Meaning of Beauty

During my recent trip back, I observed closely at people passing me in the airport to see how healthly and youthful the average Malaysian looked. I was in for a shocked at what I saw. Out of about 100 people, only a handful looked healthy and had healthful appearing skin. In short, almost everyone looked like they are aging before their time.

And this morning in The Sun, Monday @ Feb 7^th, 2011 – Page 21, Beauty Section. 'Retailer targets 8-year olds. US retailer Walmart will release an all-natural, partially “anti-ageing” beauty line for tweens, called GeoGirl. Targetting 8 to 12-year-olds blah....blah.....'

I have nothing against make-up/cosmetic but isnt it too much to burden 'a small young girl' with 'the concept of beauty and not growing old'?

I am a strong advocate of 'beauty from within'. Aging is the natural process and we can age-gracefully by making wise choices about the food we eat and drink, what we think and how to respond to life's events.

Any thoughts?

Why ME?

Most conversations seem to be carried out on two levels, the verbal and the emotional level. The verbal level contains those things which are socially acceptable to say but it is used as a means of satisfying emotional needs. Last week a friend related something that someone had done to her. I told her why I thought the person has acted the way he had and she became very upset and started arguing with me.

Now, the reason is clear. I had been listening to her words and had paid no attention to her feelings. Her words had described how terribly this other person had treated her but her emotions had been saying, ‘Please understand how I felt. Why me?’

Yes, why me? Each time whenever tragedy strikes or something bad happens, the question will always be ‘why me?.’ I learn not to ask the question anymore in fact I embrace everything let it be good and bad. How? My girl friend told me this - Just imagine this, one day you strike RM5 million lottery. Wow, great! At this very moment, are you going to ask ‘Why me?’ In most cases, you won’t as you are too consume with joy and thinking on how to spend or what to do with the money. So do not ask ‘why me?’ in dire straits if you are not able to ask the same question in the opposite situation.

Just be grateful for every small thing in life.

What Charity Means......

Charity means to name a few, the following :
Charity (practice), the practice of benevolent giving
Principle of charity in philosophy and rhetoric
Tzedakah, the Jewish concept of giving to worthy causes or people in need.
Sadaqah, the Arabic concept of alms-giving, often translated as "charity"

When I first started to be ‘charitable’ few years back, it’s all started with Karma Yoga. Still remember, every Saturday 3pm I’ll teach for free and it’s open to public and in return they contribute whatever amount preferred by each individual. The responses were amazing, people from all walk of lives attended the class and the experience has taught me how to be a better charitable person!

After a year, Karma Yoga comes to an end with a total collection of RM1,800-ish RM1,500 was donated to a young man for a kidney transplant and balance to Precious Home (a home for abandoned children). I was devastated as I expect more. Yes, my expectations exceed everything! Although I did mentioned Karma Yoga – ‘whatever amount’ but I was too carried away with the word ‘Charity’ and I’ve forgotten what Karma Yoga really means -‘a selfless service to others, by not thinking of own personal needs and desires’. Took me a while to place my feet back on the ground, where I stand!

Now I am doing Karma Yoga, in its true meaning with sincere heart – thanks to June Khaw for opening the door of my heart and showing the way. A Big thank you to Ho’s family, Alice Low, Susan Kho, Tay Che, Karen Tan, Karen A, Sunandhini, May Key, Janice Poon, Georgina Wong, Gilbert Wong, Amanda Yap, Mrs Lee, Pauline Warneck, Hancis, Jamie Bell and the rest of kind hearts out there that I did not mentioned here.

If kindness is imagined as a beautiful dove, then wisdom is its wings. Compassion without wisdom never takes off –Ajahn Brahm.

Horse-ing

As soon as I managed Surya Namaskara without any difficulties namely NO headache, NO pain in left ear and left base of the skull and most important NO MORE dizziness - I knew I am ready to ride again.

