Above all and despite everything, I am happy to be back in the Philippines.
And here I go again, gathering what I can of what the Filipino community has in store for yogis and all interested people everywhere 🙂
I hope this helps you somehow. If you know of anything else I missed, please do let me know.
Here are our events for May.
Here you go and once again, I hope this helps you somehow. If you know of anything else I missed, please do let me know.
So… I had been talking about my going here loads and loads before I actually arrived. In the month before my flight I probably said the words “Bali Silent Retreat” at least thrice or four times every week – and even before then, I said it to myself as part of my work of manifestation.
So it’s a bit funny for me to share that, the reality of the silence only really dawned on me once I stepped foot onto the grounds. And damn, it was an overwhelming dawning.
I’m sitting here in our little teachers’ living space which is a talk-safe, device-safe zone. In a bit, I’ll be walking to the retreat grounds to prepare for my class and practice beforehand. It’s less than 3 minutes walk but the spaces feel like different countries – and in the smallest ways.
On the retreat grounds of Bali Silent Retreat (BSR), there is absolutely no talking.
Here are our events for February.
Here you go and once again, I hope this helps you somehow. If you know of anything else I missed, please do let me know.
Before anything else, I’d like to clarify that I’m not vegan. I’m a pescetarian talking about a down-to-earth real personal experience of trying a vegan diet, beautifully provided by IASIS Health and Wholeness Center in Angat, Bulacan 🙂
In January and early February, I would spend my weekends in IASIS as a yoga teacher, holder of space, and a writer. One of the benefits of that was that I was fed by the wonderful cooks of IASIS’ Nourish Cafe and for those weekends, I was on a vegan diet.
Back when I was on the student’s side of the yoga classroom, teachers always seemed so impenetrable in their calm happiness, and sometimes even, otherworldly. Now that I’m a yoga teacher myself, I can tell you all with full confidence and honesty: we can be just as crazy, unhinged, insecure, uncool, basic, and normal as everyone else on the planet.
And you can bet the teachers in Manila have a lot of the Filipino quirks you can think of too 😉
In an attempt to demystify yoga teachers and the seeming perfection of their practice as seen through social media, I’m starting a series on my blog not-so-creatively entitled “Yoga Teachers of Manila.”
With grace and honesty, yoga teachers share with us their struggles, their funny “un-yogi” moments, and what keeps them on their mat as a teacher and as a student.
For this post, we get to know more about someone I went to high school with and was pleasantly surprised to know also became a teacher: Andi Bañez
The way yoga started, to learn it you had to be welcomed under a teacher’s wing, you had to study it diligently over years, and to pick up “his subtle state, his yogic attainment,” you listened to his authority and observed him in his actions.
Now, the way most of us perceive learning yoga is as attending studio classes of different levels of difficulty, at least once a week, seeing progress over long periods of practicing on and off. With the demands of our lives now, it makes sense to enter the practice that way and keep on practicing like this alongside everything else we do with our lives. Some serious practitioners still keep this practice, especially with Ashtanga for example. Another way that people live this out now is through getting private instruction 🙂
Since I started my teaching practice over a year ago, I’ve taught quite a few private classes – for some reason I’ve attracted people needing private instruction and I’ve learned to stop questioning it and instead, work with it. (GO TO: Get private classes)
Based on observations, here are the reasons why people get private yoga classes and what makes them continue. On the other side, I’d also like to share why it’s such a pleasure to teach one-on-one’s like this.
Part of the things I had to do as I finished my coaching essentials course with The TLC Solution was a research paper – anything to do with coaching. Of course, mine was on yoga 🙂
I had an inkling already that yoga and coaching would make a beautiful partnership – otherwise I wouldn’t have been so focused in pursuing it. For the practitioners out there, I’m sure we’ve all said at one point or another, “I’m a completely different person now compared to the me before yoga.” The practice is transformative on its own – what more if you add in life coaching to the mix?
My own experience of going through the workshop and being part of a few coaching conversations as a client showed me that it’s a big fat YES! to yoga and coaching 🙂 My hypothesis was correct!
I’m going to write a bit more about what training was like soon but, in this post I’d like to share my research on why and how yoga and coaching work well together by posting a few excerpts from my research paper — in the hope of enlightening coaches, yoga teachers, and even those interested in coaching.
Disclaimer: the last time I wrote a paper was in college so the citations etc might just suck 🙂
Screenshot of my presentation. All pictures are from White Space Mind and Body Wellness
Back when I was on the student’s side of the yoga classroom, teachers always seemed so impenetrable in their calm happiness, and sometimes even, otherworldly. Now that I’m a yoga teacher myself, I can tell you all with full confidence and honesty: we can be just as crazy, unhinged, insecure, uncool, basic, and normal as everyone else on the planet.
And you can bet the teachers in Manila have a lot of the Filipino quirks you can think of too 😉
In an attempt to demystify yoga teachers and the seeming perfection of their practice as seen through social media, I’m starting a series on my blog not-so-creatively entitled “Yoga Teachers of Manila.”
With grace and honesty, yoga teachers share with us their struggles, their funny “un-yogi” moments, and what keeps them on their mat as a teacher and as a student.
For this post, we get to know more about teacher and incredibly strong yogi Anna Cristina Manalastas.
Back when I was on the student’s side of the yoga classroom, teachers always seemed so impenetrable in their calm happiness, and sometimes even, otherworldly. Now that I’m a yoga teacher myself, I can tell you all with full confidence and honesty: we can be just as crazy, unhinged, insecure, uncool, basic, and normal as everyone else on the planet.
And you can bet the teachers in Manila have a lot of the Filipino quirks you can think of too 😉
In an attempt to demystify yoga teachers and the seeming perfection of their practice as seen through social media, I’m starting a series on my blog not-so-creatively entitled “Yoga Teachers of Manila.”
With grace and honesty, yoga teachers share with us their struggles, their funny “un-yogi” moments, and what keeps them on their mat as a teacher and as a student.
For this post, teacher Monica Suarez shares with us her yoga journey.