Ninie Ahmad: Off her yoga mat.

I keep rewatching Dharma Mittra’s YouTube that I posted in my previous post and his soft voice whispering,

“According to the quality of the student, they are attracted to the right guru. Those who are sincere, seeking enlightenment, full of reverence, not criticizing anyone – they attract the right guru.”

..and I realized something.

I remember the years when I first started teaching yoga somewhere in year 2000, I was attracted if not addicted to my first yoga teacher as she struck me as someone really smart, beautiful, generous, strong and everything I wanted to be in an 18-year-old mind and body.

If I were any good in my early years of teaching yoga, I fully credit the strong foundation I earned from my first yoga teacher. If I had a good eye for alignment, it was mostly from being under her tutelage for years. Unfortunately, we had a fallout and I sold my soul to the devil in a form of a giant yoga chain in Malaysia.

Over a couple of years that I was constantly being featured on local publications as ‘celebrity yoga teacher’, I was under my own  impression (if not delusion) that I was already the teacher I have always wanted to be – when I was not even close to being anyone’s celebrated yoga teacher if you strip me off my shell of tiny shiny stripey yoga clothes and fancy schmancy yoga poses. I was one of the great yoga poseurs.

I thought when I nailed Headstand, I was ready to teach others. I figured I could do most arm balancings on my two hands, I was better than some other teachers who couldn’t. My greediness, hunger for validation and intention of spreading my gift of yoga back then were far from the alignment of what made me want to be a yoga teacher in the beginning – to heal people like how yoga healed me.

I am not proud to advertise the fact that – I used to be a smoking yoga teacher. I started ’speeding up the process of killing myself’ (that was what my mom said when she first caught me) at the age of 18. I was really young and everybody around me in Bangsar and in uni smoked back then. I was also in relationships and friendships that were unhealthy for me and I held on long enough to have seemed like I did not care and love myself enough.

Looking back now, no wonder I attracted a lot of beautiful, famous, kindhearted nonetheless smokers as my yoga students (and former boyfriends) back then.

I might have been a yoga ‘instructor’ (a pretty Google-able one at that) but I knew that I did not deserve to be called a yoga teacher / guru.

In the origin language of yoga, Guru means ‘the remover of the darkness’ or ‘the one who sheds light’. I might have been ‘instructing’ step-by-step to sun salutation, but I did not dare speak nor preach about ‘life’, ‘happiness’, ‘light’, ‘non-cruelty’ in my classes many years ago as I knew that, I was not ‘living the life’ and ‘walking the talk.’

How could I shed the light when I was the one offering them the lighter?

.   .   .   .   .   .   .

Special yoga teachers have mysterious ways to sneak into your life, inspire you with their kindness and show you the ‘light’ when you are ready.

In 2007, I first met Dharma Mittra, one of the most respected living yoga teachers who has turned thousands of people off meat just by attending his yoga class. As if my (unlit) stars were up, the week I felt I was ready to stop turning my lungs into tar balloons and my body from being a cemetery for dead cows, I was assigned to interview him for an article aptly titled, ‘What Makes A Good Yoga Teacher?’ and his first line to me was, “You have to stop killing animals and yourself” when he did not even know that I was still a meat-eating and cigarette smoking yoga teacher.

Dharma Mittra & I (2007, photo by Tom Hayton)

The power of a great teacher, from the first day I met Dharma Mittra until today, I have successfully stopped eating slaughtered animals and shortafter, I swore to never smoke cigarette anymore to stop inviting cancer cells to multiply in my body when I have invested so much time and energy on my mat to achieve almost equilibrium state of health.

I then and until now, aspire to lead my classes, teach yoga to people like Dharma. With kindness, smiles, humour and inspirations, maybe nowhere close to Dharma’s teaching and dedication but I figured if I am one of the lucky ones to have been touched by Dharma Mittra, he must have seen something in me, or maybe beyond me (my first, middle and last name means ‘The Highest Light of Enlightenment’, how did Dharma realize that – I have no idea. Thank you Allah Almighty, the highest power behind the Universe for the gift of yoga and all of my yoga teachers for making me realize why am I in this lifetime for).

.  .  .  .  .  .  .

I am grateful for everyone who have been to my classes since year 2000 until yesterday.

With addition to all my amazing yoga teachers (and some yoga instructors) that I have met and learned from over the recent years, I learn tremendously a lot from all of my students. The more students I have taught, the more happiness I brought, the better teacher I got (to be).

I don’t know if I finally deserve to be called a yoga teacher today, but I do know that I am definitely a better teacher today than I was 12 years ago, 5 years ago, 1 year ago and yesterday. If you did not favour my teaching instructing then, come to my class today – let’s fall back in love with our great qualities in each other again.

I am back to sharing the healing light of yoga and to help you awaken your mind and body’s infinite wisdom to heal yourself.

Love and light at Upward (August 2011)

I know this much because I see a different crowd and yoga students at Upward since we opened July last year compared to the overall quality of students coming to my classes at all the different yoga centres I have taught at. Everyone that has been coming and keeps coming to Upward today is very kind, very strong, very honest, very clean, very enthusiastic, very punctual and very loving.

In my optimistic mind, I would like to think that it is because I am more kind, stronger, more honest, more punctual and more loving now – therefore I attract my same kind nowadays.

And you wonder what brought you here..

Heart and light of Upward (December 2011)

My gratitude for accepting and for shining my light.

I wish I have the answer to this..

I also know

• half a dozen female Malaysian celebrities in their mid-30s who chain smoke, drink Coke like water and party everyday like it’s Saturday, yet they still look younger than me
• my mom at 54 (and with seven children and does not exercise) looks younger than some of my seniors who were former athletes from my boarding school
• my dad at 57 (and only eats free-range eggs and has not eaten chicken or anything canned for as long as I could remember) looks younger than Rosyam Nor who is only 45. And errr, in fact I think my dad actually looks a lot like Rosyam Nor Rosyam Nor looks like my dad, a lot..

The Ahmads

I don’t know about looking younger but I do know that the oldest Malaysian is a vegetarian (and THAT I don’t want to look like Nigella Lawson in her swimming suit).

.  .  .  .  .

I can only speak for myself and look up to vegetarian yoga teachers being masters to their own body at their 70’s and 90’s with no health issues and rocking arm balancing like there’s no tomorrow.

93-years-old Tao Porchon-Lynch

73-years-old Dharma Mittra

I keep doing what I have been doing and I keep eating (or not) what I have (and not) been eating as
when I grow up, I want to be and look just like them.

Love and long life (to all humans and animals).