It’s felt so good to be able to do ‘normal’ things that I used to do before the accident – riding is one of my greatest joys. I love the feeling of the ‘wind’ blowing onto my face, it’s closest to flying and gives me the sense of freedom. It became apparent to me that my fitness was important at this point due to long absence of any kind of physical exercises.
Body awareness and conditioning will not only make a difference in my approach to riding but it will made a tremendous difference in the way the horse approaches his time with me. If I am tight or rigid, unfit and out of balance and rhythm with the horse’s movement, both of us will wear out much sooner than necessary. The position and ability to remain flexible and rebalance with movement can change the amount of density and pressure the horse feels on his back. Riding is one-on-one communication, a working, moving lasting partnership and I love every single minute of it.

Personally I believe the best way to ensure longevity in riding is through stretching and strengthening exercise on a regular basis. Stretching regularly will greatly decrease the overall soreness while strengthening is key to the female rider’s upper body protection.

Areas specifically need to isolate and stretch for best results are the inner thighs, hamstring, quadriceps and back. Gaining strength in upper torso will improve posture and balance while in motion.

I will be

Today I want to do things to be doing them, not to be doing something else. I do not want to do things to sell myself on myself. I don't want to do nice things for people so that I will be 'nice'. I don't want to work to make money, I want to work to work.

Today I don't want to live for, I want to live.

My prayer is - I will be what I will be and I will do what I will do.

All I want to do, need to do, is stay in rhythm with myself. All I want to do is what I do and not try to do what I don't do. Just do what I do. Just keep pace with myself. Just be what I will be.

I will be what I will be but I am now what I am, and here is where I will spend my energy. I need all my energy to be what I am today. Today I will work in rhythm with myself and not with what i 'should be'. And to work in rhythm with myself I must keep tuned in to myself.

I have been given another day on this beautiful place. Another day to hear, read, smell, walk, love and yoga-ing. I am alive for another day.

I think of those who arent.

Are you HAPPY? Am i HAPPY?

The number of things just outside the perimeter of my financial reach remains constant no matter how much my financial improves. With each increase in my income, a new perimeter forms and I experience same relative sense of lack. I believe that I would be happy if only my earnings were increased so much and I could then have or do few things I cant quite afford, but when my income does increase I find I am still unhappy because from my new financial position I can now see a whole new set of things that I don’t have.

The problem will be solved when I realize that happiness is a present attitude and not a future condition. I don’t need a reason to be happy. I don’t have to consult the future to know how happy I feel now.

I don't want to be Perfect and I am NOT.

Perfectionism is a slow death. If everything were to turn out like I would want it to, just like I would it to, then I would never experience anything new, my life would be an endless repetition of stale successes. When I make a mistake I experience something unexpected.

I sometimes react to making a mistake as it I have betrayed myself. My fear of making a mistake seems to be based on the hidden assumption that I am potentially perfect and that if I can just be very careful I will not fall from heaven. But a ‘mistake’ is a declaration of the way I am, a jolt to the way I intend, a reminder I am not dealing with the facts. When I have listened to my mistakes I have grown.

So, don’t try to be a perfectionist. Just be human, we all are.

Life

Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes and I am left the same as I began. The more things change the more I am the same. It appears that my life is a constant irony of maturity and regression, but my sense of progress is based on the illusion that things out there are going to remain the same and that, at last, I have gained a little control. But there will never be means to ends, only means. And I am means. I am what I started with, and when it is all over I will be all that is left of me.

What do I want?

Most decisions, possibly all, have already been made on some deeper level and my going through a reasoning process to arrive at them seems at least redundant. The question, ‘What do I want to do?’ may often be a fearful reaction to the subconscious decision I have already made. It seems to be quite a different form : “What do I really want to do” to “What am I really feeling?”. These questions acknowledge that at any given moment I am experiencing a variety of feelings and that what I want to do is get at the one feeling which is most central to me. If I can get in touch with that then what to do will be obvious and will probably follow naturally. On the simplest level, if I feel ‘I am thirsty’ I don’t have to ask ‘What do I want’ but I may contemplate ‘Water, fruit juice or hot nescafe’. Does it make sense to you?

Sometimes the only way for me to find out what it is I want to do is to go ahead and do something. Then the moment I start to act, my feelings become clear.

