Yoga and Me

I love to exercise especially running and for the past 2 years I started doing interval training mostly using body weight. In general I like doing exercise that make me sweat and feel good after the exercise and thus I never been attracted to Yoga at all although my mother used to practice Yoga for about 8 years in the past and at 67 she is healthy and she menopause at 59. The first Yoga class I went was Bikram Yoga I attended with colleagues and frankly speaking, I did not like it. It was about 8 years ago.
To my own surprise, I started practicing regular yoga about a year ago. Initially I was looking for a natural remedy to help a friend of mine who has trouble conceiving and I found a yoga DVD that is intended to restore fertility. However, after reading the reviews, the program also helps many who have insomnia and period pain as well and I decided to make a try to cure my period pain and insomnia. The program is developed by reproductive medicine specialist based on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and the program is uniquely designed by integrating yoga poses with acupuncture channels, to enhance each of the four phases of women menstrual cycle. In my opinion, it is a brilliant integration of Chinese medical theory and Hatha yoga, a set of physical exercises designed to alight your skin, muscle, and bones. The postures in this program are designed to open the many channels of the body, especially the main channel, the spine, so that energy can flow freely.
Given that the society is becoming more stressful and the environment we live in have changed dramatically compared to one or two decades ago, these could have a detrimental effects to our body, especially women who are more sensitive. I saw more and more women are diagnosed with women related cancer, fibroids, cysts and even infertility. All of these are contributed by the hormone imbalance. Having regular menstrual cycles is a sign that important parts of our body are working normally. In fact, the tendency that women have a longer life expectancy is heavily contributed by our monthly menstrual cycles. The menstrual cycle provides important body chemicals, called hormones, to keep us healthy. The rise and fall of levels of hormones during the month also control the menstrual cycle.
Just after a month of regular 30 minutes before bed time practicing this program, while the pain has not completely gone, I found out this program is very useful in gaining back my menstrual cycle into average of 28 days. In the last six months before I started the program, my period ranged from 25-27 days. To my surprise, the yoga poses helped me in curing mild headache, internal heat as well as helps my insomnia.
Given the many benefits that yoga has provided me so far, I came to believe that there must be something about yoga that I could explore more and share with the people around me. I signed up a 200 hour YTT at Tirisula Yoga in January this year without much hesitation. I even did not know what Ashtanga yoga was and I thought it was just a yoga I know. Although I still cannot do many poses that my other classmates can do wonderfully due to my runner legs issue, I believe I have made some progress and during my regular yoga practice before bed time, I can now go deeper and deeper to the poses. While I am aiming to be able to do advance poses in the future, in my experience, yoga is not about the destination but it is all about the journey, the moment to moment that makes me feel closer to myself and know myself and my body better than before. Besides, yoga has united me with so many great friends who share the same interest. Sometimes I was thinking that I should have postponed my YTT after a year or two of attending regular yoga classes but come to think about it again, I would rather know the basic and do it properly in my yoga practice. It is always easier to learn from scratch than fixing lousy habit that we are so used to.
It’s just the beginning… and I believe yoga is for everyone who put the trust in it and yoga will open us to a brand new world.
JW-200h YTT Jan-Apr 2016