People have heard about masculine and feminine energy, but do they know that we have both masculine and feminine energy as a person? Common statement in public is that masculine represents male and feminine represents female. That statement is not necessarily true. We can see male that is gentle, dare to cry, and nurturing while there is woman who is "get and go" type.

So, what is masculine energy and what is feminine energy?

MASCULINE energy:

• active​
• loves structure and creates rules
• organizing/managing
• planning
• keyword: DOING
• pushing/forcing when imbalanced
• is predictable
• stable (static)
• logic (mind based)
• willpower
• clarity
• focus
• achieving
• brutally honest
• direct to the point

FEMININE energy:

• flow gracefully like water ​
• attract like magnet. It is not passive, but active by attracting things to come
• receiving and appreciating
• intuitive (heart based)
• creative
• nurturing
• gentle yet powerful, not gentle meek
• embrace all, including darkness or shadow part of oneself
• quiet (contemplate)
• expressive
• letting go
• slowing down
• keyword: BEING
• dynamic or changing

Do you know which energy is more dominant in yourself?

We need both energy to work together to create balance. When both energies are balanced, we are more aligned with ourselves, between our heart and our mind. It makes it easier to attract things to come into our lives. Focus on the BEING first (for example be happy, be joyful, etc.) then take action or DOING.

Allow me to make our body as example. We need both strength (masculine energy) and flexibility (feminine energy) to keep it healthy. If we only focus to strengthen our muscles through hardcore practice that gets us sweat by forcing and pushing, and we forget to make the joints flexible, it is not considered as healthy as well. Our body needs to be both strong and flexible to sustain our everyday activities. Therefore stretching is needed here. A more gentle practice like yin yoga, qigong, taichi is a feminine practice that can keep your masculine practice in balance.
Nurturing yourself in nature like walking barefeet on grass, journaling, meditating, dancing are some of examples to escalate our feminine energy and be creative. Remember to have fun and be playful as well. Don't take all things too serious in life. Create rooms in life where we can enjoy things.

In modern times like now, we are mostly busy all the time and always try to achieve something. We get busy with the outer world like checking messages or emails in our cellphone, overthinking of something, etc. that sometimes we forget to take care of our innerself. It is time to return inside and balance our masculine and feminine. When we take care of our inner world, our outer world will take care itself.

Gratitude .... a word that is remembered mostly when someone is confronted with disadvantage situations in life. Sometimes we forget how lucky we are that we are still alive today. We are still breathing. What we experience most of the times is feeling of lack and not enough. We do not have this, we do not have that. Society creates pressure that in order to be seen as a reach person we need to live with certain standards. When other people have an expensive and luxurious car for example, we also want to have it. More expensive than what they have if necessary. This brings jealousy, feeling of envy, anger and resentment if we do not have what other people have. Then it creates competition everywhere, like in workplace, business, and even between siblings ... there is rivalry of who is the best so parents will like them more. This has been ingrained in our mind since we are young, either we are aware or unaware of it. It takes our focus outward to physical things, instead of looking inward, to our heart. Material possessions are not going to give real happiness or freedom we want, or solve whatever problems we have. I do not mean to say that physical matter is not important. It does matter, but only to support our life on a certain level. Should we not enjoy our hardwork by buying something for ourselves? Yes, you can and are encouraged to do it to keep yourself happy, but not in excessive way.

Feeling grateful and conveying our gratitude, preferably in a journal, are important. It needs to be done everyday. When we feel grateful for whatever we have, even the smallest thing, it will anchor us from the trap of lack and not enoughness, and keep us in positive energy. Gratitude will also lead us to abundance because we feel enough and we can give. Give with the wisdom that what we give can help other beings and also help us to let go of our attachment to things. Abundance is everywhere around us. We breathe in and breathe out abundance every single time, the abundance of breath. However, we will not be able to see or feel abundance if we do not feel grateful.

Two years ago, I was in anxiety state and felt frustrated with my life. I felt unsupported in my career. I felt envy when I saw my friends Instagram that they were able to go abroad for holiday. I was filled with anger and got irritated and triggered easily, even small things could trigger me. I felt unsafe and insecured. It changed slowly after I practiced gratitute. Sincere gratitude that comes from the heart, not from the mind, not by expressing gratitude because I had to or what was said by people commonly. First thing to be grateful for that I have practiced by doing meditation is gratitude for the breath. It is always there for us to support us unconditionally, 24 hours a day. With new breath each day, there is always hope that today is going to be better than yesterday, no matter what our situation in life is. Next I feel grateful and appreciate for my health, love, support, friendship, for the food that I have, sunlight, clean water, resources, etc. It will become endless list. It makes me feel rich even though I am not rich by possession .... yet (am always open towards opportunities though). I see things differently now.

To have gratitude attitude and abundant mindset are power and also a journey. It takes discipline, commitment, and courage to be in this journey and to keep rising up if we fall back into the trap of lack mindset. But hey, do not judge ourselves and feel ashamed if we fail. Just be compassionate and keep going. A brighter future awaits us.

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How can we be open and honest in communicating with others, especially with our closest people? I did try to be open and honest in my relationships, but most of the time I got judgment or I already judged myself first that people would judge me. It then made me repressed my feelings or putting invisible wall because I was afraid to get hurt. I was afraid to show who I really was. I thought people would not notice me anyway. My opinion did not matter. I hid behind what I so-called introvert identity. I did not talk much when surrounded by big group of people. I chose to be quiet, listen, and observe. I would be chatty only when the subject was related with what I was passionate about, such as yoga or spirituality.

