Do good, feel good

ooohh, finally weekends again!

In a blink of an eye, I'm left with 4 classes out of my 30 days journey. So fast?!?! To be honest, I kinda lost track on my journey records in my little notebook because I've been so caught up with work lately. Just in summary, I try to attempt 7am class once a week on weekdays and usually do the rest after work. I take break on alternate days if I'm tired and double up on weekends.

Class 22 (Tuesday)
- 7AM Hot Hatha - R

Class 23 (Wednesday)
- 630PM Hot Flow - R

Class 24 (Friday)
- 7AM Hot Hatha - R

Class 25&26 (Saturday)
- 930AM Hot Flow - O
- 11AM YIN - O

Between class 15 and 22, just passing the halfway mark, my body began to show signs of fatigue and soreness + laziness. In some way, I also felt my practice seems to be a little stagnant, and I don't attempt to go deeper in the pose. It could be due to the sudden high demand of practices. So this week, I planned my schedule well and took rest on Monday & Thursday. It's important to take time to honor signals of your body and try to get plenty of rest, H20, sleep and nourishment.

To be honest, I prefer the Orchard studio to Raffles but because Raffles is nearer to my office, I usually do there during the weekdays. Anyway, this week is the last week of my challenge and the themeeee is.. Triumph :) Perfect because it's a hit on and I'm so proud to have completed the past 26 classes and another 4 would be nothing. I felt like I'm going to miss the journey so much already haha.

Life in mini boxes lately:

1. With my colleagues at our company event at butter factory last Friday.
2. Lunch at Toss & Turn with my dearest new yogi friend, Priscilla after our practice. Such a babe :)
3. Dinner catch-up with Sammi & Jack, 2 person I'm so glad to have met in my life. And of cause their baby Kagennnnnnnnnn!
4. Lovely cakes at Lady M - perfect sweet treat to end on a Friday.

I'm so unprepared for my 10km SHAPE run tomorrow!!!! I haven't been running for a long time. Praying for good weather tomorrow morning.

I'm baking some granola from scratch. Gonna check it out now xx

Have a lovely weekends! :)

Shape Yoga by the Sea x Tara Stiles

Last Sunday A.M, we got lucky and had the opportunity to have a session of yoga by East Coast Park in Singapore with Tara Stiles from Strala, New York all thanks to Reebok and Shape! (:

Tara is special. I chanced onto her yoga videos 2 years ago through LiveStrongWoman and got hooked with her practices ever since. I started following her and Strala on social medias and felt that she's such a different and amazing guide & Strala students are lucky to have her! Doing yoga with her is all about moving with ease, being carefree and connecting you to who you are. Off youtube, I've always wondered how is it like to do a Strala class with her.

Our 45 minutes with her speaks everything about this yoga rebel :) She was definitely fun and hyper, I simply enjoy her lead. The way she guided put me and my friends on all smiles. It was all easy transition moving from pose to pose with grace and power. We even got so high playing & helped each other with handstands during the free play time, something which I've never dared to try. In just a short session, I'm beginning to understand what the "Make your own rules/yoga" philosophy was all about.

"Feeling goals lead to a strong, open, capable body, mind, and life."

Now that I know what all Strala is about after meeting the humble & outgoing lady and her husband. I'm even more determined and excited to take my little dream further - and that's to attend a Strong class in Strala or even intensive/tt training 19 hours away if I have the chance. I also hope to attend a class led by Heidi Kristoffer whom seems like a really lovely person, upside down girl I know :D

Thank you Tara for the amazing experience & the big hug, it was really heart-warming! (:

Check her Yoga videos here and her Complete Guide to Yoga in MindGreenBody!

Sunday x Nylon Coffee Roasters

The number of brunch cafe & coffee chain continues to grow in Singapore. After our brunch at The Plain on Sunday, Jack suggested to bring me to Nylon Coffee Roasters for a mid-day cup. Located under a what seems like deserted heartland residential building at Everton Park, with only about 3-4 seats, not much standing space and limited items on the menu, I wondered who would make their way down specially.

I looked interestingly at the lady who was making our cups with lots of passion and when I took my first sip, I'm truly surprised by the quality of the coffee. Very good. No wonder my boyf speaks so much about it and loves their roasted beans so much.

If you're a coffee lover, you should take some time out and make your way there! :)

Nylon Coffee Roasters
4 Everton Park
#01-40 Singapore

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 So just a little update on my 30 days challenge. I'm half way through the journey today :D gosh, I wondered how I made it through the past 15 days.

Class 12 & 13 (Saturday)
- 11AM Yin - O
- 1230PM Hot Hatha - O

Class 14 (Sunday)
- 11AM Hot Hom - O

Class 15 (Tuesday)
- 1030AM Hot Hom - O

1. Saturday's Yin was all about exercising the tissues of our body, where we stretch connective tissues by holding in yin poses for a long time. I reckon it would be great to take a break from hot classes and enjoy some stretching. But boy, I was wrong.. the class was so much more challenging as compared to the very first time I took about a month ago. It wasn't easy holding in extended poses and I was kinda struggling!! My muscles were all tight from the sudden intensive classes and I was nothing but so glad when the class ended lol.

2. It won't always feel good. yeah, this is the first time I'm feelin' this after 14 classes today. I was pretty tired in class (even though I was well-rested) and felt lazy to move. Wanted to do 2 classes since it was PH but decided not. Always listen to the body. Treated myself to Sumo Salad & fruit juice after which. It's important to keep my energy level and body high up with good, nutritious food :)

So good not to be working on a weekday :) Happy mid-week in abit!

