Why a barn?
A barn is a rustic, un-pretentious, come-dressed-as-you-are kind of place. And our buildings are all traditional, craftsman-style, created with reclaimed structures and recycled wood, all within the cultural and local aesthetic of Bali. So we truly resemble an Indonesian version of a barn.
How common is this kind of place in Bali now?
We opened the Barn in 2007. But in the last five years in particular, the wellness industry in Bali has grown exponentially. Yoga studios, retreat centers, eco-villages, organic farming operatives, fair trade clothing manufacturers and health-conscious restaurants have popped up everywhere to meet the demand. I see Bali becoming the spiritual epicenter of Southeast Asia.
Who might we find at The Yoga Barn?
People from all countries and all cultures. On a typical day we have anywhere from 250-350 people coming through our open doors. We offer the ultimate "Yogic Buffet" for the spiritually inclined tourist. Whether a complete beginner, an experienced practitioner, or somewhere in between, we have something on offer. Everyone who has a body can do yoga.
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What prompted you to write this book?
The Bhutanese have a very great sense of belonging—and therefore a strong attachment to history and their origins. But most of the educated people in Bhutan are affiliated with the system and the government; they have more or less signed an agreement that only allows them to say certain things. So we get a very watered-down version of our history. I’m an independent academic so I have no obligations to abide by any particular version of history.
Are there concrete examples of how that history can inform the present?
A lot of people come with this naïve view of Bhutan: that it’s an isolated Shangri La that’s suddenly been exposed to democracy. In fact, democracy is deeply engrained here. The whole Buddhist system is very democratic, very egalitarian, almost republican. Buddhism doesn’t accept any virtue by birth; there’s no absolute power; you are an independent individual, free to choose your own course. It’s only the election system—of appointing a government—that’s new, and there are big powers at play. The Bhutanese are very shrewd and smart; but things beyond their control, like counting of the votes, mean there’s a risk of manipulation.
What about Gross National Happiness (GNH)—is it a helpful model for development?
To some extent it’s largely rhetoric. It’s a good vision to have; a high ideal. If it happens, then we ought to be optimistic. But I often find GNH comparable to communism. It sounds like a utopian idea: a fantastic ideal, but no one really practices or implements it.
Where do you think Bhutan’s future lies?
We can’t just be isolated like we were 100 years ago. But we’ve become excessively and unnecessarily dependent on India; partly fuelled by the illusion that we cannot exist without Indian support, though that history only goes back 100 years. I’d rather choose to keep India as a very good friend, but pursue multilateral relationships.
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Walk on the wild side
Get that stale air out of your system at Changi’s five themed gardens. Our faves include Terminal 2's Sunflower Garden, where you'll find over 500 cheery flowers. But perhaps the best is Terminal 3’s Butterfly Garden, where butterflies flit around and sip on ripe pineapple all day. Terminals 1, 2 and 3
Catch 24-hour movies
Free movies—what’s not to love? The airport's movie theaters are open 24/7 and constantly play Hollywood blockbusters, so you can nip in for a free screening at literally anytime of the day. Terminals 2 and 3
Take a dip in the rooftop pool
You’d never have thought that you could fit in a workout while waiting for your flight. The Ambassador Transit Hotel at Terminal 1 has a rooftop pool that overlooks the runway, as well as a gym and Jacuzzi (free for hotel guests, a tad steep at $13.90 for non-guests). There are shower facilities for afterwards, too. Terminal 1
Get your game on
The Entertainment Deck at the Terminal 2 Departure Transit Lounge is a haven for gaming geeks. There’re LAN gaming, Xbox Kinect and PlayStation consoles, as well as a 50-inch plasma television and music system. Terminal 2
Take the ultimate selfie
Get snap-happy at Terminal 1’s The Social Tree, a snazzy high-tech interactive installation surrounded by eight touch-screen photo booths. You can superimpose your photos onto the colorful tree structure, email snapshots to friends and family, and even upload them onto social media. Terminal 1
Drink up
Sip on beer, wine or cocktails at the La Cave Wine Bar at Terminal 1, which is an outdoor bar located in the Cactus Garden. Other places to drink include Harry’s and Hari’s Pub. Terminal 1
Get a rubdown
Book yourself an invigorating treatment at Wellness Spa—we can't think of anything better to do before or after a flight. The Oxygen Therapy is especially recommended for travelers suffering from jet lag and cabin pressure-induced headaches. Terminal 2
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CoreAlign
Head to Sky Pilates for classes that are conducted on the CoreAlign, a revolutionary training tool designed to improve posture and balance. With an array of deep stretches and challenging exercises, your core stability muscles should feel the burn.
Sky Pilates, #09-01 Forum The Shopping Mall,583 Orchard Rd., 6100-7597, www.skypilates.com.sg.
Les Mills CXWORX™
Launched at California Fitness last September, this workout, which involves the use of an elastic resistance tube, will do wonders for your core muscles—all in just 30 minutes. It’ll strengthen and tone your abs, butt, back and obliques, as well as improve your balance and mobility.
