While yoga and well-being practices keep on thriving in Indonesia, no online space was set to tell people know what is on. We, therefore, are pleased and proud to present you YogaInIndonesia.com, a website dedicated to yoga audience and well-being enthusiasts in Indonesia. On the site, you’ll find an assortment of most recent information about yoga, health, well-being.
As part of our mission to inform our audience more about Indonesian yoga teachers, we are honored to have Pudjiastuti Sindhu. She founded Yoga Leaf – Be Leaf Community. Based in Bandung, she found her passion in yoga when she read Phulgenda Sinha’s “Yoga, Meaning, Value and Practice”. From that moment on, Pudjiastuti began to go on her yoga journey. The author of “Hidup Sehat dan Seimbang dengan Yoga” (Living in a Healthy and Balanced Way with Yoga) shares with us some of her views on yoga and how she juggles between her mundane tasks as a human being with so many roles to play and her yoga daily yoga practices as a yogini. Here is our interview with Pudjiastuti Sindhu.
Q: The interest of yoga in Indonesia have grown rapidly since the past 10 years, how do you think yoga has affected the life of so many practitioners in Indonesia?
PS: The best impact I can notice is yoga may improve the quality of its practitioner’s life. I witnessed on my own bow yoga has improved my self confidence, self acceptance, and peace within each student so as to enable them to unleash their best potentials. In addition to the benefits they may reap in personal lives, the yoga practice of course positively affect the surroundings.
Q: What kind of challenges have you faced when establishing yoga in Indonesia?
PS: I started teaching yoga in Bandung in 2001. It was the time when what people know of yoga was that yoga was like gymnastics done for people to get more flexible (for housewives) and yoga was Hinduism practice involving mantras. In essence, yoga was considered either too physically demanding like gymanstics or deeply spiritual.
I founded Yoga Leaf in 2000 armed with the spirit of bridging these two opposite poles, i.e. yoga as a medium to master the Self through managing breathing and physical body as well as teaching practical spirituality. I have tried to make yoga more acceptable by the society through healthy lifestyle ala yogic 5 principles. I also wrote and published a book and several articles in order to educate people on what yoga is in fact and it looks like things are improving.
Q: What does your personal practice look like?
PS: Now I happen to have more spare time after I don’t teach public classes any longer. That is why I find it more easily to practice by myself much better. The tentative training and workshop schedules enable me to do my self practice and attend trainings I need to refresh and deepen my understanding.
My Self Practice these days has been more gentle in nature compared to the first time I started doing yoga. Now I prefer practices that “I need” to ones I can do.
My daily practice involves going to bed earlier so I can wake up earlier and have more time before the other family members wake up. After praying every early morning, I do some pranayama, bandha and Surya Namaskar practice for several rounds. To end my practice, I get relaxed and meditate for 20 minutes then I shower and perform my daily chores.
After making sure there is no errand to run and every household chore is done, I can practice more properly in 90-120 minutes. I usually manage to practice full time on my own 2-3 times a week. I focus more on complete or general forms of practice or I may focus on things I want to do such as forward bending poses, inversion poses, and so forth. All is based on my moods.In the afternoon I read books, particularly ones that enrich my mind and soul or write something.
At night before going to bed (after everyone at home is asleep), I practice Yin Yoga and then meditate or yoga nidra until I fall asleep.
Q: You have just introduced "Taman Rumi", could you tell us a little bit about this?
PS: Taman Rumi is the existence of my spiritual journey. I believe that each spiritual teaching is good and has a similar goal – that is to say, to achieve awareness of our True Self (and to feel th econnection between humans and most importantly, with God). The reason why I chose sufism is because I am a moslem. I feel more familiar and accustomed to sufism, both in terms of the concept and the use of terminologies. That being said, I can wholeheartedly learn whatever sufism offers me.
Q:What is your all time favorite yoga pose?
PS: My favorite posture is all the twisting asanas as they can always put my mind into balance. While I feel fatigued, the twisting postures enable me to relax; whereas, while I feel energized, twisting boosts my stamina.
Thank you Pujiastuti Sindhu for sharing your thoughts with us :)
By: Dee
