Enhanced yoga training is coming to Prince George, and a former P.G. instructor is leading the exercise.
Sufey Chen, the city's 2010 Youth of the Year and the youngest inductee into the Chamber Of Commerce's Top 40 Under 40, has been learning yoga since she was a teenager and has now travelled to several countries of the world deepening her understanding of the mind-body fitness discipline. It is part athletics, part philosophy. After a year of both teaching and learning in Hawaii, Florida, Costa Rica, and other locales, she and yoga partner Allowah Lani are bringing their skills here.
Chen and Lani are the two lead instructors for Yoga University, an organization with more than a dozen other yogis helping lead retreats established in five different countries. The Prince George model they will use provides 200 hours of instruction to yoga teachers spread out over eight weekends.
"It's good for teachers, but also just for self-study. A lot of people take it for that purpose - just to contribute to their own health and happiness and knowledge of yoga," said Chen.
"Our students call it a course in inspired living because it is much more than just teaching the physical postures. It is about the philosophies of yoga and how to apply that to your daily life - taking it into our work, our families, our relationships, the strangers we meet on the street. It is a completely different way of looking at life. It can change your entire experience with your existence. It's pretty damn magical."
There are many subsets of yoga, and Yoga University is inclusive of multidisciplinary forms. It allows the practitioner to dive deeply into specialties, but from a foundation of the yoga cross-section. It also provides background on the origins of yoga and the different mental processes that accompany the moves of the body.
"It's about freedom for the self from fear, from inner power struggles," said Chen.
"We believe everyone is already a teacher; we provide space to see the patters in ourselves that no longer serve us, or never served us but we picked up along the way. We are about getting down to the core. People go through major transformations, have big breakthroughs, sometimes people are crying in relief or ecstasy. We love being part of that sharing and revelation."
The teachers retreat runs weekends from October through December. For more information, contact Chen by email at [email protected] or call 604-880-5891.
Admission is $3,000 plus tax (it goes to $3,500 plus tax after
Sept. 1) and half the spaces are already sold, said Chen.
Through Chinook Yoga in Prince George, Chen will also be teaching workshops in ecstatic breath, chanting and mantras beginning Sept. 5.
While she is in her hometown for a few months, she will also be available for private health and wellness consultations, and she is doing a set of free classes during the last week of August. Locations will be provided by email.
