Hi! I’m Vina!
I started my yoga practice in 2006, mainly because I needed a fitness activity to improve my physical health. My first class was Bikram Yoga, and it was certainly love at first try (and heat). After a few months, I literally felt my joints unhinge! Months turned into years, and true enough, the physical transformation happened – but what was more notable were the mental and emotional changes I experienced. I became more calm, focused, and generally gravitated towards surrounding myself with positivity.
Eventually, I explored other forms of yoga, and that is when I fell in love with the Vinyasa style, and in 2017, more than a decade into my yoga practice, I finally felt I was ready to take the plunge. I enrolled in an intensive 200-hour Vinyasa Yoga Teacher Training with Yoga Plus, and wow, what a journey that was! Two weeks into the training, I just got home one day and unexpectedly burst out crying. I felt so vulnerable and unsure of myself. That self-doubt still followed me when I started teaching – but as with everything else in life, progress comes with regular practice and repetition. And I just kept teaching and experimenting – till I finally found my voice. And that voice emerged because of my love for music.
I was already using music as background for my regular vinyasa classes, but it was in 2019 when I underwent the 50-hour Inside Flow Yoga Teacher Training with the founder himself, Young Ho Kim, that everything just finally, truly clicked. Here was a style that combined all my loves – music, dance, and yoga.
Cliche as it may sound, but yoga is now a big part of my life. The type and intensity of my practice may have evolved over the years, but it has been the one constant thing, through ups and downs. And because of it, I not only have met the most authentic and warm-hearted people- some of whom I now consider family and closest friends – but it has guided me to my calling, which is teaching.
