INNER ALIGNMENT | YOGA | TANTRA

How I Found True Love in a Cold-Hearted Emotionless City

Walking the enlightening path of yoga held the answers to my desire

I was exposed to yoga through learning gymnastics at school. Then my mother bought a yoga postures book with instructions, which I read and practiced religiously without understanding how the practice was shaping me.

Soon after, I was writing spontaneous poems. I still do. But I had a 20-year gap in between the spontaneous poetry writing phases. These 20 years that I have been in Hong Kong were dark, lonely and gruesome. The strength of my spirit kept me believing in my path and I didn’t give up my quest for a loving relationship.

Here’s how my path of yoga evolved:

1. I kept practicing yoga throughout these years. Sometimes in classes with complete strangers. Sometimes solo. I preferred solo because I knew by then that yoga is an inner journey. My purpose was to find inner alignment.
2. After becoming a mother, I read books that spoke healing words and love I never heard from or felt with my mother. It was important for me to end my trauma. I sought peace. I sought to understand my anger. I realized it came from unmet needs since childhood. I never felt seen or heard. I made sure I saw, heard and validated my child. I wanted to move in the exact opposite direction of the cold, critical, angry, violent, psychopathic and merciless mother I grew up witnessing.
3. Four years of reading books from great authors lead me down the path of meditation. I wanted to fill my cup with love so that I could pour into my child. I knew nothing about myself. I didn’t have an identity of my own. I made sure I could pass down better values and beliefs to my child than the ones that I had inherited.
4. I realized I wasn’t a happy person deep down. I had every right to be unhappy. I gave up the love of my life. I gave in to please my mother and then everyone else. I said yes to marrying someone I knew nothing about, nor was compatible with. But I realize that without moving away from a mother like that, I would have traveled this far on my journey to get to know myself. As well as the part that becoming a mother had played.
5. In the summer of 2013, I had reached my lowest lows. A friend suggested that I take time out for myself. I had never done that. I didn’t even know what that meant. But that’s what led me to seek a certification in Hatha Yoga Teacher Training in Mysore, India. It only deepened my understanding of myself as a person, why I was the way I was. I was someone who wanted to get to the root of the problem in order to completely eliminate its future occurrence. Without even knowing, I was put on the path of yoga since childhood, only the path became clearer once I was older.
6. Mediation and reflection had by then become a way of life. One thing led to another. And before I knew it, I had in my hands a book on Tantric Sex. It was when I practiced alone the teachings in that book that I found out what I wanted. Tantra is one of the seven major paths of yoga. Not receiving love from a parent is extremely painful. It creates a foreground for future traumatic relationships through unconscious attachment patterns. I desperately wanted to be in a deeply loving relationship with a man whom I’d choose to spend the rest of my life with. I longed to be in the safe embrace of someone as emotionally strong and resilient as I had become. I longed to experience tantric orgasms with a man. That was something I was crystal clear about. I was unwilling to settle for anything less than that. I was on a mission to find that man no matter how long it took me. Tantric orgasms are the most healing. I realized I needed this healing to remove blocks from my chakras and my life.
7. You’re a yogi if you practice yoga philosophies. The commercial display of yoga never appealed to me. Yoga is a personal journey of getting to know oneself through disciplined practices. Yoga means union — the coming together of our masculine and feminine sides to serve our purpose. The meaning of the word namaste is ‘the divine in me honors the divine in you.’ When we put this into practice, we strive to regulate ourselves intentionally and make peace within, so that we can resolve differences with others. This union is what I sought the most.
8. Self-inquiry is something I came to do a lot more, thanks to my exposure to meditation and the insights about myself in the practice. I realized my up-bringing had set the foundation of stunted growth. But thanks to meditation and knowing my strengths, I knew rewiring myself was possible. Meditation changes the brain. It helped me cultivate strength of character and have the confidence to leave a marriage I didn’t feel loved in. If a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment, not the flower. This is what I was doing when I started living on my own and starting life from scratch with new friends, new positive experiences and places to be without those old relationships that didn’t serve me.
9. I realized growth was something I valued. For the first time in my life I allowed myself to witness the gravity of damage done to me from being in a relationship with a narcissistic parent. So I resolved to create and provide myself the experiences that I was denied growing up. I was empowering myself. I traveled alone. I took up dancing, which I had loved as a child but wasn’t allowed to learn formally. I allowed myself to feel — angry, upset, grief, bitterness. I cried. I listened to the unheard parts of me. I validated the unseen parts of me. I gave myself opportunities to be whoever I wanted to be and learn from the hard knocks of life what I didn’t learn in school or growing up in an abusive family.
10. I went on dates endlessly, never giving up on my vision of and belief in my finding true love and a deep, meaningful and healing relationship. My healing and self-enquiry never stopped. From time to time, I stepped back to reflect on how I was doing, what results I was seeing with respect to the work I was putting in. Not finding that guy didn’t mean he didn’t exist. It only meant I needed to work on getting myself a little more aligned. So I didn’t let the coldness of the city dampen the light and love in my spirit and heart.
11. Through learning public speaking and storytelling I learned to be confident. I taught myself to be a better communicator — mind, body and soul. Call it aligning from the inside out. Leadership called to me from a young age. I knew there was a leader in me. Until I found her, I kept following people who were aligned to my path and whose guidance I could trust. The results I saw through the work I was putting in increased my trust and faith in myself. I implemented everything I learned. I was my own guinea pig.
12. After failing to meet my life partner, I asked myself what it was that I was not aware of. What was missing in the way I was communicating when I was meeting guys? Then I’d learn more and implement. By then I had gotten over rejection. I stopped asking myself “What’s wrong with me?” and realized those were not the right guys. I became hyper-focused on fulfilling my desire of finding that fulfilling relationship. There was no plan B, no exit strategy. I stuck with plan A. I fully owned and powerfully stepped into my feminine essence. It was do or die for me. I did. And I won the heart of my man.
13. He is the type of man I wanted. This is the relationship where I experience those healing orgasms. This sacred relationship I’m now in is where we both share similar values and have a vision for ourselves and our life together. We practice namaste and honor each other’s beliefs. We respect each other. We help each other grow to become more of who we’re meant to be.
14. Sharing my story in multiple ways brought me the opportunity to write my book WIRED FOR SELF-LOVE. Writing my book made me fall in love with writing to express myself. Writing, I realized, did amazing things to the brain. The unstoppable poems are back. Being disconnected from myself was not my choice, it still happened. The only thing that I had control over was what I could do to make my life worthwhile for myself and others. The path of yoga showed me the path of inner alignment and to believe in love.

I write to awaken you to the world of love that awaits you when you dare to ask the universe. It delivers to the degree of your belief in yourself. I am a living proof of this.

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