Practice Yoga

The first time I came to Taiwan, in March 2009, it was to meet a yoga teacher I had met in London a couple of months before. I practiced yoga by then. I was pretty good at bending my body in all kinds of weird postures called 'asanas.' I was actually so good that I had become a yoga model for several magazines, posters and even a book. The book was called 'Yoga, Your Home Practice Companion.' I met the female model there. It was the second time we met. The first time had been a year before, at another photo-shoot, in Austria. She told me that she worked in Taiwan as a yoga teacher - a full-time yoga teacher. I didn't even know that that job existed 'full-time'. She invited me to spend a week in Taiwan and to see the yoga phenomenon with my own eyes. And I went! It was indeed amazing.

I had never seen yoga studios like those before. Rooms packed with 50 or even 60 sweating females bending their slim and half-naked bodies again and again, smiling at me as if I had been Leonardo Dicaprio or Johnny Depp. I must say that I didn't like Taipei at first. I didn't like it because I didn't know anything. I didn't know where to buy Western or Indian food. I didn't know where to find a decent swimming-pool or ice-skating ring. I didn't know that Taiwan was one of the best places in the world to hike and to drink tea. I didn't know there were hundreds of fun things to do.  

Well, after a few months in Europe, this friend told me that I could find a job as a yoga teacher: "Foreigners are overly popular here. Taiwanese love foreigners." That decided me. I packed. My first few months were difficult. I don't want to talk about that now, but soon enough I got a job at the studio where she taught, Pure Yoga, one of the biggest yoga studios on the island. The others are True Yoga (hiring only Indian and local Taiwanese teachers), Space Yoga, Royal Yoga and Yoga Journey. I worked two years at Pure Yoga before I got into trouble with that friend in question. I left Pure, as soon as I could, and joined Space, a few hundred meters away. Yoga is definitely one of the most popular 'sports' in Taiwan, if not the most popular. I met thousands - I am not exaggerating - thousands and thousands of Taiwanese people in that way. So I can hear your question from here: Shall I practice yoga in Taipei?

- Yes, you can... But you need to be careful. After three years of teaching yoga in Taipei, I badly injured my neck and I had to stop yoga. I got a cervical disc herniation. I went back to Europe and I got operated for that. It was a very serious operation. Yoga is actually much more dangerous than what we usually think. It's dangerous in the long run, like smoking cigarettes. If you smoke a couple of cigarettes, nothing will happen to you. Even if you smoke cigarettes for a full year, every single day, nothing will happen. But do that for ten or twenty years and you will know exactly what what I mean. Practicing yoga, in the long run, is exactly like smoking cigarettes. It won't destroy you lungs though. Yoga will destroy your joints - mainly vertebral joints and knee joints.

However, for the purpose of meeting Taiwanese people, since it's a popular activity for them, you may join a few yoga classes. If you do so, let me tell you a few more things. Space Yoga is the nicest yoga studio you'll find. It's also the most expensive. There are two branches, one downtown, near Zhongxiao-Dunhua MRT station, and one in Tienmu. The owner is American. He is one of the nicest men I have ever met, and please know that I have met the Dalai Lama, Matthieu Ricard and Khempo Tsultrim Gyatso (an enlightened Tibetan lama). And there is more: physical yoga is dangerous, but it's a gate to a higher type of yoga: meditation. Through yoga, I have found the great haven of meditation. Meditation can really change a person, and it won't destroy your joints, unless you stubbornly sit only in lotus, day after day, ignoring your body's calls.