Reiki Wonder (23-Dec-06) @ Bali

I wanted to something special for this Bali trip, other than the usual shopping and sightseeing, so I googled on "Bali" & "holistic", and voila!, I ended up on www.balispirit.com and clicked on the tab "Holistic Healing & Wellness". The 1-day Reiki Level 1 workshop seemed like a great way to learn something purposeful. Maybe after multiple sessions of Reiki on Mornin, his migraines might just disappear for good! Plus I can reiki my grandma, mum, sister and myself! woohoo!

The initial plan was to just fork out USD100+++ and attend the workshop myself, the rest of the gang including Mornin can hang out at the beach or maybe go shopping. To my surprise, Mornin was interested to try out the workshop too!

The day finally came when we took a 45-min ride from Desa Seni to meet Cat at Ubud. We were warmly greeted by 3 happy Reiki dogs @ Cat's place. Even her house (that she specially designed) just radiates happiness with pretty greenery all around and nice furniture with Balinese carvings. She beams with pride, saying that she "built" the house all by herself with the help of a contractor.

For Reiki Level 1, we had 4 attunements in total, with a delicious vegetarian salad lunch in-between. The best part of the workshop was to try out Reiki on each other. I did Reiki on Mornin first. I visualised a white beam of energy coming through my head and out through my hands to his head. After that, the current I visualised was pulsing strongly. Fascinating! There was a tingly feeling in my hands. For Mornin, he felt energy radiating from his feet. I felt really grateful that he attended this workshop with me, coz if I attended on my own, I might be skeptical of this whole experience. With him, it's as if we re-connected on a whole new level, and it feels magical yet real at the same time. The 3 Reiki dogs added the fun element by sticking to both of us. One even used my ankle as a mini-pillow while we gave him a good doggy massage. The way his eyes gleamed, it's as though we're giving him the greatest gift ever and he's showing immense gratitude looking at us. Cat said there's a Tibetan saying that the dog is the last reincarnation of man before he becomes a man; that's why dogs look so human sometimes.

Reiki is a wonderful thing. It feels so relaxing to do reiki that both of us fall asleep while giving reiki. And the pulsing, sucking feeling at the hands feels as though I've got magical healing hands. Once, we were just holding hands in the car ride, when we both felt a ball of energy swirling right in the centre of our palms! Cool! =D I'll keep on doing Reiki everyday and move on to doing Reiki on my mum and sis =)

P.S for those of you who want to find out more about Reiki, you can check out the discussion thread I've started at Steve Pavlina's forum

What are you / will you be grateful for?

As usual, my inspiration for another exciting blog post came during the long bus journey. Today, I will talk about things I'm grateful for, and things I'll be grateful for.

I'm grateful for having:

• a great and complete family with one cute younger sister who's now happily attached.
• a great job that pays well
• friendly colleagues who support me and are willing to give me honest feedback to help me grow career-wise
• not-so-friendly colleagues who helped me understand my own weaknesses.
• understanding, charming, inspirational, smart boyfriend Mornin! heehee.
• great dance friends and idols to model after: in no order of preference and of course includes many more other idols not mentioned here... (Michelle - groovy, sexy babe!; Eugene - recipient of Patrick's best Student award; Mornin - forever stealing the limelight; Jimmy Kong - stylo milo!; Aishah - hip hop diva!; Allegra and Tina- you rock the stage!; Shulin - my first dance idol!, Ti Eu - NTU MJ's ultimate dance legend!)
• A wonderful dance instructor Patrick Loo who's also a life guru
• been accepted into ECNAD's Dance Explorer Programme
• so many opportunities to perform, choreograph, learn and teach dance.

Things I'll be grateful for:

• being internationally known as a talented and versatile dancer, excellent choreographer, passionate and dedicated dance instructor, outstanding dance therapist.
• being rich enough to support myself, my family, my future family and my dance passion!
• being healthy and fit enough to experiment with a wide repertoire of dance genres.
• having more than 10,000,000 people thanking me for making a difference to their lives through dance
• great relationships with families and friends.

Yeah!! I love to teach and choreo!

Today I was cover instructor for Adeline's Hip Hop class @ YCK Sports For Life. Only 3 turned up, but I was happy for quite a few reasons!

1. I lurve my choreography- 4 8s to Missy Elliot's "teary eyed". There's floor work, plus I choreographed half of it in the middle of class. The steps just came to me naturally. wahaha... I'm a genius!
2. I approached the SSC guy to help get an interview for dance instructor =) He told me that the Bishan branch has no Hip Hop class yet so I could start there!
3. I taught them dance the same way dance instructors @ Fitness First teach-- just keep on repeating the same steps for 5-6 times without stopping and sooner or later they'll get the hang of it; if not, they'll be happy to get a good workout. It works! Even the slowest of them got most of the steps, and today's steps is not easy at all!
4. I could feel their great sense of satisfaction on dancing such difficult choreography today. And so I'm happy that they're happy =D
5. I'm earning money doing something that I thoroughly enjoy!

