first yoga competition in the Philippines

Well, lots of first for me this year. My third 'first' is the first-ever yoga competition in the Philippines called the Philippine Yoga Asana Championship or PYAC (www.philippineyogachampionship.com). The competition was held last Monday at BDO Theater in Makati Avenue. Four bikram studios participated in the event - Tristan's Makati and QC, Joy's Eastwood and Al's Greenhills.
I was actually more into ashtanga before. When I had a rotator cuff problem that wouldn't go away (from Badminton), a friend recommended to do Bikram. She said that the heat will help heal the muscles. Well... since then I've been healed and hooked! i've been sweating out in the 'hot room' for 90-minutes, doing 26 poses twice for the last two years.. I agree with RJ though that the 'competition' is contrapuntal to the philosophy of yoga. i joined the competition to deepen my practice and it was fun training under Marc and Christina Mead.

We were 21 females and 3 men judged according to how well and graceful we executed the five compulsory asanas (or poses)- plus two advance within the timeframe of three minutes. The five compulsory asanas were Standing Head to Knee, Standing Bow, Bow, Rabbit, Stretching and my two optional asanas were- Head Stand and Upward Stretch (right photo).
I'm not surprised that Al, teacher and owner of Greenhills studio, won the male category. For the females, Lintal won! So both will be traveling to Los Angeles to represent the Philippines in Los Angeles. Woohoo!!! As for me, I didn't place, but I'm happy that i did all of the poses without falling and within the specified timeframe and hopefully, inspired peeps in the audience to practice yoga - - be it bikram, ashtanga, hatha, iyengar...