We spoke to Alice Chieng, a yoga instructor at Padma Yoga in Kuching, who also practises an interesting healing technique.
Alice was just like most of us and had a nine to five job but was faced with a health crisis after a while. She hated exercise until she got very sick with an autoimmune disorder. Then, she decided to go for yoga and the first month was so terrible because the autoimmune disorder caused her joints to hurt!
After undergoing a meditation course, she just kept learning more and more things!
Since then, she’s been doing yoga for about eight years and found out about fly yoga five years ago. It really aligned with her personality because it’s so fun and helps to destress. Some people are already stressed and yet, they come to yoga and stress further about having the perfect poses! This is where fly yoga comes in and also why she brought it to Kuching.
Fly yoga really helps to stretch your spine while defying gravity and it’s relaxing especially for those with neck and back stiffness. Inversions on the hammock will make the blood rush to your head and face which could help with anti-ageing.
Her class structure usually consists of Viveka-Vinyasa yoga, Pranayama yoga and then relaxing in the hammock. Viveka-Vinyasa yoga integrates the techniques and knowledge of yoga along with energy enhancements through acupressure points whereas Pranayama yoga is the practice of controlling your breath along with yoga poses.
Emotional Freedom Technique
Other than fly yoga, Alice practises and also holds workshops for Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) which is a tapping technique that integrates both Western psychotherapy with acupressure points commonly used in acupuncture. This technique helps stimulate the body’s meridians – concept in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) about the path where life energy (qi) flows – increases energy flow to heal emotional blocks and it also teaches the body to respond to stress in a calmer way.
Alice mentions that it sounds like it is easy but the tapping needs to be done right in order to be effective and is advisable for people who are dealing with problems such as anxiety, insomnia, fears, pain, relationship issues and sometimes, cases of depression.
Deeply Dedicated
Being a full-time yoga instructor doesn’t mean all she does is yoga. Alice wakes up at the crack of dawn, at 5.30 am and practises EFT to around 6 am. Afterwards, she’ll practice some yoga depending on how she feels that day for about 40 minutes and sometimes, up to two hours! Her commute to the yoga studio takes almost an hour and she’ll then start teaching her classes.
Looking fabulous comes easily to Alice and she doesn’t limit herself from eating what she craves. When she was younger much like the rest of us, she loved junk food but yoga really changed the way she tasted food. She doesn’t really fancy beef anymore and just listens to what her body wants because forcing a diet on someone doesn’t really work. Gravitating towards vegetables naturally, she eats only when she’s hungry and feels satiated easily.
Words of Wisdom
Alice is currently pursuing a sports science course to better understand athletes and how they move because there are athletes who are trickling into her classes after an injury. She’d like her classes to be able to benefit them more and not just for athletes but for those who are active in sports.
One of the challenges Alice faces is her students who hide their medical problems. It is difficult to teach them because she doesn’t really know their limits and thus, she hopes that in order to minimise injury, do be honest with yourself and your instructor!
