I Guess This is How Rebirth Feels

In Midair

It is July 31st, 2015. I am half way through my yoga teacher training with a queer feeling of being in midair. The same as in a long-haul, cross-continental flight: you’re crossing the ocean in the pitch-blackness of night, having your belly strapped in the leather seat of a flying metal box. Time and place blur away in the soft breaths of asleep passengers. You don’t belong to anywhere.

I guess this feeling signals the teacher training program’s effects. Our day includes pranayama – yogic breathing exercises – and meditation, philosophy, theory lesson, yoga asana practice. From 6AM to 8PM, every day except Sunday, in a 1 month duration.

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How to Discover Your Passion

Rapha and I are walking in City Square Mall, hands in hands. I am here in Singapore visiting him and we are going out for dinner. On a whim, I say “I’m gonna close my eyes now. And you lead me” “OK,” he replies, already used to my spontaneity.

I interlace my fingers with his, close my eyes. Rapha is walking on my left, a little bit in front. I sense the direction through the gentle pull of his arm and his voice whispering “Now 1 step down. Now 3 steps up.”

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The Pearl of Our Life: a Story about Pain, Beauty, and Art

I learnt this from a book of Julia Cameron. She compares art with pearl. Do you know how pearl is created? It is created out of a disturbance: a grain of sand, for example, finds its way inside an oyster’s shell. To protect itself, the oyster releases a substance to cover that grain of sand. That’s how pearl is made. The beautiful pearl is art; the act of transforming pain to beauty is a greater art. That’s the big art of our life.

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Milena Nguyenart, beauty, courage, pain, recovery