Dance to HEAL...

I've been thinking about how I will fulfill my mission statement , and one of the words that came to me was "HEAL". So I googled it, and found Dance / Movement Therapy. As defined by the American Dance Therapy Association, "Dance/Movement Therapy is the the psychotherapeutic use of movement as a process which furthers the emotional, social, cognitive, and physical integration of the individual." It's based on the belief that the mind and body are inter-connected and thus by healing the body, the mind gets healed as well, which I feel is very similar to exercise forms like Yoga and QiGong. Dance/Movement Therapy was even used as a group treatment method for psychiatric patients during the World War II.

Dance/Movement Therapy is not common in Singapore, except in charity organizations eg. Very Special Arts Singapore Ltd. I feel that it has potential as a wellness institute available to the public as well. Does anyone have more information on this field? Pls let me know ya? =)

My Dance Journey so far...

My very first Hip Hop instructor was Mr Patrick Loo. I started to learn Hip Hop after my 'A' Levels while waiting to go into NTU. It was at a weird place to learn dance- Amore Fitness! When it was time to start uni studies, I had to bid farewell to dance, so I wrote a card to Patrick, saying how much I love his dance classes, and wrote my email address to keep in contact (heard he told others I idolize him a lot! hehe.. which is true la). I was really sad coz NTU seemed like a super boring place to me and I wouldn't have time to do other stuff like dance. Then there was an ECA fair during the 1st week of school, so I joined NTU Modern Jazz Club, aka MJ.

I love MJ (I got popular coz I was the only gutsy one to do a hip hop solo=D), and the best thing was, the committee managed to get Patrick to teach us! Yeah!! Yippee! and I didn't have to pay for classes. Soon after, what followed throughout my NTU years was competitions, performances, and my brief but memorable 3-month scholarship @ Jitterbugs Swingapore.

My dance skills improved quite a lot through 11 hours of dance and of course endless crunches and stretching @ Jitterbugs. And yet, I was at an emotional low during that period. I remembered telling Fen that I had to stop coz I was having trouble passing my school modules. There were lots of other reasons as well. I felt tired shuttling between Orchard and Boon Lay most of the time; I felt miserable being among the weakest of the lot; and I couldn't face the rejection if they "fire" me from the scholarship during the evaluation which was coming soon. After writing the resignation letter, I left and cried all the way from the studio to Somerset MRT station. Studies seemed like an obligation, dance is something I enjoy yet difficult to master. I felt I couldn't multi-task with both dance and studies. The good part about leaving the scholarship was that I got back on track with my studies, and of course, I got together with Mornin, who loves dancing too! =)

Other than dancing, I got to experiment with choreography and mixing music (kudos to DJ Funky T!). There was a Masquerade event for entry into MJ, so I choreographed a 1-min piece. It was so much more fun than schoolwork. I've also choregraphed for Hall mass dances, Hall beauty pageant contestants, and MJ's competition pieces. I was proud of every piece of choreography I created, sometimes a bit too proud that ego got in the way and there was conflict among team members. There's a precious lesson in every step of this journey.

DaNceTitUde 2003 was my most memorable dance experience during my 4 years at NTU. Library scene rocks! After finally graduating with a Bachelor's degree in Engineering, I thought that was it for my dance journey-- byebye Dance, and Hello to Work life. Until Patrick invited both Mornin and myself to join United Groovers (UG), a premier Hip Hop dance crew comprising of Hip Hop dancers from NTU, NUS, other tertiary institutions and dance studios. We also put together an alumni's Geek Vs Mean Girls scene @ DaNceTitUde 2005! Best item ever for me! Though UG's life was brief, I found more hip hop dance friends, and life became much more interesting with more performances (Hoobastank's pre-concert @ Sentosa!), competitions and even teaching stints @ community centres as cover instructor.

So far, I've been taking Patrick's Hip Hop classes, and Lyrical Hip Hop @ Oschool. Next year's going to be a more exciting year @ECNAD's Dance Explorer Programme.

Accepted into ECNAD's Dance Explorer Programme!

