Yoga Revealed My Happiness Within

Viewing myself from the outside, things looked like all was going really well, and frankly it was - I won scholarships to study in the United Kingdom & Switzerland - in pursuit for a career in academic biomedical research. At the age of 18, I left my home country of Brunei for the United Kingdom and spent 7 years there before I moved to Switzerland for my PhD studies. Through my studies I gained the opportunities to travel extensively, make new friends from around the world and learn about the different cultures of this beautiful world.

That all sounds really lovely, doesn't it?

Yet, I never really felt true happiness during these rather exciting times of my life.

I felt stressed most of the time, always aiming for the next goal to progress my career path, constantly worried of failing. I cared a lot about what others thought about me, my academic successes became my badge of honour which gave me a sense of achievement. My sense of self-worth became dependent on being successful.

It wasn't until my first year of my PhD studies that I really reassessed my viewpoint on life. It took a mild mental break down to bring me to this point. I was constantly anxious and couldn't sleep properly. I had a promising start into the PhD but as all research students eventually realise, experiments fail, you have days upon days of failed experiments which can drive you into feeling like you are just not good enough.

I realised I needed to find a way to alleviate my anxiety, fears and feelings of being worthless.

This was when I returned to my #Yoga practice.

Yoga had been in my life on and off for many years prior, and I really enjoyed it whenever I practiced. Yet, I had not developed the discipline to practice Yoga regularly.

During this return to Yoga, I realised my mind finally started to quiet down while I was practicing the asana. Upon feeling this peace within, I wanted more!

Slowly my practice became more regular from once a week, to twice a week, to every other day and finally an almost daily practice. I also realised I was building up strength in my body and increased range of motion.

Over the period of a year of this regular practice, I started to become a lot calmer. I started developing the mental & physical resilience to carry on through challenging situations. As a result, I actually finally managed to enjoy life. I am still chasing after my various goals yet I now frequently invest some time to reconnect with myself and to be in the now.

I can honestly say that I now understand a little bit of what happiness is.

My hope is to help others realise this sense of serenity and happiness that really comes from within each of us.

With love,

Lester

#yogabenefits #peace #happiness #stressbuster #namaste