Five years ago, 30-something William Hsieh's (
Camille Wu (吳怡嫻), a 30-something graphic designer has also made the change to yoga. Her big treat at the weekend used to be having a big Sunday brunch with her girlfriends. Now she takes yoga classes with her friends instead.
Given a chance to try out "hot yoga" last week I found myself in a 40oC room following an instructor doing tree and triangle postures.
I started sweating like a trooper, trying hard to hold on to the posture for two more seconds. As I turned around I realized some celebrities were also practicing in the same room. They were pop singer and TV host Harlem Yu (
About 20 years ago Chiu Su-chen (
trendsetting lifestyle activity.
Three or four years ago being a member of a fitness center might have seemed cool among friends. Now, it's yoga.
According to the ROC Yoga Association (
unaffiliated studios.
Yen Wan-hua (
"Almost all government units, including the Taipei City Government and the Presidential Office, have begun setting up yoga classes as a form of employee welfare," she said.
Yoga has become so trendy that a Zhongxiao East Road studio called Space was recently opened. Its founder, Mathew Allison, calls it a "boutique-style" yoga center and has spent tens of millions of NT dollars making it look the part.
The decor looks like a resort spa, with natural Kuanyin-stone flooring. There is incense, new age music and candles, as well as a lounge for guests to take a break, with a long wall decorated with red- and orange-colored tassels that looks like something the painter Mark Rothko might have come up with.
Allison, who is from the US but has lived in Taiwan for 20 years, used to be an executive at a major record label, but five years ago he began to practice yoga because he was suffering from knee problems.
He said he had practiced at different yoga centers but could not find one he really liked. Having spent more than three years preparing, he has now thrown himself into his own yoga business and has hired eight instructors from Taiwan, the US and Canada.
"We are aiming to promote Taiwan's yoga culture. It's more than a sport, it's a lifestyle," said William Hsieh, who now works with Allison at Space.
The yoga schools set up by Chiu Su-chen attract mainly women and the instructors are also women, with more than 20 years of teaching experience. It is, in a way, a women's world in these studios.
Their teaching methods tend to be more function-oriented, emphasizing the curative or beneficial effects of practicing yoga, such as slimming and relieving body pain or sleeping problems.
But at Space many of the instructors are men in their 20s who have been practicing yoga since the age of seven or eight. They travel around the world giving yoga lessons and besides yoga they go surfing, learn new languages and meditate. They are, in a way, the new generation of yoga instructors.
And of course, there are more male students in the classrooms at Space.
Hsieh talked about his own experience shifting from weightlifting to yoga practice.
"When I did weight training, it was mindless and very mechanical. But when I do yoga -- which has mental and spiritual elements as well as physical postures -- I feel more balanced in my mind. For me, it's meditation in motion," Hsieh said.
Taiwanese have become more drawn to exotic cultures in recent years, which is evident in the number of tourists visiting India. According to the India-Taipei Association, last year more than 21,500 Taiwanese visited the country. That represents an increase of 33 percent since 2003. In 2001 less than 8,000 Taiwanese visited India.
With the younger generation more curious about foreign cultures, Hsieh is optimistic about promoting yoga in Taiwan.
"We still consider Taiwan's yoga development in its infancy. Take the US as an example: more than 15 percent of the adult population practice yoga. With less than 1 million [of the adult population] practicing yoga in Taiwan, or around 8 percent, it means there's still a lot of room for growth."
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