A Matter of Taste

Yesterday I had the good fortune to be in the company of a very wise, very compassionate sage. He was Swami Veda Bharati from the Himalayan Institute, who led a group of us in guided meditation, and then answered our questions.

The meditation lasted for more than 30 minutes, to me it felt like five.

One of his lessons for the day (and there were many ) was this, that no amount of received knowledge, one that comes from books or experts could take the place of experiencing for oneself through self examination.

He gave the example of a cube cube of sugar. Everyone will tell you that sugar is sweet, all the books that you read will tell that sugar tastes sweet but until you stop examining the sugar cube and put it in your mouth and taste it, you will never really know what the true nature or essence of sugar is. And so in Life.

At the end he said "Enjoy". And then he called for Meghna, a friend and fellow yogi and she sang for us a song in her native Bangla a song from Tagore" Ekla Chalo Re"which roughly translated means "Walk Alone".

Many thanks to Shilpa for arranging this, I met old friends friends Parul, Iolanda and others, and made some new ones.

Matter of the heart

Verity made good point about setting an intention which i believe comes from the heart and this should be applied in everything that we do in life. Whenever i have been unfortunate enough to meet someone who is nasty to me for reasons i simply couldn't fathom, i would go back to my intention...what did i say? what do i really mean? was i honest? was i? once that is established, next,i would go the person's intention...like...why did he/she say that? and then the big question...WHAT WAS THE INTENTION? Of late, no thanks to my tv appearances,I've been talking to a lot of people whom talked to me about their intention of starting yoga. Some started with sheer sceptisism, a bit cynicism and questionable intention. Fortunately, most have good intention and a healthy dose of sceptisism. Having the privillege (or hell) of being trained in auditing for few years, i must admit that we need sceptisism in our lives but that should be coupled with intention, a good one I hope. For those, who have been wanting to start on yoga, I say, a step in a right direction but we, human, have many 'wants'. So, in this new year, I urge those who 'have been wanting' to let that 'want' be a 'need' and let that 'need' starts with a good intention. "Yoga is a light, once lighted, will never be put off." Have a good year, have a good life!

Class schedule for 2008

For those who have the intention to start yoga, below is some info on my class:

-Day and Time: Every Saturday 9-10am
-Address: Havana Estudio, No 34B(2nd floor), Jalan Persiaran Zaaba, Taman Tun Dr Ismail
-Contact no: 03-7710 6148

Models wanted!

Yes, we need models for our weekly tv appearances. Preferably, those who have some basic yoga and won't freeze in front of camera :-))

Intention and Effort

We set up this blog to be a place where a group of cyber yogis could come together, have a chat and a virtual cup of tea. We even decided that although all of us had yoga as a common denominator this was not a Yoga Only blog, it was going to be about life, the universe and everything (yes, I'm a fan).

Somewhere along the way we let the intention drift into a black hole of nothingness.

And now we're back in 2008 not just with intention but knowing we must make the effort to keep the blog going. So people lets get the conversation started. Write, post pics, videos anything ask a question. Make new friends.

Has anyone decided what their their new year resolution is going to be vis a vis their yoga? Intention is just half the story, effort completes it.

And oh yes one of us is now a major morning show star, but that, as they say is another story.

Running and fasting

It is indeeed quite a task to be running during this holy month. i have yet to run since the fasting started almost two weeks ago. Almost every evening after savouring the 'delicious' food ( that i cooked), i would tell myself that i would be going for running the next morning or evening just before 'buka'. That has yet to happen. i was a lot stronger before whereby i would run just before 'buka' much to the displeasure of my mother. But these days, i busied myself with the preparation of it. I would attempt to run sometime before end of ramadhan while fasting that is. I look at it as a real test and challenge. The last run that sis and i took part was the Mizuno Run, around Bukit Tunku, which we both finished the same time. Have to admit, kinda like having her around.

Running for your life!

I started running when I was 23 and at 35, I'm still running. Not quite sure how and why i started.
I've always been an active student in school taking up several games at any one time. From badminton, volleyball (the coach was cute), table tennis(yes, table tennis..hard to imagine, right??!),softball which wasn't that soft really, and few track and field events. The last time i remembered running was way back in primary school, darjah enam, 4x400m. I had a good team so we won quite a bit. In secondary school, for badminton and volleyball, we had to run around few courts, few rounds as part of the training. And after almost half dead, we then asked to run around the court chasing shuttlecock/ball. It was fun because after that we would go for 'ais kacang' a.k.a abc (in kl) and of course, checking out boys from other schools. You see, we were in Convent schools, both primary and secondary, so being able to feast our eyes is a definite privillege! So, back to running. Then came uni where I was still playing badminton (my first love) and volleyball at first. I progressed to squasy in a short time and was even approached by the squasy captain to represent uni. i honestly believe it was because i had strong serve, technics wise, well, there was plenty of room for improvement. Then, somehow, I met someone who runs marathon and i was inspired. yeah...that was how it all started. and i've been running since...
and now, my laid-back sister has successfully became a 'running freak' and registered both of us for almost, i say almost, every run in kl and selangor and not to mention the annual 'penang bridge run'. to make things worst, she is, at the moment, as fast as i am and will not stop reminding the fact that she finished 1second behind me during our last run, 'Adidas King of the road'. After the run, I felt nothing like king or even a queen as i fell ill for 3 days right after. Moral of the story, running is good as long as you don't have a highly competitive sister tailing behind you. Gone are the days when running used to be all about fun and excitement!

p/s: the photo was taken during the last 'penang bridge run' on 24 june. sis was 4mins behind me and she wasn't at all impressed.