I am a Muslim Hijabi and I Love Doing Asana Yoga #2

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In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. 



Assalamualaikum w.b.t.

If you read my 'About Me' , you would know by now that I am all about that strength, flexibility and balance lifestyle. I think it would be worth to actually share how I even started of with yoga and why I got hooked with it.


 Why Yoga?

 It all started when I was still in high school (boarding), July/August 2016. I was just casually scrolling through Instagram in the mid-year of the National Examination year for my batch. I suddenly stumbled upon a photo of Norsoraya doing a full dancer pose. When I wanted to try the pose, I found how inflexible and imbalanced I was. I immediately learned that all the amazing poses she did was actually from yoga.

At School in 2016, credits to Jamilyn Rasyeeda.
That's when I began to find yoga tutorials on Youtube. I learned from many great souls including Kino, Yoga with Adrienne, Candace, Briohny, Boho Yoga and many more! Of all the yoga practice I did, it all ended with shavasana. And I diligently followed the 10-15 minutes deep relaxation (lying down with closed eyes). Your body is meant to be still for the whole time but since I was new at it, I always ended up snoring off. I usually practice around 5 pm on-wards when I was in school. If I dozed off, I would end up waking up at 6.45 or even 7 pm when the prefects were clearing out rooms.

It was sort of a hassle but I noticed many great changes from it. At that time, I was struggling with my skin that was breaking out real bad. I noticed how when I felt good about myself doing the yoga poses, I was happy with myself holistically. Not only that, I realized how I was not sleeping in classes anymore. I think this helped me tremendously as I was not really good at studying since I was always fatigue and unfocused. With asana yoga, I think it transformed my lifestyle completely.

I have then became obsessed with the adrenaline rush I get when practicing inversions and backbends. I am grateful that Allah s.w.t. allowed me to discover this beautiful science.


What kept me going?

If you're Malaysian and either you're Muslim or you knew yoga back then, yoga was once banned in Malaysia. Back then (2000 on-wards), there were already many Malaysian including some Muslims who practiced yoga. But, some of the practices where there were Muslims; were conducted with mantras which is actually a form of shirk towards Allah s.w.t.

So, for me to actually make it like a sort of community around my peers was not the fittest idea. I then decided to search more for Malaysian yogis on Instagram and to my favour, there were many!

Cikgu Dol and I after the Free Yoga Fit at KLCC Park in 2017.
My earliest Yogi sister/friend/teacher was Dolores Leong. She was always rooting for me whenever I posted my yoga photos. We then became friends on Instagram and I found out that Dolores was actually a teacher at that time. One day, she posted a poster of her upcoming class that was a part of YOTIW's Free Yoga Fit session at KLCC Park. Keep in mind that my only source of yoga information was from Youtube at that time so I was pretty excited about it. I wanted to attend my first yoga class with Dolores.

I was working as a full-time barista at that time. Thankfully, my boss, Kak Irma, who has a golden heart allowed me to take the weekends off to my first yoga class ever. Ever since then, I have been actively joining many yoga events which all were very dear to my heart. 


I am truly thankful for Allah s.w.t. actually allowed me explore this life with asana yoga. The support from my family and friends were impeccable. I couldn't have reach here even the slightest bit without their motivation. 

Of course, there were many issues about its compliance with the Shari'ah and especially what to wear for yoga? If you liked me sharing about this, please do let me know and I will share more in the next post. Till next time.


My dearest salam to you,
Fatimah. 

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