Alone

It has been said that each of us is ultimately alone. I prefer to think of now and there as the only ultimate, but what is probably meant is that our moments alone seem somehow truer, more real. The word ‘God’ only begins to have meaning for me in a discussion. I don’t think religion is an attainable subject for the intellect. I can only believe when I am not talking about it.

I need solitude like I need food and rest, and like eating and resting, solitude is most satisfying when it fits the rhythm of my needs. A regularly schedule aloneness does not nourish me.

Solitude is nearly a misnomer. To me, being alone means togetherness – the re-coming-together of me and nature, of me and being; the reuniting of me with all. For me, solitude especially means putting the parts of me back together – the unifying of myself whereby I see once again that the little things are little and the big things are big.

I believe that solitude is a profound and needed act of self-love and self-appreciation.

My Papa

When my papa was diagnosed with Alzheimer disease in 2004, I felt resentful, then angry, then nothing at all.

Resentful because he’s making a demand on me I can’t fulfill (I can’t quickly fix things up); he’s using up my precious time; he’s making a messy situation. Then I felt angry because I think I shouldn’t be resentful when someone is sick. Then I resign myself and my emotions shut down altogether. But in the middle of this I pause long enough to look inside myself, I find that these negative feelings seem to be going on, on the surface and that deeper within me are more positive, loving feelings.

He passed away peacefully on June 3rd, 2006 at 86.

Looking back I am glad that I’ve told him how much I love him when he’s alive, when he still remembers me as his daughter, apple to his eyes. I guess that’s why I didn’t cried much when he passed away, neither regret nor anger were inside me, only love.

Sharing

Sharing what we have is a beautiful way of relating to others
Our friendships are much enhanced by the quality of generosity
Even more significantly, the cultivation of non-greed becomes a strong force for liberation
What keeps us bond is desire and grasping in our own minds
As we practice giving we learn to let go

Jackie, My Friend

It is not always easy to know when someone will have a great influence on us. The best way to handle this is to be nice to everybody.
When I first started teaching Yoga (moon-lighting) at the fitness clubs/spas, Jackie was one of those few people that gave me a chance, a chance to prove myself. How we met was totally unexpected. When asked, she always said we met ‘at the roadside’! I saw her ‘ad’ on the tree trunk. Yes, she posts the ‘ad’ for Yoga teacher onto the tree trunk, along the busy main road of Jalan P. Ramlee. Called her and manage to fix an appointment for the very next day.

To my horror, she’s forgotten about our appointment - I waited for almost half an hour before she sees me. What supposedly to be half an hour ‘interview’ turns to almost 3 hours of chit-chatting. She even sends me to LRT station! And I got the job as well. My friendship with Jackie blossoms into something very special up until today.

She’s always there for me – when my business in trouble or when my relationship with my ex crumble. If I need a kick in the ass, she’s the one I’ll turn to. She made me think outside the box, to look at life from different perspective and do something that I am not good at, be out of my comfort zone!

And I must say, she brings the best out of me.

The Yoga Path

Yoga, in Sanskrit, can be translated as ‘union’. It originally comes from the root word yuj, which means ‘to yoke’, to attach yourself to task at hand with ox-like discipline. And the task at hand in Yoga is to find union – between mind and body, between individual and her God, between our thoughts and the source of our thoughts, between teacher and student and even between ourselves and our sometimes annoying friends.

Today, mainly people come to know Yoga through Madonna or its pretzel exercises for the body, but this is only Hatha Yoga, one limb of the philosophy. The ancients developed these physical stretches not for personal fitness, but to loosen up their muscles and minds in order to prepare them for meditation. It is difficult to sit in stillness for many hours, after all, if your hips is aching, keeping you from contemplating, your intrinsic divinity because you are too busy contemplating, “wow….. my hips really aches”.

But Yoga can also mean trying to find God through meditation, through scholarly study, through the practice of silence, through devotional service or through mantra – the repetition of sacred words in Sanskrit. While some of these practices tend to look rather Hindu in their derivation, Yoga is not synonymous with Hinduism, nor are all Hindus Yogis. True Yoga neither competes with nor precludes any other religion. You may use your Yoga – your disciplines practices of sacred union – to get closer to Siva, Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha or Yahweh. During my stay at the Ashram, I met devotees who identified themselves as practicing Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and even Muslims and at the same time others who would rather not talk about their religious affiliations at all, for which, in this contentious world, you can hardly blame them.

