The Background Story:
It’s been more than two weeks since I graduated from the yoga school, and to be honest, I still have a hard time moving on. I met my cousin and her family the day after, I got busy visiting beautiful places, I joined a comedy club and did my first stand-up comedy performance, I met some new friends and they were amazing…, and I still think of my yoga teacher training days all the time.
I went to this yoga school in Canggu, Bali, Loka Yoga School from July 4 to 30, and it was the best 4 weeks of my life! It was such an amazing experience! I’ve never been so happy, I’ve never had so much joy. Oh…, I have so much to tell! Let me try to break it down one by one and hopefully give a systematic story of my beautiful experience.
First of all, let’s talk about the background. I hate yoga. I mean, I used to hate it. I tried doing yoga in the past. I watched some videos, followed some yoga classes, read yoga books, and damn they were so boring. However, I was always amazed by the yogis because they’re so healthy, peaceful, and have amazing bodies.
Seriously, their bodies are amazing: fit, slim, toned, powerful, and super elastic. They can do super cool and difficult poses gracefully and effortlessly. That was why I kept trying to do and learn yoga. I wanted to be healthy and have an amazing body. I wanted to look like that and be able to do those super cool poses!
However, since I hated to do the yoga practice itself (and any non-sports-game physical activities in general), I never really did it seriously. I went on and off with yoga. Earlier this year, in January, a yoga school advertisement popped up on my social media. I was interested, because it wasn’t just a yoga school to be a yogi or yoga practitioner, but to be a certified yoga teacher!
Hey! I could get a yoga teacher certificate? I would be able to teach! I would make money from doing yoga! And the school is in Bali! Now…, I’ve been wanting to move to Bali and live here since forever. Last year, I decided to finally do it. I still didn’t know what to do, but I decided to move. My New Year's resolution was to move to Bali, and suddenly I had the idea of what I could do!
I saw some advertisements of these yoga schools, but I didn’t sign up for any of them. I wanted to get to the cheapest one, so I started searching for a list of yoga schools in Bali. I found this site with a complete list of yoga schools in Bali, and I found Loka Yoga and other schools. Loka Yoga was the cheapest one, located near the beach, and in Canggu, where the comedy club is. It was perfect!
I was so excited that I signed up right away. I signed up for the first batch of the year, which was in March, because I just couldn’t wait to leave Jakarta…, or Tangerang, it depends. I contacted the school, registered, and paid right away. I remember the joy and excitement I felt after transferring the money. I started planning my Bali life. I will be living in Bali by March! Oh! So excited!
The next day, I finally remembered that I have a job, and I would need to tell my office and ask for a leave. In my defense, I didn’t work much back then, business was slow, and my office didn’t have enough work for me to do. So, yeah, I forgot I had a job. In fact, when I called my boss, I wasn’t about to ask for permission to leave, I just meant to inform him that I would leave.
He freaked out. He told me I couldn’t do that. He told me I should’ve asked him for permission to leave, I had to write the e-mail, and it would take time. For a start, he had a lot of projects for me. He told me I would be super busy until the end of June. I had to postpone my Bali plan. Thing is, I wasn’t sure I could cancel my yoga school. Would I be able to reschedule to July?
I contacted the yoga school. By then I already knew who I was talking to. It was Taryn Weggelaar, the founder and the main teacher. She was very nice and responsive to my messages. Before I texted her, I was worried that I couldn’t reschedule, and I might lose that amount of money I’ve paid for the school. However, she told me I could reschedule to July, and I was so relieved.
Yes, I was relieved that I could reschedule, and I didn’t have to lose my money for nothing. However, I was still upset because I couldn’t move to Bali as early as I planned. I had to stay in Tangerang for a longer time and it sucked. I didn’t live in the present. I lived in the future. My mind was already in Bali. Every day I could only think about living in Bali.
The closer I got to July, the more I got anxious about the school. I started doubting my destiny. Attending a yoga school in Bali seemed too good to be true. I was so sure something bad would happen, just like every single time I was ready for something good in my life. There have been so many disappointments in my life that I couldn’t believe that a real good thing would happen to me.
I started having these negative thoughts. What if this yoga school was a scam? I kept checking on their social media pages. I even started stalking Taryn Weggelaar on Google and social media. Okay, she is real, they are real, the school is real, but then I started to worry about other things. What if I didn’t get a plane ticket? What if the plane crashed? What if something else happened and I couldn’t go? What if it didn’t happen?
But it happened! On June 30, I finally left Jakarta, I finally arrived in Bali, and on the 4th of July, school finally started! It really happened, and it was really the best experience I’ve ever had in my life!
(to be continued…)
