我天生身體僵硬柔韌性不佳，做運動從來不是我的所愛。由於物理治療工作的關係，以前我常有腰頸背痛的問題。當年除了看過針灸推拿，我也曾經想過自學瑜伽，去幫助舒緩不適。今天收拾書架時，發現我的第一本瑜伽書，約十多年前買的。在這本小書中，它涵蓋了許多不同的瑜伽式子、動作指導及圖片說明示範。
那時，我對瑜伽的認識及理解非常有限，當時的我相信「瑜伽」＝「式子 /體位法」，即是修習瑜伽就一定要學習及做到那些不同的式子動作。而當我翻閱這本小書，見到不少難以想像的動作時，我當時已深信以自己的體質跟本難以做到這些式子，所以「瑜伽不適合我，瑜伽不是我的修行途徑」已深深印在我的腦海中。
然而，生命是非常有趣的；你一直追求的你得不到，你以爲不屬於你的，命運卻帶你遇上。之後，我遇到了我的瑜伽老師Prasad，由最初的抗拒到慢慢走在瑜伽的路上，我也一直意想不到。雖然這些年來我對瑜伽有了更全面的理解，但那個強烈的第一印象「瑜伽不適合我，我的體質做不到那些高難度的式子」原來仍然深深印在我的腦海裡，影響了我對瑜伽的看法。所以當我走在這條路上時，我仍然有一種“不適應”或“不夠好”的感覺。
然而，當我最近跟Prasad上了“靜心指導師培訓”之後，我對瑜伽的真正含義有了新的體會，“不適合”的感覺終於消失，並開始理解為什麼我走上瑜伽這一條路上，即使我的身體柔韌性亦不如一般現代瑜伽老師所給人的感覺。傳統上，瑜伽其實是一個通過不同的修習去改變我們心智頭腦的過程。通常我們的頭腦都很忙碌地想東想西，難以專注，而在瑜伽的過程中，我們通過不斷的練習來平靜和調節我們的思想頭腦。當你頭腦變得平靜後，我們便能夠認識到內在的真我，這正正是修習瑜伽的最終目標。最近當我愈來愈暸解頭腦的本質時，我開始覺得這個頭腦很多時都是一個問題創造者；在很多情況下，我們如何去瞭解一件事情的方式會絕對影響我們的看法及自我感受。例如當你行在路上不小心跌倒，有些人可能覺得只是小事一樁，起身拍拍屁股便走人，但有些人可能認為自己唔好彩好黑仔覺得個天都唔鍾意佢，而這一切都取決於你自己的感知以及你如何定義事物。
回顧我的生命，我曾經我是一個非常抑鬱和負面的人。少年時的我很不滿當時的生活環境，心中充滿了憤怒，並認定自己是生命的受害者。這種心態使我受了很多苦，情緒也很不穩定。由於我看待生命的方式非常負面，所以我的情緒非常差，而惡劣的情緒也進一步讓我看待生命更加消極。
如果我不去作出改變－處理我的情緒或是改變自己想法，這種惡性循環是可永無休止的。我記得我生命中有一些重要的改變時刻；當時的我情緒非常低落，腦中充滿消極的思想，突然之間我意識到負面的思維無法幫助我人生快樂一點，那一刻我選擇停止與我的頭腦合作去繼續負面下去，並開始問自己“真的那麼糟糕嗎？”.......雖然我的困難並沒有立刻得到解決，但至少我停下來不再讓發瘋的頭腦去控制我的一切，慢慢地讓自己回到了較正常的狀態，而不是陷入情緒的漩渦中。
經過多年的尋覓和努力，特別是我開始練習瑜伽之後，我的身心情緒都得到極大的改善，變得更穩定，也能更看清生命的意義。這些年來不同的尋覓和實踐，我發現我改變的不是外在世界，而是我的內心、我的心智頭腦。這正如瑜伽所說的一樣，我們需要改變的是我們煩躁不安的頭腦，腦袋靜下來，我們才有機會體會生命的真意。
I was born with a stiff and inflexible body and doing exercise was never my favourite. Because of my work, I suffered different type of body ache and pain. So I had bought my first yoga book 10+ years ago, and hoped that the postures could help me relieving some discomfort. In this little book, it covered a lot of different asanas, with instructions of how to do it and photos of a flexible woman demonstrating all the poses.
At that time, my understanding of Yoga was very limited, I thought Yoga was equal to Asana. I found that there’s a lot of difficult or crazy poses inside the book, so I had a strong impression that I could never do it and concluded that Yoga was not my path.
However, life was very interesting. Finally I met my Guruji Prasad who is a Yogi and walked on the path of Yoga. Although I had a more holistic understanding of Yoga after all these years, that first strong impression of “Yoga is not for me. I am not flexible enough to do all those poses” was still deeply imprinted in my mind and affected my perception of Yoga. I still had a “not fit in” or “not good enough” feeling when I walked on this path.
However, after my recent “Meditation facilitator Training” with Prasad, I had a new idea of what Yoga really was, that “not fit in” feeling finally faded away, and started to understand why I was walking on the path of Yoga even I didn’t have a yogi body as defined by modern’s yoga world.
Traditionally, Yoga is a process of transforming the MIND through different practices. Normally our mind are busy and non-focused, we calm and regulate our mind through constant practice. This peaceful and calm mind can help us to realise the truth within us, for which is the goal of Yoga.
Recently, I start to feel that our MIND is really a Problem Creator, and in many instances, how we think is really more important than what actually happens. For same instance, some people can see it very neutral, but some can think it as tragedy, all depends on your own perception and how you define things.
Looking back in life, I was once a very depressed and negative minded person. I was full of anger and considered myself as victim of life when I was a teenager. This mind-set made me suffered a lot and I became very emotionally unstable. Because of my negative way of seeing life, I was emotionally upset and depressed, and all the emotions, like sadness and anger also blinded me and made me seeing life more negatively.
This vicious cycle seemed never stopped if I didn’t change any part, either working on my emotions or working on my beliefs. I remembered there’s a few important moments in my life, I was so emotionally down and upset, my mind was full of negative thinking; all of a sudden I realised that my negative thinking couldn’t solve any of my problems or improve my emotional wellbeing, so I stopped to cooperate with my mind at that moment, and started asking myself “Is it really that bad?”…. Although my difficulty wasn’t immediately solved at that moment, at least I stopped to contribute to my negative thinking pattern and I slowly got myself back to a more normal state of beings, instead of falling into an emotional whirlpool.
Slowly, after years of different searching and practices, especially after I started to practice yoga, my emotional wellbeing gets greatly improved, and I can see life more clearly as what it is, rather than what I think it is. All these years of different seeking, searching and practice, I find what I change is not the outer world, but my inner mind. This exactly is what Yoga talks about, what we need is to transform our mind so as to realise the truth self within.
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