yoga anyone?

Teaching in the local school is not the only motivation I had to come here. As most of you may already know, I am looking around for some land. I think I may have finally hit on my life motivator and I think Siargao is the place to set u the next chapter of the book called my life.

As a young girl I loved gymnastics, and apparently was quite good at it. However, being on a scholarship in my school requiring a minimum B grade across the board and after-after school gymnastics training until 7PM did not really gel quite well. I started losing ground on the studying front and was promptly reminded by my parents that school and my grades came first. And so much to my dismay, I abandoned gymnastics after almost 4 years, at age 12.

Much has changed since then, and my body certainly is not the same, however, if there is anything to show for all those years of ballet, tap and gymnastics, it is a love of exercise and a flexibility maintained to this day. Yoga is to me not just an opportunity to tune into the here & now, to re-tune my body and to combat stress. It has also become a reminder of that dream I had as a child to slowly chisel my body and perform movement with grace. It seamlessly combines the physical and spiritual aspect that does me such good, with my other love: performing arts. Throughout my careers at P&G and managing the Spa, I ended up joining the teaching programmes for staff because I enjoyed being onstage and helping others learn what I had learned. And so, now comes the time to unite all of those things into one: yoga teaching.

It was never my plan. As the story goes, I was quite happy to learn and be the student, and for the past 5 years have gotten fairly good at it. Funnily enough, my local friends arranged a merienda recently that was to be preceded by a yoga class. Unbeknownst to me, I was to lead the session (while I thought it was the host fo the house who would be leading) and that was soon to become the beginning of what I can now say is turnign into a bit of a following. I always thought the Spa would be successful here, with massage and some beauty treatments. I also thought the yoga would work and envisaged bringing in some friends to run retreats and such. Now, whilst I still believe that is how it will be, I also know I will be getting my yoga teacher training in order to run the classes myself the rest fo the season. I am excited about my project and love the fact that it is not just the women who are keen to join the classes, but also the surfers, for whom yoga is such a great complement to their time in the water. And surprisingly to many, is often something they have all tried before and quite enjoy.

So bring on the challenge, and bring on Siargao Spa. Watch this space! :-)