Yoga India TTC : Open Practice and Master Class

You're invited to join the daily morning Open Classes and a weekend Master Class, with Master Bharath Shetty (Mysore), in conjunction with the Yoga India 200 Hour Teacher Training in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.


Come practise with our teacher trainees during their Module 1 TTC, and learn from one of South India's best Hatha teachers.  Details in the poster below. Please pre-register by calling or texting Calvin at 012-3393810 (no walk-ins, please).


See you on the mat soon.
Namaste.

The Yoga India 200H TTC comes to Malaysia

I am delighted to announce that my master, Yoga Acharya Bharath Shetty of Yoga India, Mysore will be coming to Kuala Lumpur next year to teach the 200 Hours Teacher Training Course. The Yoga India 200 Hours TTC is recognised by Yoga Alliance, and Bharath has completed over 28 TTC's to-date (and counting). This one month intensive course is aimed to train aspiring yoga teachers to a competent level of teaching beginners and intermediates.  The TTC will be in collaboration with Journey Within Studio. Module 1 will begin in 2 April 2012, and Module 2 in 2 July.  The course is limited to a maximum of 20 teacher trainees. 

My Guruji, Bharath Shetty, with
his Guruji, B.K.S Iyengar in Mysore

I feel truly blessed to share Bharath's teaching in Malaysia, as well as the opportunity to assist him in the TTC, in areas of Asana, Teaching Practicum and Anatomy.


There is no better way to learn, than to teach.
Om Shanti, love & light to all.

For more info, visit www.journeywithin.com.my

The Oxymoron of Yoga

Presenting the Simple Supreme vinyasa sequence. What an oxymoron.... typical of Edward Clark's dry humour. It's like asking someone to give you an exact estimate or declaring you're a social smoker! Supreme yes, like the pizza with everything on top, but there is certainly NOTHING simple about this sequence. And this is just ONE of the vinyasa sequences from our 500 Hours Tripsichore Teacher Training. And there are 14 sequences in total. Wondering why I signed up for this, still wakes me up in the middle of some nights.


As I got onto the mat this morning, I glanced at the red circle on my calendar... 24 October. With Module 3 of the TTC just 3 weeks away, how will I remember all of this??? 


Love, Practice and Sweat from,
A Moron on the Mat

Making Peace with My Practice

"Your light is to work only but never with its fruits. Let not the fruits of action be your motive, let you not be attached to inaction. Be steadfast in yoga, O Arjuna. Perform your duty without attachment, remaining equal to success or failure. Such equanimity of mind is called yoga". (Bhagavad Gita 2:48)


As a yoga teacher, I create the arena for people to explore possibilities and discover their potential. It is "my yoga"... "my dharma"... to inspire, to guide and to nurture students along their yogic journey, to my best ability. 


It takes a long time to get good at things.... a really, really, really long time. The late Pattabhi Jois said, "Practice.... and all is coming".  Yeah, and being the wise yogi, he never mentioned 'exactly when all will be coming'. Module 3 of the Tripsichore Yoga TTC starts in exactly 3 weeks.  Me and the Handstand version of the Tripsichore practice? Nope, the Handstand will definitely not be 'coming'.... not anytime soon... not in a Sthira Sukham Asanam way (Sadhana Pada 2:46)... not even when I wake up on Christmas morning and peer into my stocking! (and I've been a really good girl this year too!)


Life and yoga, is, but a work-in-progress.  And like the Gita verse above, if we start caring less about the destination, and instead, enjoy the discoveries of the journey, and start looking at how far along we've come from Day One, we would have made peace with our practice.


Monday night's Vinyasa class for Intermediates had a few 'Brave New Entries'. The Brave New Entries were from my Beginner's class, making their debut in a 90-minute class.  Not wanting to intimidate them, and yet trying to balance attainability with challenge (for the regulars), I backed off from long(er) holding postures, and instead had them breathing one breath per movement. Alignment was not so much the highlight of the evening, but body-mind-breath connection was.


Lining up 4 blocks against the wall, the new practitioners were kept busy with the baby steps to Sirsasana.  Fascinated with learning what the 'older kids' were doing, thuds and giggles could be heard as they tried kicking up against the wall and staying up.

Image from Essential Yoga

I then took the opportunity to wean some of the Regulars off doing the headstand against the wall.  Letting the breath lead, and with the uddyana and mula engaged, the Regulars got into the Headstand Split, and stayed stable for 8 whole breaths.  Those who could already hold a steady Headstand, were presented the challenge of different arm and leg variations in the pose.

Headstand Split, Tripsichore style

Classical styles of Yoga always taught the Headstand with both legs straight up in the air - the final pose.  But today's practitioners often find this very intimidating especially when they were to do the asana in the centre of the room after being so used to the crutch of wall support. But by getting them to do the Headstand Split first, the inversion suddenly becomes more accessible, they fight fear face on, actually get the feel of the inversion, thus getting the best of both worlds. Eventually, as their confidence increases with constant practice, the Headstand "will come". 

In my personal yoga practice, the 'getting there' may be the icing on the cake, but mindful exploration on letting the breath lead to what works for my body and letting the practice naturally unfold, certainly is the cherry on top.

My Tripsichore Module 2 : Things Fall Apart, So That Other Things Can Fall Together

For the past 3 years now, since I'd gotten onto the teacher's mat, having a well-maintained, strong physical body has been the source of my well-being, income and the anchor to my personal practice.