As an introvert I feel "charged" when I am alone, have more time to contemplate and do whatever I want. However, lately I realized that I also got disconnected from other people even if I meet them in places. There is this longing to be part of a group, to have routine schedule to meet up, etc. There is also this extrovert part inside of me who wants to be connected with people. But it will not happen if I don't change myself first because I cannot accept the environment to change for me.

Few days ago, I had a situation with a client. I normally post yoga schedule in the yoga group so that my clients can choose which time they want to practice. One of the clients already read it, but no response. As a person who loves to plan things and have high expectation, the situation was kinda irritating for me. But since I have started meditating, I knew that the problem was in me, not with the client as what happens on the outside is the projection of what is in the inside. So, I decided to release the negative emotions by meditating, dancing, did whatever I like, and most importantly be grateful. Out of sudden, she informed me that she wanted to join the evening class. So, after the class I decided to talk with her about how I felt before which I usually would only stay quiet and keep it inside. She apologised and we talked about our characters that apparently were opposite. We had open and honest communication in the end which made the relationship better, without prejudice. Now I also understand why I am surrounded by these type of people. I need to learn to let go of my expectation. If something is meant to be then it will happen. The incident made us more aware and learnt from each other.

Being so open and vulnerable are not easy for most of us. There is trust involved. However without them, we will not be able to have proper communication where we feel safe and be who we truly are. Even if the other party might have difficulty in accepting what we have to say, at least we are being true to ourselves. We become who we truly are. So, lets be open and shine.

What do I want is a question that is not that easy to answer for most of us, including for me. I do know what I want superficially. I want to become a yoga teacher, which I did. I want to eat this, I want to eat that. I want to do this, I want to do that, or I want to have this and I want to have that. Even when we already have what we want, do they really fulfill our heart?

The question of "What do I want?" comes during social distancing time. It has been 3 months since Indonesian government made the statement for the people to stay at home. In the beginning, I thought it would not give too much impact on my activities. I just needed to do things online from home, work with clients online. Apparently it has big impact, especially with the economy, including my clients. So, they need to stop their yoga practice which of course affects my life. The feeling of losing security and safety financially. However, I have been grateful that I still have food to eat, place to stay, and many more abundance that I have been receiving. They might be small, but they are meaningful.

​So during quarantine, I use the time to create, either yoga sequences, blog, short video or coloring. I also learn a few things like how to do video editting, listen to podcast about yoga, basic qigong or anything that can improve my life. I feel like I need to DO something (masculine energy), instead of just BE (feminine energy). I have been putting pressure on myself while I can actually just enjoy the time with myself. Just be with myself and know myself more.

Then I found this old picture of mine when I was about three years old. She even posed in the picture. I did not remember that I was a happy child back then. I only remembered that my face looked sad in my most toddler pictures. Getting back to the question of "What do I want?". I want this little girl in the picture to enjoy the best of her life, to fulfill her destiny of why she was born. She wants people around her live in peace and harmony, from within.

I envision YOGA BLISS WITH LIA not only as a yoga brand, but also a community like a family, where there are love, peace, trust, openess, support, encouragement, healing, harmony, balance, and union. A community where we learn from each other, and give great impact for the society. That's what I want. Unexpected events happen during the journey of establishing and developing YOGA BLISS WITH LIA. However, I believe that giving up is not the answer. I trust that there are people out there who need yoga for their healing purpose, and I want to help them. This is the reason I was born.

NO, we are not going to ask mirror on the wall who is the prettiest lady or the most handsome man. This is about mirror in our life.

Mirror in life reflects the events in our life whether they are pleasant ones or unpleasant ones, or people who are around us whether we like them or not, especially our family members.
My mirror and my biggest angel is my mum.

We often go through frictions, end it with quarrels and no conversation for days. We almost never have similar way of thinking. Now, how come I can say that she is my mirror, the reflection of me? She is there to trigger the things that I need to learn about myself. She is there to keep me stronger in my faith. The faith to keep teaching yoga and growing the business, and helping many more people in this planet. And I am also her trigger. I help her to understand, learn and grow herself. I used to  have expectations that she would understand and being supportive in whatever I do. I knew now that it might will not happen. So, I focus in expanding myself now because when I grow, people around me eventually will also grow.

Recently, something happened that triggered both of us regarding household matter. I have just realized that I triggered her fear to come out and she projected her anger towards me with her words which was hurtful. And just like mirror principle, when we project negative energy out, it would return back to us because mirror reflects back and it also reflects who we are inside. I am not a perfect human. There are times when I feel low and lose my power by getting angry back at her. The awareness plays important part here. Once I am aware of it, I release it through meditation, journaling, or yoga, or another energy work. I do not want to hold into anger too long because it will weaken and block the energy in the liver (anger energy is stored in liver). Like my business partner says, "Turn anger into passion which drives the work and the business". He is correct.

It is not that easy to forgive and love unconditionally, but that is the biggest gift we can ever give to ourselves. We do not do it for others, but we do it for ourselves, for we are the one who can love ourselves the most. Let the sadness, grief, hatred, disappointment or whatever that is be returned to light for we are LOVE & LIGHT. Shine from the inside out.