We have all heard this from most non-yoga practitioners; “I’m too stiff to do yoga!” and I am guilty of that as well. I remembered when I was first introduced into yoga back in 2013. The class package lasted for a month and I am on yoga hiatus since then. Fast forward a year later when I started to join the corporate world, I began to realize my daily life has been almost like a typical “9am-5pm” routine and I needed to do something about it. Soon enough, I began practicing yoga through YouTube and doing simple High-intensity interval training (HIIT) workout at home, but the urge and motivation to exercise slowly wears off after a month or two. By the third month, I have stopped watching tutorials via YouTube and my HIIT workout has come to a halt.
By the end of the year, I have finally signed up with one of the yoga centers because I was so eager to give Hot Yoga a try. Hot Yoga to me was like “killing two birds with one stone” because you get to sweat buckets and tone your body up at the same time. However, I do not see much progression in terms of flexibility and exploring new yoga poses from the past 6 months of practice considering the fact that I attended classes for about 3 times a week. I was not told if my alignments were right or wrong as the classes were usually of a bigger crowd. But because yoga really made a difference to my stressful working-life, I guess this is more than just a mere hobby. Hence, I have decided to take up the YTT course to learn and improve on my alignments, to have a deeper understanding of yoga not just in exploring the yoga asanas but mentally but spiritually as well, and most importantly, to be able to teach and have interpersonal relationship with the students at the same time because I personally feel quality is far more important than quantity when it comes to the practitioner’s physical, mental and spiritual.
[Vivien Phang of 200 Hr Hatha Vinyasa YTTC]