The Yogic path is about disentangling the built-in glitches of human conditions, which I’m going to over-simplify define here as the heartbreaking inability to sustain contentment. Different schools of thought over the centuries have found different explanations for man’s apparent inherently flawed state. Taoist calls it imbalance, Buddhism calls it ignorance, Islam blames our misery on rebellion against God and psychologist explains it ‘desire is the design flaw’.

Yoga is the effort to experience one’s divinity personally and then to hold on to that experience forever. Yoga is about self-mastery and the dedicated effort to haul your attention away from the endless brooding over the past and your nonstop worrying about the future, so that you can seek, instead, a place of eternal presence from which you may regard yourself and your surroundings with noise. Only from that point of even-mindedness will the true nature of yourself be revealed to you.

It’s about the journey, not the destination. Self journey. Self discovery. The Path. The Yoga Path was conceived based on that foundation.

Namaste.

How to forgive your loved (Ex?) ones and yourself

Have you ever been in love – song by Celine Dion, my favourite song. Have you ever been in love with someone who doesn’t love you anymore?

If you arrive at this point, there are very different ways of finishing a relationship; it can be very nasty or amicable, whether or not you’re the one who is instigating the split. It can be very hard, with feelings running so deep, to behave as well as we should. So, how do you move on from here? How to forgive – not just your ex but most important is yourself.

Listen to your own internal voice – dragging things out will only make it worse. When people look back on relationships that didn’t work out, how often do you hear them say, ‘You know, deep down I knew it was over when she forgot our fifth wedding anniversary’, or ‘Looking back, when he took that job even though I begged him not to, that was the beginning of the end’?

Actually we almost always do have foresight. We just don’t realize it. There’s a little voice inside us but we just don’t listen. Of course there are times you have to work and you can still reclaim a great relationship. But deep down, if only you listen, you know when the relationship has passed the point of no return.

Recognise that it takes two. Its takes two to tango, that what people used to say. There has to be responsibility on both sides when things fall apart. I’ve been through a divorce myself and although it took me a while to admit it – I now freely accept that we both played a part in allowing the relationship to deteriorate to the point where it couldn’t be salvage.

This is important because you’ll both cope with the break-up more amicably or at least less bitter if you both admit a share in the responsibility (even if you only admit it to yourself). And if you don’t recognize where you could have done things differently, you risk making the same mistakes next time you fall in love.

Keeping the moral high ground will taste a thousand times better than revenge ever would. Oh boy, is this a simple one to say and a really difficult one to live up to. No matter how rough it gets you are never going to take revenge, act badly, be very, very angry, hurt anyone, act without thinking, act rashly and be aggressive. You are going to behave honestly, decently, kindly, forgiving, nicely (whatever that means), no matter what the provocation. No matter what challenge they throw at you. No matter how unfairly they behave. No matter how badly they behave. You will no retaliate in kind. I know revenge is tempting but you don’t have to go there, because revenge is for losers. You’ll be the one with the beasts instead of the angles.

Learn what you can from what went wrong, and then get over it. I know a person whose husband left her with the children about 20 years ago, and went off with another woman. She still hasn’t forgiven him and she’s still bitter, and it’s still eating her up.

The main person she’s hurting is herself and also her children. She’s miserable and of course, single because she hasn’t let go of her marriage from all those years ago ad she can’t move on and find a happier relationship.

The important thing is learn to forgive and remember- times wait for no man. We’ve only got one life – get on with it.

The Secret of ‘The Secret’

Most of us still remember how ‘The Secret’ (book as well as DVD) swept our shores (not to mention the rest of the world), such a phenomena, big time, not long ago, and probably still is. Everyone wanted to know The Secret – how to be have everything you ever wanted!

So many people are missing the whole picture because it is so simple. The bottom line is if we can relax our body and mind enough to focus our thoughts and use vivid visualization, we can perform miracles.

Lets put it this way, everything has a frequency, vibration, beat or cycle. Mother Earth goes around the sun every 365 days, 6 hours. The Moon goes around Earth every 28 days.

