Organizing a workshop ? Hardly could imagine that before … I am a loyal workshop participant, especially to those conducted by my favourite gurus – no matter where such guru organizes the workshop, I will present myself there.

In December 2007 I flew to Surabaya in order to participate in a workshop conducted by Donna ( a yoga practitioner of Sanggar Primadona ), with Daniel Aaron as the guru. I had been used to follow the iyengar method yoga workshop, but in that occasion I followed the new Astanga Vinyasa method for the first time – it sounds unfamiliar, doesn’t it ? But I decided that try such new “menu” on that day.

In the previous year, Daniel Aaron had conducted a workshop in Jakarta, but I did not participate since I had heard several negative comments about him. And I assumed that such comments were delivered by some practitioners who knew yoga well.

However, after I followed the workshop, I found that the negative comments were untrue. One of the workshop committee – a friend of mine – told me that Daniel wanted to conduct more workshops in Jakarta and she offered me to be the workshop organizer. Wow … I was really surprised and I said: “ How can I be a workshop organizer? I am not experienced in such activity and I even cannot imagine how the committee works !” My friend told me: “ We will help you in producing the brochures.” I told her that I needed time to think; after I returned from Surabaya, there were many things to do in order to avoid misunderstandings – and I told her that I would notify him as soon as possible.
Finally, supported by my positive thinking that I would make a leisure trip to Bali for a workshop, that means, I would have to spend some money for my air tickets, hotel accomodation, meals, and seminar, I started to produce brochures, as well as renovated the studio for better air circulation. The preparation process took about 2 months and finally the day came.
Attended by many yoga practitioners – whom I considered to be “more expert” since they had been practising yoga longer than me – we started to focus the whole energy to Daniel’s presentation about asana and yoga philosophy. All of us were seriously learning and exercising asana. We got the opportunity to question some aspects that we did not understand and meditation sessions were also given after each asana. The exercise went well, while during the lunch break we could enjoy the cold/hot juice processing demos for our healtf and Tahitian noni juice as well.

The 12 hour and 30 minute session had passed and we took home the knowledge we had obtained in 12,5 hours. I felt relieved since the workshop went well – I had previously been extremely worried about any incident or unsatisfied clients.

I remember a proverb – money means nothing if we do not have any friends. Had my friends in Surabaya (Donna,Cakka) and Carin Studio staffs not work very hard in the workshop preparation and when it took places, I would not have been able to do anything. I would also like to thank to our sponsors who had kindly distributed prizes to the participats.

Life is difficult, but with knowledge, it becomes easy. With art, life becomes beautiful; with our faith, we become tougher.

I hope with the knowledge shared by Daniel and yoga exercise art as well, we will be able to step further with more confidence with “Mas YOGA”.

Namasté, Carin