Jews often say that you can travel to anywhere in the world and when you enter a synagogue, the services and prayers are familiar enough to follow along and join. The fact that everyone uses Hebrew helps – it creates a common platform. Sure, there are different melodies – or sometimes no melodies at all if they're Orthodox. But you can usually navigate it.
Yoga has a similar quality. Only instead of Hebrew being the unifying platform, it's the Asanas – the poses. Our bodies are designed a certain way across the board and so the positions and poses have a range, and people have formed sequences and class structures around a common set of these.
Today I tried Hom Yoga in the Orchard Center Mall – one I've never been in before, built after my time. A very friendly American-Singaporean couple owns and runs it. It had all the elements one would expect of a nice corporate yoga studio – spacious, light, well appointed locker rooms with showers and hair dryers, towels, fancy water – the whole nine yards. I've now been to only two yoga studios in Singapore – so no hard and fast conclusions – but it seems providing the mats and have them all laid out like parking spaces is the standard here. Also, while they give out towels for your mat, they don't offer mat towels – the wonderful towel-like covers yoga brands make that perfectly cover mats so you can sweat all over and the towel absorbs the sweat and ensures you enjoy continued traction. But these little quirks are much like the melodies or lack of them in services. It doesn't change much and given today's class was based in the Bikram 26 and 2 sequence that my studio at home uses for one of the classes I most often attend, I knew mostly where we were headed.
Of course the command, "Change!" between asanas was a bit jarring. Maybe you get used to that with some time.
One very noticeable difference was the vibe. Maybe I'm just spoiled, but Westlake Yoga Company is very community oriented. People know each other. There are hugs and catching up between classes or while waiting for one to start. One teacher calls the 10 minutes leading up to his class, "The Muppet Show" because of the quiet din of everyone chatting. I can't count the number of times I stretch and zone out before class and suddenly I feel someone touch my shoulder, or lean over me and waive hello or just bend down and give me a hug. It's fantastic. None of that at either of the studios I've thus far visited. But the view out the 6th story floor to ceiling windows was pretty great.
When I first came to Singapore on my first visits in late 2003-early 2004, I would be shocked if there were even half as many yoga studios as there are today. When my friend Alex came to join me in the nurse recruiting business I was here doing in 2005, he was taken aback by how disconnected Singapore was from things like clean living, healthy food, self-care – all the things Alex experienced in abundance in the Bay Area for several years prior.
Alex noticed Singapore lacked its own art. He felt the amazingly strong and tight systems design that led to a successful Singapore in just one generation and was catapulting itself to higher heights in yet another didn't leave people with either the room for creativity or the pathos that comes with suffering. While I never liked that assertion, the proof seemed to be in the pudding – Singapore had one modest art museum and a handful of small galleries. If there was any thriving art in Singapore, it was architecture – not the fine arts.
Once you plant a seed, you can't really know what will happen. The tree or plant could develop in any number or ways with variances in shape or even a mutation producing a new crop or color. Of course a terrible frost, blight or man with an axe or scythe can come along too.
One of the most common conversations I would have with Singaporeans and non-Singaporeans about the small nation's future is what would happen in another generation? What would happen once Lee Kuan Yew – the force of nature who throughout his life claimed titles such as founding Prime Minister, Senior Minister, Minister Mentor, and for all intents and purposes Mastermind and Father of Singapore – died? Would the incredible system prove unsustainable and break down when the maker was gone the way it did when Portugal's Salazar died? Would young Singaporeans want something different? Would a generation that knew only prosperity and never the fear and suffering of their grandparents continue on the path LKY meant for them?
It has been almost eight years since the Minister Mentor passed and Singapore has not changed tremendously yet. But maybe change won't come radical bursts, but evolutions of organic growth? Maybe the tree will take on some of its own direction and shape?
After yoga, I walked along Orchard Rd toward Bras Basah – one of my favorite areas. As a rounded a curve I knew so well there in front of me was a massive building I didn't recognize at all – interesting, artistic and covered with live plants. School Of The Arts Singapore. My heart smiled. Apparently the pathos was just waiting for expression. The tree is growing toward the light.
A major barrier to clean eating in Singapore is the produce itself. Early in Singapore's nationhood, LKY and his group of leaders made the difficult decision to end all agriculture in Singapore because there wasn't enough land and resource to ever make the country self-sufficient. Instead, they reasoned, it was better to develop better housing and industries with Singapore's precious and limited land and use its comparative strengths to its advantage. Food can be bought from other countries – and so it has been ever since. The supermarket produce section offers a selection of onions from Australia, the USA, China and Malaysia. Pricing corresponds to cost of import and freshness (generally Malaysian agriculture is the freshest). Produce is sprayed and treated to have longer shelf life because it has already come such a long way before it is displayed in the supermarket. Alex made the point about how dull the produce was in Singapore and after a run down to my house in Bali where incredibly delicious produce is fresh off the farm and the trees – I could taste the difference by contrast in returning to Singapore.
Today, Singapore is a pioneer in low-resource hydroponic farming and is beginning to once again produce its own food. The times have changed and it turns out that Singaporeans are happy to have the freshest healthiest produce if they can get it. Through their investments in science and research, they may well get there.
Many critics of the paternalistic flavor of Singaporean governance believed that younger generations would rise and change Singapore radically after LKY was gone. It could still happen. But I don't think it will. My Singaporean ex-girlfriend was smart, educated and spent significant time in Australia and the United States. When it was election time, I asked her who she would vote for – assuming she would support an opposition party because she would want change.
"The answer is obvious," she told me, "I would only vote for the PAP (the party that has always held the majority in Singapore). You can't trust someone else can successfully govern Singapore – the whole thing could unravel!"
And there it was. Even a younger generation thought of LKY like Roger Moore – Nobody Does It Better…. And sometimes they probably wish someone would.
Maybe the Singaporean way isn't to revolt or want drastic change. Maybe there's too much to lose that way. Trees seem unmoving and very stable. However, if you took a photo of a tree every week for 50 years and made a flip book of the photos, you would discover trees move a lot. I believe the Singaporean tree is moving and changing. You see it in the architecture, art walks being advertised, yoga studios, new farm-t0-table restaurants and through charity work, civic planning, education, exposure through travel.
You also see change through love. Singapore changes as people intermarry and cultures come together and blend. There are plenty of international, intercultural families in Singapore like the Hot Yoga couple – and soon Tony and Vanessa will be joining their ranks.
In fact, despite Tony's COVID and the challenges of having a wedding while awaiting a negative test, Tony and Vanessa had their very masked-up wedding rehearsal yesterday evening and Tony's family and two of his friends (one being me) still went out for dinner at an outdoor Hawker Center. Nothing fancy, but delicious Singaporean food. It may not have been what was imagined, but it's what there was – and not only was it better than not, it was good.