Day 9, 10, 11 - Reconnecting

Class 9 (Wednesday)
- 630PM Hot Hom - R

Class 10 & 11 (Friday)
- 430PM Hot Ashtangah - O
- 530PM Hot Flow - O

I'm one-third through the journey! :) Amazing how time flies and I'm lovin every single bit of this. I'm exactly on track and we're done with Week 1.

Week 1's journey theme was Presence. Finding presence is at the heart of all yogic practices and essential for living a happy, fulfilled and enjoyable life. In these 10 days, I've came to learn to find ease and reconnecting with my body. I am pretty flexible by nature so it wasn't hard for me to get myself into stretching poses but anything else, like balancing, arm strength poses still requires so much more practices. With my recent regular practice and right breathing control, I found that my body gets into poses more intuitively itself without being forced. Example, I couldn't even used to hold a crow pose for more than 1 seconds when I first attemped 1 month ago, but now I can even hold up to 10 or more seconds :)

Anyway, I had to cancel my class soooooooooooo last minute yesterday evening because I was called back for a meeting. Thankfully we had family day today and get to leave at 4pm :) Hot Flow with Lily was crazily tiring, so much vinyasa but I was stoked to get to learn challenging poses from her. We played around with crow and headstand variations and I've so much to improved on. always a wip.

More flow to come!

So it's Day 12 and 13 tomorrow & meeting the busyboy finally!! :)

Till then, have a great weekend!

Baking x Banana with Assorted Nuts Muffin

My poor oven sitting in a sealed box at the corner of the living room (since May) has finally seen light :)

Sometime last week, mom and I decide to bake Banana Assorted Nuts muffin. It was our 2nd attempt because the first one didn't turned out that successful. With a little tweak, we were pretty confident it'll be right and edible this time.

One of my favourite morning or pre-workout fruits is banana :) it provides me with energy for the day and more importantly, it's sweet and yums. Banana with walnuts, almonds, sunflower seeds, raisins never go wrong together. (oh & PB!) When my banana gets too ripe, I place in freezer and eat it as ice-cream for desserts after dinner :D

The whole place was filled with fragrant muffin smell at 1030pm. Can't help but to help myself to one piping hot muffin immediately.

yummehz! :)

Day 8/30: Sore

 

Class 4 & 5 (Saturday)
- 4PM Hot Ashtangah
- 5PM Hot Hatha

Class 6 & 7 (Sunday)
- 2PM Vinyasa  (75m)
- 330PM Hot Hatha (90m)

Class 8 (Tuesday)
- 7AM Hot Hatha

I doubled up my practice over the weekends and took 2 classes each day. Ran late for Saturday first class and was so annoyed with myself (for being late), with the bus (for moving so slowly), with the cars (for causing jam) and I had to miss the 230pm class. But my spare hour gave me an excuse to get myself a smoothie king to cool myself down, then I thought 'hey why so mad :)' Anyway, it was my first Hot Ashtangah with Hom and I pretty much enjoyed it! We get to play around with more challenging poses like headstands during class, which I literally flipped into wheel pose because I couldn't balance on head and forearms. thump. haha I was a little embarrassed though but Anton turned and signalled it's ok.

Sunday was intensive because in all, I did 2 hours 45 minutes of yoga in a day. That could have been the most I've ever done in my entire life and my arms were sore from all the Chaturangah flow & I couldn't sleep on my sides that night haha. But I was happy because I managed to do my first forearm stand (with the help of mirror wall of course!) I still remembered the very first time I was challenged to do this, I thought it was crazy! I am loving Ashtangah and Vinyasa and that'd probably be my weekends classes ;)

Monday was rest and this morning was Hatha with June. I've been doing lots of Hatha because the classes always seems to best fit my work and schedule timing. In Hatha, I hope to master my standing head to toe posture, which I never dare to keep my head to knee because of fear of falling :/

Ok, I've been up since 540am. Need a rest now and Day 9 tomorrow! :)

What are you truly grateful for?

One of the most commonly asked questions, I realised, by many people who knew I'm doing a 30 days hot yoga journey was, "Oh, what do you get after you have completed it?"

When the very first person asked, my response was, "haha, nothing, a 20% off their next package".

Then another guy came along and asked the same. I thought about it for a while and replied, "Oh I'll get a 20% off their next package. But it's not about the discount, it's more about personal achievement and self satisfaction laaa".

Some 3rd and 4th person enquired the same but each time, my response seems to be different.

This little episode frankly got me thinking. It seems like it's natural for all beings to want something in return for whatever they have contributed. For everything you give, it's always in hope to achieve something. Then, are we sub-consciously quite self-centered because in everything we do, we are harboring returns rather than unselfish giving? All kind of level of giving is good, but when we give with expectation of receiving something back in return, we are not actually letting go of what we are giving.

I'm learning something with Yoga everyday. One especially inspiring quote I learned from Cindy from Strala - "Pushing is never a good way to approach anything - everything will come in time when we are ready, in yoga or life." This is very true and I'll keep this reminder at work.

raffles at 8am

Class 1 and 2: (Tues/Wed)
- 7PM Hot Hatha
- 6PM Hot Hatha

Class 3: (Fri)
- 7AM Hot Hatha

The first two days were probably the most exciting with me all filled with energy and ready to kickstart the journey. Class was all fun except I need to work on my balancing poses. I have an over-reliance relationship with the mirror, ready to fall when I can't see myself.

Decided to do a 7am class this morning since I am meeting Jack for dinner. I was extremely surprised to see the class almost full and there were so many people on the mat before the sun was fully up. The morning class was extremely body opening and mood lifting because I felt very energized and happy the rest of day at work + I was eligible for free MRT ride ;) hahaha I can't wait to do more morning classes next week.

Catching up with 2 hot classes tomorrow since I had to give a miss on Thursday & a shabu steamboat to end the night!

 Sweet treats for the sweet, have a great week ya'all :)