California Fitness, 8/F Ngee Ann City, 391A Orchard Rd., 6834-2100, www.californiafitness.com.
ViPR
This 30-minute class places an emphasis on loaded movement training and 3-dimensional movements with the ViPR, that log-shaped exercise tooL you may have seen lying around the gym. You’ll get to build up your functional strength, while torching tons of calories.
Pure Fitness, 6/F Asia Square Tower 1, 8 Marina View, 6100-2233, www.pure-fitness.com.
Zumba Step
This workout, which debuted worldwide last month, combines traditional fitness, dance and step aerobic moves, all set to sexy, infectious tunes. It’s a fun and effective way to tone those glutes and hamstrings, plus you’ll get to burn up to 1,000 calories in a single session.
Virgin Active, 6/F One Raffles Place, 1 Raffles Place, 6908-7878, www.virginactive.com.sg.
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Like all of you, we think of ourselves as reasonably fit. Not obsessive about it, but, you know, not in bad shape considering how much eating, partying and TV drama-watching we do. Truth be told though, we’ve grown a little bored of our lazy gym routine and the occasional jog around the track. So when we heard about a host of new workouts that promised us not just a better body, but less time lifting weights and more fun while we were at it, we jumped at the chance. Of course, it wasn’t enough for us to just test them out: we set ourselves the ambitious and horribly ill-advised goal of trying them all within just one week. Here’s what happened:
Monday
How hopeful we were when the week began! Once we’d shaken off our post-weekend woes the prospect of a workout that would be over almost before it had begun had us pretty excited. That’s RIOT, a 30-minute regime that packs a series of cardio, calisthenics and weight-training exercises into a single session. It harnesses your own body weight, plus equipment such as kettle bells and TRX for a more structured workout.
“RIOT is a great way to work out and keep motivated with your friends,” says Dr. Lynn Yeo, owner and Director of new gym R-Evolution. “It’s short, intense, effective and fun.” We can’t really argue with that, though a more honest appraisal would have been “it’ll leave you lying on your back gasping like dying fish.”
We were tasked to perform a series of jumping jacks (60 reps), ring push-ups (20 reps), ab extensions (20 reps)... well, you get the idea. And that was just one circuit—we had to complete as many circuits as humanly possible within 30 minutes. Great for getting ripped in no time, not so great if you’ve spent all day Sunday at a Champagne brunch.
Where to do it: R-Evolution, #03-09 Vivocity, 1 HarbourFront Walk, 6376-9697, www.r-evolution.com.sg. $280/month for unlimited classes.
Tuesday
Ouch. Barely a day in and already our bodies were screaming stop. But the prospect of a workout mimicking animal movements and poses had piqued our interest, and we were hopeful at least one of them would be “sleeping cat”.
No such luck: Zuu (pronounced “zoo”) is a 30 or 45-minute, high-intensity workout featuring bizarre exercises like frog squats and bear crawls. There are over 100 different moves altogether.
According to Christian Mason, Virgin Active’s operations director for Southeast Asia, Zuu “improves mobility… and strengthens ligaments, tendons and inter-connective tissue through primal pattern movements.” But while they might be primal, it’s been a good 10 million years since man branched out from other animals, and it certainly felt like that long since we’d had to move like this.
We were actually quite good at the gorilla crawls (although apparently our lactate threshold sucks), less so the snake plank (moving up and down while holding a normal plank position, which actually felt pretty uncomfortable) and iguana push-ups. We also invented a new one: sweaty ape. We couldn’t fault the routine for novelty value, but we’re not rushing back.
Where to do it: Virgin Active, 6/F One Raffles Place, 1 Raffles Place, 6908-7878, www.virginactive.com.sg. Membership is priced at $42.50 a week and $170 per month.
Wednesday
By now we were desperately hoping for a second wind to kick in, or at least an excuse not to do any more damn squats. We’d tactically booked in for a session of Aerial Arts, figuring the gravity-defying, acrobatic moves would spare our knees. That they did, though hauling our own bodyweight up, over and through equipment like the trapeze, lyra (hoop) and silks for the best part of an hour was by no means easy,and despite some helpful guidance we’re still waiting on the call up from Cirque de Soleil.
It was a great core and upper body workout, though, and “by learning how to perform aerial tricks, you’ll improve your bodily awareness, coordination and mental concentration,” says Simply Yoga Director Annie Gan.
One thing we really didn’t want to concentrate on was how high the equipment seemed—if you suffer from vertigo (or, you know, are just looking for an excuse to sit out your third day of exercise in a row) you might want to give it a miss.
Where to do it: Simply Yoga, #03-23/24/25 Katong V, 30 East Coast Rd., 6348-6828, www.simplyyoga.sg. $200 for an 8-week aerial foundation class.
Thursday
With the weekend approaching (and our arms now struggling with ultra-challenging tasks like, ahem, picking up pens) we figured we’d take things down a notch and sign up for a chilled out session of Surfset. We figured wrong.
