I can’t believe it’s only been two weeks since my last entry. It felt like forever and I’ve seriously missed having the time to focus on the blog. It’s not that I’ve suffered from a blogger’s burnout, a writer’s block or anything. Just that I don’t want to type away only for the sake of posting. Luckily today, I only have to teach one class and so I have the rest of the time to rest, recharge and write!
The past few weeks I’ve been missing on the blog were spent making face-to-face, real life connections with a few of the most amazing men and women. I am so thrilled to be sharing with you a couple of successful events I was able to mount with my yogini partner Anna and my friends/support group (Nic, Shirley and DK). I’m writing a series of posts for it but to startHere’s what went on:
AUGUST 9, THE SECOND EKAM COMMUNITY MEETUP
We recently held the second Ekam Community Meetup which we so aptly called, Happiness Happens. Aug 8 was National Happiness Happens Day and so we decided to celebrate it. If you haven’t read my first entry on Ekam, it’s basically a group of like-minded, positively-charged people who come together to meet (and sweat) in real life and continue on connecting online through our Facebook Group.
Ekam in Sanskrit means “One” and if you reverse it, it reads “Make” which is a total coincidence because the community’s objective is to make all of us one. So, just like last time, we prepared our classes: an NT Sweat Sesh with me, and a Yoga class with Anna. We also served vegan burgers from Juicesabel and coconut water from Vita Coco (Thank you, guys!)
We were so excited to see the number of attendees grow this time. Many of our new members, we only met that day and about 95% of them joined us for the first time.
Because many requested for a re-run of the first meet-up that we did, we kept things pretty much the same but still offering an entirely different yoga class and a lot of new tracks at the NT Sweat Sesh.
Brought a lot of leg and glute work to class that day.
And then, we smashed the floor, as usual.
My girls like to bring in the vocals during class too! Caught a couple of them singing to “Worth It” by Fifth Harmony on this snapshot! LOL
Anna kept it slow and stretchy in her class. I was itching to get on a mat to practice but helped out in assisting students instead. :p
All that strengthening from the NT Sweat Sesh was brought to balance by Anna’s opening class.
We ended with a deeply relaxing Svasana wherein even those who didn’t practice (a.k.a. me), ended up spending a few minutes of quiet time.
That wasn’t all. I’d say the highlight of the event was the real connections that were made and new friendships that unraveled right before our eyes.
Anna had this brilliant idea of giving out the brown bags of food with names of other attendees written on them.
The task was to find that person and deliver his/her food. And voila! New friends huddled during the break. <3
Very special thanks to the Manalastas Family for their all-out support during the event, especially to Mark and Alexei who took these great photos. All on point!
The Ekam Community continues to grow and we want you to be part of it. Join our Facebook Group to know when the next meetup is going to be. We’re also on Instagram so be sure to follow us there!
