We all have a story to tell!
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I was born in Seoul, South Korea, on Feb 15, 1975. I have two brothers and one sister and I am the youngest in my family. I am actually one year older than all my records say I am.
My parents found out that the person who helped with my birth registration made a mistake and put 1976 instead of 1975 on my birth certificate. I decided not to change it because I felt like it gave me an extra year of life! |
In 1995, after I graduated from high school, I decided to move to Beijing, China for one year to study Chinese. I ended up studying and working there for almost 15 years. I am fluent in Chinese and consider it my second language (English is my third). Living abroad was a difficult transition for me but it was also one of my greatest life turning-points. I had to self-educate myself to be independent. Also, I had to learn to coach myself to be a bolder and more efficient person to survive in a foreign country.
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After I graduated from the Beijing Language and Culture University in 2000, I started to work at the International School of Beijing (ISB) a Korean Community Liaison. ISB is one of the largest and most well-respected international schools in the world. My primary role was to work with students, faculty, staff, and parents to bridge the gap between the English-speaking international education environment and Korean community. I also took on several management roles in addition to my job as Liaison.
When combined, I held a decisional, informational and interpersonal managerial role for the school. |
From this experience, I learned so much about how to receive and communicate between different education systems and aspects in the learning environment. Working at ISB also helped me build interpersonal relationship skills in order to foster good connections with both sides of the community.
In 2003, I married a wonderful man I met from the same university in Beijing. I was studying Chinese and he was teaching English to Chinese students. We had a beautiful wedding on NamSan mountain in central downtown Seoul. We lived in Beijing for another 6 years, then moved to Austin, Texas in 2009. That was a huge transition for both of us. We both felt that we had to build our lives from scratch after living in China for 15 years! In 2011, we were both admitted into graduate school programs at Michigan State University and we moved to East Lansing, Michigan.
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My new journey of life started when I visited a doctor a few years ago. I found out that I have an hormone imbalance condition. When the doctors told me this, it made everything else seem meaningless. I became deeply depressed. In time, I decided I needed to turn my life in a new direction. I wanted to feel more connected to my body and spirit. I had tried yoga before for just casual exercise but now I decided to commit myself completely. I spent almost five months working on my 500 hours yoga teacher training in Spring 2015. Yoga became a search for my physical, mental, and spiritual self.
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The 500 hours yoga teacher-training program was a very challenging process, but it definitely encouraged me to go deeper in my journey. The program taught me to consistently to find peace, to find my power, to find inspiration and my own inner beauty. I learned that outside accomplishments are temporary but inner strength and discipline can last a lifetime. Now as a yoga instructor, I believe yoga is connection, the enlivening power of connection with life and with others. Yoga is the divine, imbued combination of techniques and teachings that brings a pure heart, strong body, perfect health, and mental and spiritual power to achieve whatever we want to achieve.
Focus and awareness are important when teaching yoga. I have noticed that when students come to my class, they often just focus on postures. But I have come to realize that yoga is not only about practicing postures. It is about communication between the body and my mind. In this way, it is about the connections we build between our physical and mental states. As a teacher and mentor, I came to understand the role of trust when leading students to try something that is physically challenging. I have learned to model both physical and mental traits that are often key to helping my students find intrinsic motivation for developing their own practice. Determination and discipline can also be powerful motivators and students can take inspiration from a teacher that embodies those qualities. Naturally, when building these connections, the most important issue is physical safety. I want my students to have the best possible experience in the studio, and that means finding the right balance between challenging them and keeping them safe.
I want my students to feel challenged and supported at the same time. I want them to trust me as someone who has knowledge and experience, both as a teacher and a learner. Finally, I want to be a teacher who inspires students to have closer connections between their activities and their thinking, their mind and their body.
Focus and awareness are important when teaching yoga. I have noticed that when students come to my class, they often just focus on postures. But I have come to realize that yoga is not only about practicing postures. It is about communication between the body and my mind. In this way, it is about the connections we build between our physical and mental states. As a teacher and mentor, I came to understand the role of trust when leading students to try something that is physically challenging. I have learned to model both physical and mental traits that are often key to helping my students find intrinsic motivation for developing their own practice. Determination and discipline can also be powerful motivators and students can take inspiration from a teacher that embodies those qualities. Naturally, when building these connections, the most important issue is physical safety. I want my students to have the best possible experience in the studio, and that means finding the right balance between challenging them and keeping them safe.
I want my students to feel challenged and supported at the same time. I want them to trust me as someone who has knowledge and experience, both as a teacher and a learner. Finally, I want to be a teacher who inspires students to have closer connections between their activities and their thinking, their mind and their body.