Think of all the things that make surfing so difficult (nailing the right posture, having good balance, needing a strong core), take away the scenic setting and the water and you’re left with a tough, 45-minute session of surf-inspired moves on a static, floor-mounted (and purposefully unstable) board, incorporating planks, push-ups, paddling and even yoga poses. All this means you reap “the cardio benefits of spinning, the muscle toning of TRX training, and the improvement of core and balance all at once,” according to Melissa Goh, owner and instructor of Surfset Fitness.
Surfset doesn’t teach you how to surf (there’s Wave House Sentosa for that) but it targets the exact muscles needed for the sport. And it wasn’t nearly as mechanical as that makes it sound: you don’t get the zen effect of being out on the water, but just like the real thing there are plenty of hot bodies to ogle. And the afterburn lasted all the way to our workout the next day, which can only be a good thing (even if it felt like anything but at the time). The movements certainly came more naturally than in many of the other classes we tried.
Where to do it: Surfset, 454B Joo Chiat Rd., 9751-0793, www.surfset.sg. $35 for a single class; $165 for a package of five.
Friday
The folly of what we’d gotten ourselves into was now abundantly clear, and we knew we’d need something truly crazy to keep us motivated. Step forward Powerzeit! It’s a full body training exercise that uses neuromuscular electronic stimulation (NMES) to…who are we kidding? It’s a weird and wacky regime in which you get zapped to get fit.
Said to increase aerobic capacity, define muscles and fight cellulite, Powerzeit also allegedly prevents unnecessary exertion and pressure on your joints. “NMES is very scalable—athletes can complement their functional training, weekend warriors can keep fit and couch potatoes can overcome their motivational issues,” says Wolfgang Reeh, co-founder of Powerzeit.
There’s no denying it’s an unusual experience, though. Once we’d overcome our fear of having electricity passed through our body (and frankly we were in no state to resist by this point), we were fitted in a special damp outfit—for better conductivity!—before getting wired up. But it wasn’t nearly as bad as we’d feared: the instructor controls the intensity of the electrical impulses so we never felt too uncomfortable. We did, though, break into sweat after just two minutes, and we were knackered at the end of the 20-minute session. Was it interesting? Yes. And great if you’re lazy. Would we do it again? Doubtful.
Where to do it: Powerzeit, 4/F Equity Plaza, 20 Cecil St., 6536-6921, www.powerzeit.com. $30 per starter session; $70 for a single class.
Saturday
We tried really, really hard not to treat ourselves to a night out after Powerzeit. But the less said about what happens when we try not to do something the better. So we were quietly relieved to have booked ourselves into a padded room to work off our hangover. Even better? When you go trampolining you can do as little or as much as you like within a one-hour slot.
Of course, once we realized the setup was basically a giant bouncy castle, kitted out with wall-to-wall trampolines and foam pits, the temptation to bounce around like a loon proved irresistible. And there’s some serious science behind it—according to a 1980 NASA study, 10 minutes of playing Spiderman equates to 30 minutes of cardio, and is more efficient and effective than running or swimming. What’s more, it supposedly increases bone density, preventing arthritis, and strengthening muscles you didn’t know you had (we can certainly testify to the not knowing part).
The downside? We can see it being pretty easy to hurt yourself (our backs were a little stiff after half an hour). Says Sky Ong of AMPED Singapore, “It’s safe, although we’ve had a few injuries when people get overambitious while doing trick jumps.”
Where to do it: AMPED Singapore, 2/F, 369 Tanjong Katong Rd., 8669-4894, ampedsingapore.com. $9-$15 per hour.
Sunday
The end of the week couldn’t come soon enough; though we had to reluctantly admit feeling much fitter than we had when we started out. Perhaps mixing things up like this wasn’t such a bad thing after all. And thankfully we’d saved one of the most interesting offerings till last.
At Stand Up Paddleboarding (or SUP) Yoga we paddled out 25 meters from Tanjong Beach to perform basic yoga asanas, from sun salutations to back bridges, on a 10-foot long board. Similar to Surfset you’re working your core so as not to keep shaking and falling off the board—it was a less challenging workout but so much more fun for being out in the elements. You have to hold your balance as the waves roll in and, of course, avoid capsizing the board. They don’t even really mind you cooling off in the water: “More people are willing to try handstands at SUP Yoga,” says Ellen Goel of 22 Experience, “as you fall into the water, instead of onto hard ground.”
All things considered, a pretty great way to end a pretty tough week. Who knew Singapore sunsets were that pretty?
Where to do it: 22 Experience (8421-5021, www.22experience.com) holds a session ($55) every last Sunday of the month at Tanjong Beach. Weekly YogaFitness classes ($50 upwards) are available at SUP School Singapore, Tanjong Beach, Sentosa, 9638-5565, www.supschool.com.sg).
We speak to Derrick Foo, founder of Palm Avenue Float Club to find out what the fuss is all about with sensory deprivation tanks. Also, check out these four new gym routines around town!
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