Human heart beats about 70 times a minute. According to my research (and my personal understanding) human brain also has a frequency, beat or cycle. The brain frequency is separated into 4 parts – Delta (0.5 – 3 beats per second), Theta (4 – 7 beats per second), Alpha (8 – 14 beats per second) and Beta (15 beats and above per second).

In energy healing, Delta and Theta are known as the ‘Land of the Shaman’, Alpha is the ‘Land of the Spirit’ and Beta is the ‘Land of the Living Dead’.

In our normal state during the day, our brain is emitting about 20 beats per second – Beta state. We can be in Alpha state by relaxing the body and mind – doing meditation.

The basic idea is the future is composed of thoughts not yet materialized. We have the choice to create our future or let it be created by our indecision. We have created our present thought, decisions and actions or by their absence. By the same method, or lack of it, we create out future. We have a choice of which future we create. There are probably infinite possible futures for us, all dependent upon our thoughts and actions.

The 'Needs' and 'Wants'

What I want? What I need? Do I want what I need? Do I need what I want?

I want to be healthy.
I need to watch what I eat plus daily yoga dosage.

I want to be happy.
I need to discover who I am.

I want best friends.
I need to be with good company.

I want to love and to be loved.
I need an open heart.

I want to relax.
I need to meditate.

I want a holiday.
I need to slow down.

I want to be beautiful.
I need self confidence.

I want more money.
I need to be more prudent with my money.

I want to be free.
I need to learn how to forgive.

I want a house at Janda Baik, big compound with 1 dozen of dogs and cats.
I need a sanctuary, a home, with Beanie and Missy.

I want a silver SLK.
What I need is a kind of transportation, Kelisa will do.

Criticism

I have two principal ways of discovering the areas where I fail to see myself. The 1st is acknowledging the qualities in others which irritate me, 2nd is recognizing the comments that make me defensive.

All I have to do to discover what annoys me in other people’s behavior is to review my latest encounters, but I have more difficulty recognizing when I am defensive.

I can identify it best by the following syndrome :

I answer quickly;
I feel in need of talking at length, and impatient when interrupted;
I explain;
I try to persuade;
But I feel frustrated even if I appear to be succeeding, as if the damage has already done;
I think hurriedly and I feel a strong resistance to pausing and considering as if something will be lost if I do this;
My face feels fixed and serious;
I usually avoid eye contact immediately after hearing the comment;
I am incapable of taking the comment any way but seriously; the words never seem light or funny to me.

When my reaction becomes apparent to the people present, they often take the situation lightly. I feel somewhat misunderstood and misused.

Now that I know that when I critise other I am seeing my own fault, I like to be very honest and very specific in my criticism. After I get it straight how I think this fault works in someone else, I can then look at my own behavior with a surprising new clarity.

This way of critising works best when I do it SILENTLY!

The Day I LETTING GO

Still fresh in my mind when one of the practitioners asked me “what is there to let go?”. Yes, ‘what is there to let go’, rather than ‘how to let go’. If we know WHAT then HOW is no more a question.

My journey of letting go starts almost 4 years ago in India, but too soon, it was forgotten until June 19th, 2008. Here they are………….

Everyday without fail, for the last three years till this very day, I end all classes with saying ‘Let us free ourselves from egoism, anger, lust, hatred, greed and jealousy and let us fill our hearts with love, compassionate and understanding.”

And that's my Christmas wish as well as my new year resolutions.

Lessons Learned in the LOSING

In our culture, of course, is all about wining. Let’s face it, at any point of the time, in any year, the importance of finishing first is drummed into us daily, even hourly. From kindergarten, secondary school, primary school, college, university and working, it’s all about scoring more As or being no 1 or own the biggest car or house .

Losing, in the other hand, is a source of shame and bitterness. People who lose are, by definition, losers.

We tend to frame things in terms of contests or wars must be won or lost. Many challenges, however, are about hanging in there and managing a bad situation. What don’t kill us will make us stronger.

Losing prepares us for the slog that is life. The world doesn’t give us many finish lines, but it does give us the long run.

I didn’t always win. But I’m sure a winner.