After chatting with my lovely friend Nadine during our morning walk today about finding our voice in writing, I thought it was important for me to define my voice and set the tone for Karen’s Yogaland.  I’m not sure if I can say this out loud myself, I’m too much of a coward and my fear of judgement is telling me “don’t do it!” so I will let Buddha Cat speak up for those who are too chicken to speak for themselves………….

There, Buddha Cat has spoken.

So here’s what you will not find in Karen’s Yogaland:

• Over usage of fancy Sanskrit words.  How is Urdhva Prasarita eka Padasana easier to remember than standing splits maybe combined with a picture or demonstration?  C’mon, let’s be honest, I’m not the only one who struggles to remember these long words.  And whilst Virabhadrasana is relatively easy to remember, there’s just one too many R’s in that word for my Asian tongue for me to be able to get it right every time.  I’ll stick with “Warrior” thanks.
• Over usage of any kind of fancy schmancy words actually.  Never did it when I was an economist, not gonna do it now that I’m a yoga teacher.  I mean, seriously.
• Over seriousness.  Life is way too short to take everything way too seriously.  Seriously.
• I-practise-yoga-therefore-I-am-a-better-person-than-you attitude.  I practise yoga and therefore I’m possibly a better version of myself than before I started practising (oblivious then) or when I’m not practising (grumpy and creaky).  But I’m not in any position to judge others and I would appreciate if they did not assert that sorts of attitude here either.

“It is what it is” was not a phrase I commonly heard at yoga classes usually referring to accepting things for what they are.  ”It is what it is” is a phrase the director at my old job used to say all the time when referring to financial markets.  When other analysts and economists were trying to sugar coat the global economic crisis using jargon and other long words found mostly in a Thesaurus and research papers, he would just say that the global economic health “was in a f***ing pile of shit”.  Every time he said something like that, the only girl in the office, me, would just look at him wondering if it is entirely necessary for him to swear as much as he does, and he would just reply, “Well, it is what it is!”.  You could say, that was his mantra.

This is what I learnt from him.  Calling it as it is.  Whether you use a fancy long word with debatable spelling, or one that everyone definitely understands, it’s still the same thing.  For me, I already speak three languages fluently, and with what I believe to be a cultural disadvantage when it comes to certain pronunciations, I will stick to using the easy words thank you.  That said, I have no issues with people who DO use Sanskrit words for everything, some things are better described in Sanskrit as the English version is just a mouthful and does not fully include the essence of it anyways.  I’m just saying you won’t find that HERE and this is WHY.  Oh also, long sentences with long fancy words tend to lose my attention quick.  I’m just assuming there are other human beings out there like me.

By the way in case you were wondering, my morning walk was wonderful

Namaste!
From Karen and Buddha Cat