussing about ‘love’ issues. I guessed it must have been one of the girls complaining that her other half had forgotten to take out the trash that weekend.

Once the conversation turned to English, we eventually gathered that one of the girls hated her job but the money from it affords her to pay her half of the mortgage of their recently bought apartment. The infamous question of “should I stay in this mundane job and keep earning the bucks or should I risk it and pursue my passion?” was raised.

Doesn’t that sound absolutely familiar?

I don’t know about you, but it definitely does to me. As the conversation developed, I got the impression that a majority of the working class young adults in Rome do not have it easy in their initial years setting up a nest of their own. And by that I mean moving out, starting a career, long-term relationships, marriage and kids. At one point, their wide-eyed look felt more like eyes that were about to pop and roll on the floor towards the DJ and his turntable when we told them the price of petrol per litre that we, normal working class Malaysian citizens pay.

For a while now, my itchy feet has been longing for me to move out of the country and earn a living elsewhere. That night I realized, there are a LOT of things to be thankful for by remaining in my home country – government petrol subsidy being on those things.

Reading poetry into the sunset

And then there is love. Whether you are down South in Australia, or the on the China Silk Road, or up north in an unfamiliar European country, the language of love is immediately understood. The photo above was taken in Piazza del Campidoglio, where an Italian couple were sitting together at dusk reading each other poetry.

Massimo, who were one of the friends we made in that lounge that night told us the story of how he met his current wife, this beautiful lithe blonde next to him. A quick private snicker was shared between the two when asked how they had met, before he turned to me and asked “Are you sure you really want to know how we met?”.

I always enjoy listening to stories of how two people met. Theirs by far, is one of the most hilarious and wonderful ones I have heard thus far. For the next 1 hour, we learnt that they had met years ago on a movie set (how surreal!) and shared their first kiss on the screen because they were directed to do so. A few years of break between the two as each went their separate ways, they met again but each were now engaged to different people. It made me realize that life, really has a way of leading you through it with some crazy twists and turns. Today, they have been happily married for a year and a half and they speak of each other with that comical sense of fondness that kept us laughing throughout the night.

I saw a lot of things, tasted many delicious food and drink, felt a range of emotions from intrigued to complete exhaustion (which could only happen if you have been on your feet for a full 12 hours, walking, climbing up and down many hills, getting on and off trains and buses over a number of days) while in Italy. Many more entries (and photos!) to follow on my perspective of this trip soon 🙂

 

Do not go gentle into that good night

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night. – Dylan Thomas 

I am starting to wonder what I will do for the next 6 weeks to fill up my evenings now that my purple yoga mat is rolled up and snugly sitting in its zippered bag, forlornly looking at me from the corner of my room might I add. Coincidentally, I came across this brilliant article on yogajournal entitled Burn Out, Don’t Fade Away which talks about common setbacks in the course of one’s journey with yoga.

And it made me feel that much better knowing that these setbacks are necessary and part of the journey.

Setbacks are necessary.

If only my head can accept that as easy as the mouth that utters it. But yet such a concept is no stranger to poets, philosophers, psychologists and spiritualists alike.

M.Scott Peck made a living off this belief that “life is difficult” in his international bestseller “The Road Less Travelled”. In the same book, he also mentioned that marriage is God’s trick to get two people to commit to each other for the rest of their lives – but then again.. that would be a topic which calls for an entirely separate entry altogether.

Viktor E. Frankl recounts his heartbreaking experience being in various concentration camps during the Holocaust but emerged from this a wise man who offered the world a valuable perspective of finding meaning through suffering. And it may not be always need to be a painful, life/death type of suffering, heck, it can even be the type of suffering you experience just trying to get by on a working day, but the fact of the matter is that as long as you attach a meaning to any of your life’s circumstances, you are on your way to a better life.

Late last year while catching up with one of my mentors, I remembered being deeply frustrated for not receiving the acknowledgement at work which I had been counting on for about a year before that. I did what I thought was required of me. I put in the hours and more, and got myself busy in extra social activities that most corporations pride themselves for as being part of its “Better Workplace” concept these days. But when silence followed the usual period where you would expect to be notified, I knew that I wasn’t going to be getting any salary revision anytime soon. My mentor, who has over 15 years of work experience under her belt proceeds to whip out her Blackberry and showed me this:

I think what she was trying to tell me that day was not to dwell too much on the “have-not’s”, but to look forward into the future and keep doing what I know is right for me. I love how Dylan Thomas describes that one should never go gently into the night, to never give up, and to rage, rage against the dying light.

As for me and my yoga practice, I think I will consider light stretching while watching TV as my next best plan for the coming weeks. At least that way I know all that flexibility I’ve achieved in my hamstrings will not go to waste. Plus, you’d be surprised of the many healthy things you could do while simultaneously trying not to snort at those guys in The Bachelorette.