Ninie Ahmad: Off her yoga mat.

I am a simple little girl.

While most women spend their salary on 9000 dollars LVs, I save up for 90 dollars LLs.

Most people want to own a million bucks convertible, I ’simply’ want to be able to stand for a minute on my elbows.

My InStyle IS Yoga Journal (come on, you know where this is going, right..).

Among my favourite Yoga Journal covers

I thought I couldn’t be happier after I was made the cover of SHAPE (Malaysia) in 2009 until I realized, almost every skinny Malaysian celebrity / model has been on the cover of this nation’s SHAPE.

And I’m not even skinny nor a celebrity!

Now, if you think Yoga Journal could use

• more Asian / ethnic-looking yoga evangelists
• a short and short-haired yoga personality  for once
• a banned-in-their-own-country yoga teacher

as their cover models,

or if you simply want to see ME on their cover (classy Ninie, not subtle at all, eh!),

send your message to Yoga Journal by casting your vote HERE

No registration & form-filling required at all!

All you have to do is simply click ‘Rate‘ and your vote is counted!

Somehow if you do vote everyday until April 15th (that’s just once a day for 15 days, my pretty readers.. Errr, and only one vote per IP address per day – YES, I DID TRY VOTING MYSELF MANY MANY TIMES!),

maybe I will be the cover for Yoga Journal edition September 2011!

I AM self-promoting, a-s-k-i-n-g (with cherry on top!) and visualizing

Love and million yogi bear hugs in advance!

Having read and enjoyed both books tremendously,

- tell me if I am being patriotic or optimistic if I get MORE excited watching this trailer

LAGENDA BUDAK SETAN The Movie (to be released 2010)

compared to this?

EAT PRAY LOVE The Movie (Summer 2010)

I remember clearly taking turns reading Lagenda Budak Setan in boarding school some 15 years(!) ago and how hard I prayed I’d grow up a pretty Malay woman like Ayu (clearly didn’t happen) and to fall in love and eventually marry a hopeless romantic Malay guy (which based on personal experience, doesn’t exist) like Kasyah.

Judging from the trailer,

While Ayu can never be played by any other local actress (I can’t think of anyone that is not mesmerised by Lisa Surihani, she is just too lovely..) and I am never not a fan of Farid Kamil, I must say he looks the Kasyah part!

Spoiler: I bet think Fazura is Ayu (too)! Although she would embody the perfect perfect Katerina (she even looks like the girl on the cover of Katerina The Novel, no?) too..

I choose OPTIMISTIC – that Lagenda Budak Setan movie will be as good if not better than tear-jerking Cinta, my absolute favourite Malaysian movie among a couple others.

Love. Lots of love this weekend.

For my birthday last year, I bought myself this book amongst many (every birthday I’d buy myself books significant to my age, so 27 books last year) and found it to have been very helpful with my poor Sanskrit pronounciation and comprehension.

‘COMPLETE A TO Y GUIDE’ – how can I not buy that?

Anyone who’s been practicing yoga long enough would agree that – it is crucial to properly pronounce Sanskrit as it is the language of yoga.

Understanding the meaning and purpose of each yoga asana (pose) helps preserve the terms related to the science of yoga – an understanding that is lost when these asanas are known only by their English names.

Knowing the postures names in Sanskrit allows teachers and students to unambiguously refer to a posture as the same posture may have several different English names (and refer to my title, having joined two different Yoga TTC in China humbled me – when yoga poses were being translated from Sanskrit to Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghai-nese, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese and Tagalog.. Why don’t just translate them to English, you asked? – because most Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese and Thai don’t even understand basic English! Aren’t we 1Malaysia lucky?)

adidas Ra’Yoka TTC (Shanghai March ‘08)

God knows I struggle with my basic Sanskrit pronounciation and I’d be happy to be able to name all poses in Ashtanga Primary & Second Series and to be able to count them without second guessing myself.

As a Muslim yoga practitioner, I also find it helpful to understand basic Sanskrit as I can differentiate basic words / actions / verbs with Gods from deities / goddesses’ from Sages names so that I have an option to not say them out loud when I chant / meditate / perform kirtans.

I keep stressing (in my blog) that anything Sanskrit doesn’t necessarily mean Hindu and I personally believe that, The Highest Above understands all languages before we even say it. Hence I make it a point to READ the translation of Al’ Quran as often as I can instead of blatantly singing my prayers in Arabic that I don’t understand (sitting for Arabic For Communication PMR paper evidently doesn’t help).