On the very day (5-Dec-2006) that I wrote my personal mission statement on a card, I received an email from ECNAD, saying that I've been accepted into their Dance Explorer Programme! Yeah!!! =D

Here's my plan so far:

1. Join ECNAD's Dance Explorer Programme in 2007 (to get a good foundation in Ballet, pure Jazz and Dance Improvisation)
2. Join Jitterbugs Swingapore's next scholarship intake in end 2007 or 2008 (to learn a larger variety of dances eg. Hip Hop, Belly dance, Salsa, Lindy Hop, Funk Jazz etc).

There's lotsa other dance-related stuff I wanna do as well! eg. watch more dance performances (this time must save up!), teach dance at CCs, start thinking of choreography for NTU Modern Jazz Club's DaNceTitUde 2008 (hopefully Patrick will say yes!), get some fellow dancers to dance at charity homes etc. things are looking good. =)

The story behind my Personal Mission Statement

My Mission Statement reads: "To positively impact more than 10,000,000 lives through dance ". I came up with it after listening to Earl Nightingale's "The Strangest Secret". Just as it was instructed in the audio clip, I wrote my mission statement on side of a blank card, and on the other side I wrote these words: "Ask, and it shall be given; Seek, and you shall find; Knock, and it shall be opened unto you".

Why do I choose dance then? After all, I've been in science / engineering majors from Secondary school to University, I've quit the Jitterbugs scholarship after only 3-months of training, and so far I'm still learning only Hip Hop. Well I guess it's because:

1. It's the only long-term passion I've ever pursued
2. It's the only avenue through which people say that I've inspired them, and I want to inspire more people.
3. I'm inspired by SoYouThinkYouCanDance
4. I love the satisfaction of having dancers complimenting on my choreography
5. I frequently visualize myself dancing in impossible but beautiful ways when I close my eyes
6. I promised to my parents that I'll stop dancing after graduation from university, but 2 years later I'm still dancing, teaching, performing, competing, choreographing, mixing music
7. Dance shuts down the shy / selfish side of me.

I wrote "10,000,000" because I want to reach outside of Singapore (at least!) and this number creates so much excitement. I made it vague ("through dance") because I want to explore the different ways of reaching out via dance, eg. teach, perform, do charity, open dance studios, do dance productions, publish books, produce a dance movie (Happy Feet!) etc. Like what Earl Nightingale says, I'll just write down this mission statement and think about it; my subconscious mind will do the work of precisely how to reach this goal.

What's the Law of Attraction?

The Law of Attraction (combined with subjective reality) simply says that you attract into your life whatever you think about. It also means that whatever's happening in your life right now is manifested as a result of what you think about --that includes all things positive (eg. getting married your perfect soulmate) and negative (eg. the violence and injustice you read in the news everyday). To apply this law positively in your life, here's some steps you can use:

1. Make a list of things that you want in your life.
2. Visualize as if all the things that you want are already fulfilled in real life. Imagine what kind of life you'd be living when you have everything you've asked for.
3. Think of the things that you already have that you're grateful for.
4. Be patient, for the Law of Attraction takes time to activate.

Steve Pavlina has a great article on explaining the Law of Attraction. Rhonda Brynes made a movie-length dvd clip of the wonderful world of the Law of Attraction called "The Secret".

This is not some new theory that's just evolved. Here's some free resources you can read / listen to. James Allen (1864-1812) wrote about it in his book "As a man thinketh". Earl Nightingale talked about it as "The strangest secret". http://www.scienceofgettingrich.net/ and http://www.scienceofbeingwell.net/ share experiences and success stories of applying principles found in two of Wallace D. Wattles' most popular books.

Some people find that this theory (of being responsible for everything that happened, is happening and is going to happen in their lives) is too extreme. The world might be getting more and more depressing nowadays, and being held responsible for all the crimes, violence, global warning etc is simply too much for them to bear. It's not a realistic theory, they say.

Well, for me, this theory empowers me! At least I CAN make a positive contribution to this world (or rather, my world) by simply thinking positively! And if everyone else is part of me, or a projection of me, then it makes sense for me to make an effort in seeing the positive intention behind every action anyone takes, however negative that person seems to be.

Maybe you'd like to put this theory to the test?
You can join Deepak Chopra in creating a peace movement larger than any military movement in the world. http://www.peaceisthewayglobalcommunity.org/index.aspx, and /or you can join Steve Pavlina's Million Dollar experiment using the power of intention. http://www.stevepavlina.com/million-dollar-experiment.htm

First night of DanceyBingz Blog!

Hello everyone! finally I've taken real action in creating my own blog. This is where I share my learning experiences in dance and personal development with you. By writing this blog, I'm committing to myself to start living passionately coz any life is worth celebrating =D I'll be adding lots of free stuff and links to free stuff. So, stay tuned!