Imagine my horror, when I over-strained my intercostal muscles during my practice of the Khonundrum sequence just a WEEK before Module 2 of my Tripsichore Teacher Training!  Every inhalation felt like someone had stabbed a knife into my left rib-cage and in slow, deliberate motion, continued slicing the knife's blade down the rib-cage towards the kidney.  Even lifting my left arm backwards to an arc felt excruciatingly painful.


The injury left me somewhat frustrated, but it also left me thinking. A sprained wrist and an asthma attack accompanied my Module 1 of the Tripsichore Training but I worked within the boundaries of my limitations (and pain), and sailed through a tough but enjoyable training session.  But with the intercostal sprain, my range of motion seemed more limited, and total rest was the only alternative.  How now brown cow???


Because the 'me' had always felt tied to physicality as far as yoga was concerned, the injury left me somewhat disoriented, when the training started on 29 May.


The first 3 days took me on a roller-coster ride of challenges... physically, mentally and emotionally.  I tried to sought out the 'peace' in the vinyasa practice and found none.  As this was, as Edward Clark put it, 'one of the world's toughest yoga teacher training', it felt very much like Asana Boot Camp as we were pushed right to the precipice of our individual breaking points of the practice by more complicated and advanced postures and sequences.  It also didn't help when some tension between the training faculty openly reared its ugly head.

Edward Clark playing 'peek-a-boo' in
an inverted Garudasana

If the breath sets the tone of my practice, then the 'tone' for the first 3 days was one of anger mingled with a foggy perception of my commitment to the practice.  I started to question if I was on the right path, and if this was the yoga journey I'd wanted.  Or was the physical limitation a test of perseverance? 

Just breathe (painfully)

Day 4 came around, and with it, a calmer frame of mind (perhaps also due to fact that the pain had subsided tremendously....amazing what anti-flammatories and pain-killers can do).  The self-anger I had felt for the past 3 days got channeled to a different kind of energy... a positive one.  The frustration was used to refine and improve my practice, and the fog that had misted over my decision to embark on the training, slowly dissipated.  As the breath got calmer, I started to detach from what I could achieve at the end of each day, and instead focussed on doing one thing at a time without being presumptuous to what's coming next.

According to yogic texts, the Sanskrit word 'vidya' means wisdom or knowledge - the wisdom that is earned through deep (self) practice and experience.


In the "texts" of Edward Clark, the Tripsichore Teacher Training is a physically and philosophically intensive and complicated practice.  During my chat with him, he revealed that, the purpose of the course is to work purely on the yoga...because he truly believes that the intrinsic techniques of the Tripsichore vinyasa practice outweigh the need to merely train a teacher in order to teach the practice.  He goes on to say, "there's a huge difference between a good teacher with a good practice, versus a good teacher who's just good at being a teacher but has a weak or bad practice".


So where, then, is the 'peace' in the practice? Can such peace be found in an 'Asana Boot Camp' of a highly demanding, week-long, 6-hour daily drill? 


As I journeyed through these past 8 days of ups, downs and intensiveness, it dawned on me, that if yoga is defined as "evenness of mind" (Bhagavad Gita 2:48), then the peace in the practice is found when one is able to bring a tempestuous mind and situation into a place of calm.

To acknowledge this, is the vidya, where one increases the ability to be conscious of the present, and by tuning one's awareness inward to help the true self lift the veil that clouds the purity and beauty of yoga.  And only the practice (lots of it) and the application of yogic philosophy to the practice, can bring you to this realisation.


And knowing the vidya from the avidya (its opposite), will help to distinguish the difference between perseverance and stubbornness.  


Wishing you peace in the breath, and honesty in your practice.
(a big thank you hug to those who have sent me your love and healing energy during this time, without judgement nor influence).


xxx

Tripsi-who?

Ever since I got onto the teacher's mat, I'd told myself that I would take a break from teaching each year.... to treat myself to a little bit of 'me' time (totally yoga-skewed, nonetheless).... and take the time to rejuvenate, refresh, rediscover the sweetness of the yoga nectar, and to fall in love again with my practice.


In my opinion, a teacher who teaches continuously without taking a break, (nor takes the time to advance and deepen his/her personal practice), is not good for neither the teacher nor the student.  Needless to say, I've attended yoga classes in my free time, and have come across teachers who not only look extremely tired (read : jaded) but also sound like a tape recording from the front of the room. Not only do they not innovate nor change their vinyasa sequencing, some don't even look at the practitioners, let alone provide hands-on assist. 


So, after religiously traipsing back to my Masters in Mysore annually since 2008, I've decided to give Incredible India a break this year, and immerse myself in the 500-Hour Tripsichore Yoga Teacher Training Program organized by Jiva Yoga, right here in Kuala Lumpur.


He shall be Master.... 

Edward Clark

And I the humble student....

The training will have grueling, entertaining, exhilarating yet demanding vinyasa sequences, and graduates of the course will have to be conversant with the sequences of Tripsichore Yoga, and the intricacies of the techniques and philosophies that form it, with the knowledge and versatility to apply to other forms and styles of yoga practice.


Edward Clark is infamous for his creative inversions and arm balances.  I'm super excited at what I'm about learn, and the fun I'm going to have on the mat, yet in the same breath, I'm about to have a nervous breakdown just thinking about it....


So, as I take the next couple of weeks to prepare myself mentally, spiritually and physically for D-Day on 18 April, I surrender to the fact that, in order to stay up and upside down, I must first fall down again and again and again... 


To attempt to fly, one must first learn to ground.  And ground I shall, as I allow the Universe to channel me toward a fun-filled path on my yogic journey. 


Love and Light.