Back to Sanskrit (before I go ahead, do you know that 80% of Malay words were Sanskrit-based? What do you think ‘guru‘, ‘agama‘, ‘raja‘, ‘sakti‘, ‘sama‘ all came from?) – most yoga teachers instruct asanas in Sanskrit as they were taught, trained and encouraged to do so but in our effort of preserving the art and language of yoga, most students get literally lost in translation as most of them just understand basic Tadasana, Chaturanga, Balasana and Shavasana (err, you don’t get them either?).

So when one of my students shared this over our teh-tarik-post-yoga-class last week, Azmi (Samdjaga) & I can’t stop laughing for minutes!

She said, “I don’t know what exactly the pose name is but it sounds like ‘Pandang Straight Tapi Tengok Sana‘ (from Malay translation, ‘Look Straight But Turn Ahead‘) to me..”

I’m quite sure she meant this pose,

PADANGUSTHASANA

And she wasn’t finished.

She added, “I have one more pose I don’t know how to pronounce. That ‘La Bodega Padan Muka‘ pose itu“.

Azmi & I still can’t decipher that one though.

Love and light.

Lokha Samastha Sukhino Bhavanthu.

Would you believe me if I say that it equally means Gong Xi Fai Chai and Assalamualaikum?

2009.

This is the year I

• attended Coldplay’s VIVA LA VIDA concert,
• represented Malaysia for adidas Fitness Academy Summer / Spring ‘09 in KL and adidas Fitness Academy Fall / Winter ‘09 in Beijing,
• discovered life is so much fun with iPhone,
• launched www.ninieahmad.com
  
• awarded National Young Entrepreneur of The Year by HSBC
• got to wear designer gowns & hundred thousand ringgit timepieces under the direction of Malaysia’s best art director, make-up artist, photographer for 8-pages spread of TATLER Malaysia,
• commenced 27-minutes Headstand
• materialized my lifetime fantasy of being a SHAPE covergirl,
• launched http:beyoga.my (IMHO, one of the coolest websites I’ve ever seen)
• and started my own business

yet this is also the year that I chose to

• willingly stop writing advertorials
• happily cut my long hair short
• helplessly end my 2-year-old relationship with a wonderful and supertall someone

So yes, 2009 was a really good year but..

then we came to the end.

I had an interesting long talk with a member of BE Yoga during a quiet class earlier this week. Her name is Sue Ng, her cheeks glow with pink happiness, her words are honest, her presence and speech are as eloquent as a beauty queen and we can’t stop chatting on our business similarities and hardships as she just opened her restaurant about the same time BE Yoga opened.

We were exchanging stories about yoga retreats in India  from what I read in Eat, Love, Pray spiced with secondhand experience from my fellow yoga teachers and her firsthand experience of having been to India earlier this year following this ‘dream’ she had one night.

She was sharing her share of ‘wanting to change‘ and ‘seeing the light‘ upon being there, as I shared my fear of, ‘what happens IF I don’t want to drive a car, wear fancy adidas yogawear and get married anymore?‘ upon returning back from India if I can collect enough guts to actually go to India (Mysore hopefully) in the nearest future.

We had a good laugh yet painful reality check as we traded and agreed on this irony,

• Sue opened her restaurant and shortly after, developed gastric problem she never had before AND
• I, opened a yoga centre and immediately after, my stress level shot so high that my body (immune system) is attacking almost everything I eat!

Given a choice now, I will be happier to stick to simply teaching yoga as when money is involved, it gets ugly.

Having announced that though, I would NOT trade this experience of having sold my car to keep BE Yoga alive, having sacrificed my dignity and sanity to ensure my team loves and looks yoga, having met wonderful people and angels in human form as I crawl my way up and struggle for another breath when I’m on the brink of drowning – for anything else in the world and I am very excited to face what else is lined up for me, BRING IT ON!

This tunnel I am still driving through still seems endless and so far, I am not sure if I have enough fuel to reach its end but I am sure I will still have my spine and my breaths to keep me alive.

This bumpy road (and expensive highway tunnel) will definitely make me a stronger yogi, a more humble yoga teacher and a better person when I do see the light and rainbow (in form of WETHER investment returned, being a personal yoga instructor to British rockstars ;D, getting to volunteer at a remote orphanage as long as I could OR even settling down as a mother with two beautiful daughters, I don’t know and get ever so curious) at the end, I’m sure.

I breathe this wisdom by one of the greatest yoga teacher in this lifetime (I hope I will be lucky enough to meet), Guruji Iyengar – everytime I feel so drained, tired and low

“Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured.”

and I move by the love and kindness around me anytime I feel I have nothing else to smile for.

Love, hope and optimism (for RM400,000 to fall from my sky this weekend).