How Movement Found Me
I actually hated moving as a kid, when I was old enough for teachers to organize sports like running, I just cried. I was a relatively obedient child but I just cried because didn't want to move in that way. School had to call my mom to come and get me to run! When I was around 12 I had a bit of a strong nudge by my teachers, they said “you’re in the seniors now, so that means you have to perform", and I had to pick between playing the drums or Indian dance. I chose to play the drums because I loved music, but these were Chinese drums, the drums that you see in line dances, which meant there was much movement involved, more so than music. That was when I started getting increasingly interested in understanding that I have the capacity to move. Before that point I had never given myself the permission to explore movement, because I just saw that I wasn’t good at sports, and it felt like that was the end of the story for me. I think this kind of reaction to a particular type of sport is common, people write off moving purely because they can’t do sport. I still experience this day in, day out in the context of a yoga class. People come to me saying "Oh, Yoga's not for me, I'm just not flexible enough for this” and I do feel for them because for many people this is still their impression of what yoga is about.
For me as a kid, with sport, there was a sense of “if I measure myself to others, this is not where I can excel, so I'm just going to say no to this”. And as grow towards adulthood, it gets even harder because we begin to build these armors. There's this really heavy expectation of "Oh, okay, I should know things by now so I shouldn't screw up," and with that comes a much greater resistance to trying new things. I think this is a shame. That's why a lot of my classes are all about giving people permission. Just giving permission so that students can strip away any layers of judgement or shame. Which allows them to dip their toes into something that they may think is not for them, and then just see how they navigate beyond that. And if they still don't like it, fair enough, but at least they've given themselves a chance to try.
And so it was this way of moving as expression through drumming which made me feel "Okay, I actually can move, and I actually like moving." From then onwards this really became the heart of how I continued to move. Chinese drumming is like a form of martial arts, which happens simultaneously as you play. This very rhythmic based stuff led me towards my journey of exploring dance which has led me to exposing myself and encompassing many different forms of dance and yoga.
Yoga at it’s very essence is the idea of yoking, which means to blend, to bridge, to bring together and as I understand, to put things into context. Each day it changes and that's the magic of it. What I tend to generally associate yoga with is the idea of yoking my internal and external world, and that means asking “how can I find connection within myself as well as connection towards others and my environment?” Increasingly, within this approach is liberation, the idea of opening not just your body, but your mind to possibilities. Yoga is the practice of shedding light on the darkest corners of your mind. This can be a challenge and I've had loads of experiences in this sense. I've even had students walk out, saying "this is not yoga." But, these are the moments when I feel "okay, I'm doing something right", because I see my practice as art and I always believe in art being something that either disturbs comfortable people or comforts disturbed people. I feel that if students leave the space that I've created with a strong reaction then I feel I have been able to do what I need to do for their journey. Because then, there is a question of why. Why are you so opposed to this invitation that I am sharing? Teaching feels like a beautiful exchange, where I can notice how my work comes through and what people get from it. It’s this which fuels me towards continuously refining my craft.
It's been a journey. When I started teaching Yoga I was fresh out of dance training which meant a lot of my ego within my teaching lay in creative and fancy sequences, which meant that is what I offered. Which in turn meant that people coming into my class would expect some sort of choreography from me, until it dawned on me "Oh, wait this ends up becoming me training up a lot of David's!”. Of course there are many people who move like me, but what I ended up being really interested in was individual expression, how do you, as an individual, move? I began to develop this during a time when I was doing annual visits back home, to visit my family in Malaysia. I kept getting messages from students saying "Oh, I miss having you here". I started to wonder, “how can I empower my students to be able to practice without depending on me?” Which is the very traditional way of practicing yoga. To practice on your own every single day. I realised that based on how I'd been teaching, I’d been spoon feeding which didn't allow my students to be able to find the autonomy to think "Okay, what actually is right for me?" Consequently I‘ve had to take a bit of time to dismantle that sense of my ego and also the sense of knowing that I've taught a good class when I have nailed my sequence, or when my students have nailed my sequence. I’ve just stripped it all back to "Okay, how do you want to move?" And that was when I began to be met with some resistance, that was when people started walking out, but it just became a stronger reason to keep this going, to tread into this ambiguous space. To enable people to really understand for themselves why are they are here and not to just blindly follow the teacher. In the doing of this, I've realized how I've become less of an instructor looking from above on to the students, but rather I’m there by their side instead. I’m just saying "Hey, if you want to do this go for it, if you don't want to do this that's fine," and it's really interesting to navigate this shift.
In yoga there is form and there is flow, neither is more important than the other. I believe that when we practice Yoga we are able to feel the presence of the components of both. Without flow we cannot understand what structure or form is, and without structure we will not understand flow. It is this dance of absence and presence that makes them so powerfully co-existing together.
David’s top tips for movement and yoga.
To keep it very, very practical and achievable, find a song that makes you instinctively move, like one that you just can't stop bobbing your head to, shut yourself in your bedroom. Put down the blinds, whatever you need to make you feel safe, blast that music and just let yourself move, that's it. Because, you know it and you don't need someone to tell you "how do I move?" So I think that would be the first top tip. A very easy start, your favorite song in your own room, dance it out without judgment.
If you were to look into beginning your yoga journey, it always starts with breath. A good tip is have a reminder on your phone, for a five count breath and whenever that reminder pops up breath, counting to five upon your inhale, counting to five upon your exhale. Repeat that five times. Notice any change in your state and that's that. That's your first step done.
David Kam
@davidkamkw