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Switches and Stoicism

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Seeing lavender fields this summer in Furano, Hokkaido. A romantic fantasy from childhood came true. If you were asked to switch the light on in a dark room that you had never been before, you would think that the task was difficult. What is difficult is not the act of switching, but finding the switch itself. Stoicism tells us that we can decide how we react to things. While many things external to our mind is incontrollable, our reactions and feelings are still under our control. A problem many people have in believing in this line of thinking or putting Stoicism in actions, is that they interpret it as with enough practices and mindfulness, they will eventually be able to just switch their reactions and feelings on and off like a finger snap. But time after time, the practice of such awareness did not seem to have taken them far enough. To put it another way, their average state of happiness did not go up as much even after adopting the teachings of Stoicism in their lives for reaso
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A Confession To My Partner

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Removing old wax from my surfboard Written On May 3rd, 2023 I am not perfect. I cannot be my best-self every day and every minute.  I was so exhausted this morning. I will-powered my way through my yoga practice under the blazing sun. I told myself "this would be my only physical exercise today because there would not be enough time for me to surf." I completed my yoga practice, came back to the car to take my ten-minute Shavasana rest. You returned from surfing, looked very happy and asked me if I would like to go surfing. You even told me that you came back just to tell me that I can surf if I want to. A lot went into my mind to answer that question. My immediate answer came from body: "no, I shouldn’t go." I already pushed through yoga and packed myself on the back for that. I had no doubt that I was actually tired. On the other hand, I wanted to live up to you. I slept for nine hours last night, so it seemed like there is no reason for me to be tired still. It
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I Am No Good For Anything

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The end of a yoga practice on a road trip I am five years into the Mysore-style practice of Ashtanga Yoga. I am probably one of the most disciplined practitioners. I rarely skip any practice. And yet, my progress in asanas is slower than most people, who are not as disciplined as me or who are not as young as me. At least this has been my experience. I know yoga is not about asanas (yoga postures.) I know suffering comes from comparing yourself to others.   But there is always light at the end of the tunnel, so let us talk about comparing myself to others in the journey of asanas.   It has been five years! If you consider a two-hour practice, six-day a week schedule throughout the year for five years, it is a lot of yoga! Yoga has taught me a lot of things about our body. One thing is that it takes a hell lot of time to change the structure of your body or to loosen things up, even for just a little bit. The journey teaches me humility. I surrender to God (a Supreme) that I have a bod
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I Try To Be Strong Because I Want To Be Happy

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Facilitating a group discussion during an event of my company I have been told that I am like the sun, constantly emanating energy and super charged with positivity and happiness. I did not take it as a part of my character too seriously until I was told in various occasions by different people in the past couple of years. When I started to think about it, I recognized that although I have met people of different ages, jobs, hobbies and lifestyles, most of them share a similar level of average mood and happiness, which is average. My definition of an average mood and happiness is that people are doing generally ok; they are aware of how much better off they are compared to their previous generations; they have grown to either adapt or accept all the little problems of a modern life. The most obvious trait of an average average (not a typo) mood is that it is really difficult to lift it up. Most people do not get very excited even being shown to the most amazing thing in the world, and
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Airports! Save Your Smile and Stop Doing These Things!

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Diving in the Kerama Islands of Okinawa in 2021 The airport is the place where I can’t keep my zen. I can’t hide my annoyance even if I try. The moment I enter the airport, my bitch face takes over. No matter how many times I’ve done it, I can’t get over and accept all the bullshit things they do at the airport. I know, I know. You’re going to say that I’m mean and everyone is just trying to do their job, blah blah blah. You don’t think I know that? But I just can’t. And I will tell you why. This is a blog about all the annoying things I experience in Japanese airports. Some are universal while some are more confined to the country. Let’s start with the very initial encounter with the airport personnels at the airline check-in counter where these people openly discriminate their customers with very friendly and smiley faces. I swear to god there was one time when I tried to check in and this lady was speaking to me very politely with a smile on her face, but she was essentially telling
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Avoid These Sentences to be a Better Conversationalist

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Talking with friends in Ishigaki, September 2021 Welcome to 2022! I am excited to do more yoga, surfing and exciting projects at work this year. On the note of self-improvement, I want to be a better conversationalist by saying and not saying a few things that I will write about in this post. These are the lessons I learnt from the observations of people's reactions, reflections of my own reactions and countless emotional fallouts due to mis-communication that stemmed from the inappropriate use of language. One of my biggest pitfalls had been that when I said something that was not accurate to what I intended, and even after I learnt that, I sometimes would still think that the conversation partner should have understood my intention. There are many reasons why I would think so. The common ones are: come on, no one would be that dumb to think like this, of course I meant that; you should know Michelle by now that she would not think like that. There should be a balance of an assump
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What Yoga is Not

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I used to be guilty of sharing this kind of photos on Instagram too There are many issues around how the modern world portrays yoga, which in turns affect how people perceive it. As yoga is misperceived, the modern yoga world is filled with the wrong audience who do not have their expectation quite right. Then, studios and teachers need to twist the tradition of yoga even further to meet the expectation; thus, it becomes a negative feedback cycle. I am in a constant battle between maintaining an indifference to what other people think or do, and telling people what I believe yoga is and is not. On one hand, I think people are free think and do whatever they want, as long as I know what my practice is. On the other hand, as I am receiving this beautiful gift of the world, being yoga, which ameliorates so much of the suffering that human beings experience everyday, I feel the urge to share, to spread and shout "Look! This is the path most of you guys are looking for! Look here!"
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