The first time I heard the word YOGA!

Before I talk about my journey going upside down, let me tell you the first time I heard the term Yoga.

The year was 1986. Some of you were born and some of you were perhaps in another sphere at that time.

I went to the National University of Singapore. AT that time you have to choose two majors and a minor. I choose Political Science and Philosophy as my major and Sociology as my minor. When I chose Philosophy as a major, I had very little idea what it was about except that it has to do with thinking and arguing your point.

In my first year, Logic Paper was compulsory. The argument is, to win any idea, it has to be logical. Fair enough. Then I realised that a logic paper is actually a formulation of deduction. It was very much like Maths. At that point I thought to myself what did I get myself into cos I am a 'genius' at Maths.. NOT!! There were symbols and equation. Very much like Maths...(I thought I was going to die!). Then, I was told a few had to leave the university because they failed their logic paper after a retest. The system then was merciless. You take a retest if you failed the first time. If you failed again, you are not allowed to drop that subject and take a different subject. Simply means, you made the wrong choice of subject, too bad... you don't belong there. Merciless indeed. If you are lucky, they allow you to redo your first year, even if you had passed the other subjects.

Then a bomb hit me!! I failed my logic paper. I studied relentlessly for my retest day and night. Practised any logic problem I had my hands on. Phew!! I passed.

Second year was smoother and a breeze to me. I had to pick 3 topics for philosophy. One of the three I picked was Indian Philosophy. Yoga Philosophy falls under that. At that time YOga was rather foreign. I knew it was something exotic and interesting.  There were many sanskrit words to remember.  Most of the time, I thought it was just academic and did not apply anything to me. I also thought it was just ideas and could not understand some of the concepts. 20 plus years later when I took my 200hr Teacher training and studied YOga philosophy again, there were several "Aha" moments with concepts like Ahimsa, Satya, Yama and Niyama.

What I learn is that ideas are just ideas until you can apply and makes sense of it.

Only when one applies and understand how it benefits oneself can one truly appreciate these simple but yet practical concepts. I suppose coupled with a few years of life experiences, I could relate better with the concepts. Life is actually the best University and experience is indeed the best teacher.