Why you should do a 200 hrs yoga teacher training when you live in Singapore as an expat wife…

Since one year, I’m an expat wife in Singapore – thanks to my dear husbands carrier plans. I left my family, friends and work opportunities behind to move from Switzerland to Singapore. And of course, I am the one taking care of the family and the household – fair division of roles! After half year living here, I realized that expat husbands tend to work more than back home. I realized that settling down in a new culture is time- and energy-consuming and that I was missing the grandparents sometimes taking care of the children. And on top, I had to live with a bunch of boys and me being homesick what started to emotionally burn me out.

Something had to be changed. After a meeting with my husband, who of course likes to have a happy wife at home, we decided to find a domestic helper. A good decision: an angel coming to live with us – helping here and there and everywhere. All of a sudden, I had a lot of time. But I also lost my traditional role of housewife. My husband coming home from work and eating his dinner suddenly changed from saying “darling, you cooked delicious today” to “Vilma (our helper), the food is delicious”.

So after having overcome a big part of the family’s homesickness and getting rid of the stress of managing the whole family and household alone, there was suddenly another feeling disturbing me – an emptiness and feeling of completely being useless. When the children were at school, I could spend hours with drinking coffee, sight seeing, doing sports, or doing nothing. In the afternoons, I had time to be the perfect mum, spending a lot of time playing football, helping with homework, reading stories to them. But still there was this feeling of being useless.

And again something had to be changed. I started to think about finding something – work or education – that I like, a goal I could work towards. I searched through all the offers for expat wifes (there is a lot in Singapore: museum guide, charity work, volunteer at school, …). All interesting opportunities, but all not perfectly fitting to me. One day, I met this mother from Swiss School who offered me and a few others to teach private yoga lessons. She did her teachers certification at Tirisula a few years ago. That’s how I got to know Astanga yoga. Very soon I felt, that practising yoga could bring me a stability and contentment I was always lacking. I realized that I would like to spend more time practising yoga, but also learn more about yoga.

So nothing is better than a 200 hrs yoga teacher training! I think it was a great decision to do this. It was a very intense but very satisfying time. I learned a lot about Yoga, about myself and how not to give up but work hard. I learned about Karma and Bhakti…

Rebecca