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.

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.

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.

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.

Tension = Backache

Why does tension attack the back? And why does tension take up ‘residence’ in the very specific place (between the shoulder blades up to the base of the neck)? After so many years of practising and teaching Yoga, what I can say that emotional, physical and postural tensions are the main culprits.

Tension can be emotional. Tension in the back is directly related to the state of MIND. Automatically, when we’re upset, we curl up. This posture takes a lot of effort, straining and fatiguing the muscles in your upper back and neck. The longer you despair, the more strained and tired those muscles get. And worse, the muscles in front of your chest will begin to shorten, pulling you even lover. It’s no accident of language that I refer to an unhappy person as being ‘down’.

I’m going to tell you something shocking – unhappy people are prone to injury and illness. Nearly 80% of all the physical problems I encounter are related, directly or indirectly, to tension and pressure. No matter what I do to unlock the body or show how successful I am in restoring function, sooner or later, she/he are going to come back unless she/he gets a handle on life. I’m not saying that getting happy will guarantee a lifetime of health and injury-free, but it helps. Big time.

Tension can be physical. The emotional aspect of carrying tension between the shoulder blades is not the only culprit. Fitness or lack thereof, plays an even bigger role.

When your back is pain, your abdominal muscles are the suspected cause. Weak abs cause the pelvis to be unstable, so the back (all the way from sacrum to the skull) has to compensate to keep our body balanced and erect in posture. But without the assistance of supporting abdominal muscles, your struggling back becomes very unstable.

While the problem originates at your pelvis, it qualifies as a full-blown disaster by the time it reaches your head. Weighing between 3.6 – 5.4kg, the head is pretty heavy! When the abdominal muscles are weak and the back is struggling to compensate, that heavy head pulls the spine forwards. Shoulder follow suits as the front of the shoulder foreshorten and collapse. This sag may be subtle at first, but it doesn’t take long for the upper back, designed to stabilize, to become fatigued from trying to support weight.

A strong, fit body ensures that all your muscles are doing their jobs and that they are sparing your back from having to compensate.

Tension can be postural. People can even make tension between shoulders worse by postural mistakes.

When you sleep on your side with a pillow that fails to support your head and neck, you collapse your lower shoulder, folding it towards your chest and straining the muscles in your back for hours.

When you work at your desk, you sit and pull all your action in front of you, so that you reach out and down towards the desk – and your upper back is stressed.

When you drive, you reach forwards and up to steer – and your upper back is stressed.

When you eat, your plate is on the table in front of you, so you reach down and towards it – and your upper back is stressed.

Add personal tension to biomechanical mistakes and long-term fatigue, and you have a knotted, cramped upper back.

When those muscles between the shoulder blades become fatigued, they begin to shut down in a process that is like strangulation; the area were deprived of oxygen, as blood flow is slowly squeezed off when tissue constrict. Fresh oxygenated blood not only carry oxygen to muscles but it also helps to carry away metabolic waste generated (like lactic acid) when muscles fire.

While many back problems originate in that upper back zone, they don’t necessarily stay there. Just when you thought you couldn’t be more locked up and incapacitated, this pain sneaks down to your lower back to hobble your step, creeps up your neck to inflict a world-class tension headache or radiates down your arms in an exhausting ache or shooting pain.

Back and shoulder problems aren’t always the result of a postural imbalance or an incorrect performed exercise; sometimes the root cause can be a lot deeper.

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!

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.

New Year Resolutions??

Something for us to think about ....

1. Take 10-30 minutes gentle exercise (i.e. walk) every day and keep smiling.

2. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day. Let thoughts/emotions go..... and just be.

3. Live with Energy, Enthusiasm, and Empathy.

4. Play more games & Read more books.

5. Make time to practice meditation, yoga, and prayer*.

6. Spend time with people over the age of 70 & under the age of 6 and realise how enjoyable it is.

7. Dream more while you are awake. Visualise what you want as if it has already happened. Think only about what you want. (never what you don't - please try this).

8. Eat more foods that grow on trees and that are natural. Eat less foods that are processed. Work towards 90% of food that grows / are produced naturally and drink plenty of water.

9. Make at least three people smile each day. Smile and laugh more yourself. Each day do / give something good to [at least] an other.

10. Don't waste your precious energy on gossip, lies and ill will.

11. Never remind you, your partner or your friends of their "mistakes". Forgive and forget issues of the past.

12. Don't have negative thoughts on things you cannot control. Work onwhatyou CAN control - it will increase.

13. Drink less booze. Don't smoke cigarettes at all.

14. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a beggar.

15. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. Never hate.

16. Don't take yourself too seriously. No one else does.

17. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree. It's only game.

18. Make peace with your past ("let go") so it won't spoil the present.

19. Don't compare your life to others'. It's not a race, it's your journey, so YOU should enjoy it.

20. No one is in charge of your happiness except YOU - choose happy, you can.

21. Forgive everyone for everything - that includes you. Love all - that includes you too!

22. What other people think of you is none of your business. It's what you think that counts (see 21)

23. However good or bad a situation is. It will always change.

24. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch. Call your family often.

25. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.

26. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need. You will always get what you deserve - be of service.

27. The best is yet to come. Always.

28. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.

29. Do the right thing! You always know what it is.

Your inner self is happy, all powerful and all love. Start to recognize this.

*Prayer is the simple action of giving thanks for what you have and requesting what you want. We are all part of the whole and the whole is magnificent.

Thanks to Karen and Ian MacAndrew.

I am what I am - SOHAM

Keith told me something that he remembers reading about it, long time ago, by an English philosopher “there are 3 persons living inside each and every one of us – 1st is someone who we think we are, 2nd is someone who people think we are and 3rd is who we actually are’.

I love myself when I am myself. I think of those who aren’t. I am what I am. Soham.

Why Yoga Works - for me

Every day of my life, just as I eat, just as I sleep, just as I work, just as I love – I practice yoga.

Yoga is simple and in tune with how the body is designed to move and operate. It builds functional fundamental strength rather than superficial strength, empowers them to purposeful use and conditions my body the way nature intended it to be; for day to day life – bending, stretching, lifting, reaching, twisting and etc. On top of that Yoga pays due attention to both the physical and mental wellbeing, can you imagine that? 2 in 1 or 3 in 1….…should I say

All of us are very well aware the benefits of yoga; we read about it the newspapers, magazines, internet, books and even discussing it with our friends. But, hey …. what stopping most us from practicing yoga? Lazy? Too tired? Next time? No mood? I am not flexible! Backache! Heard all of them and the most popular is ‘no time la’……..

It’s about feel good, when I feel good I look good, and honestly I am feeling much better now than I was in my 20s…… spiritually and of course, physically.

There is no such thing as ‘best’ in a world of individuals.

Promise Yourself

Read this somewhere "Be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind,
Talk health, happiness and prosperity to every person you meet,
Make all your friends feel that there is something in them,

Look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true,

Think only of the best, to work only for the best and expect only the best,
Be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own,
Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future,
Wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile,
Give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others,
Be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble,
Think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud words but in great deeds, Live in the faith that the whole world is on your side so long as you are true to the best in you."

Are we living life to the fullest?

The Power In You

We gave our health to our doctor, our money to our banker, our soul to our preacher/priest/monk, our children to the school system, and in doing so, we have lost the power to control our own lives.

On top of that most of us buy things that we don't need, at prices we cannot afford, worst of all with money we don't have, just to impress someone who doesn't give a damn!

Is that me? Is that you? Think hard!