Stephanie Chan ZERO GRAVITY

Stephanie Chan, Owner Anahata Sound Healing & Yoga

Stephanie Chan, owner of Anahata Sound Healing & Yoga, shares with The Yum List the story of how it all began.

What do you do and how did you get into the industry?
I was a hotelier half my life heading the Sales & Marketing team which was pretty demanding, so I thought I’d wind down a bit and I open my own restaurant. I had a Nyonya restaurant for six years and it wasn’t a wind down really: in fact, it has given me more pressure physically and mentally than any other job. I was getting insomnia, migraines, sick and the list goes on.

I took up yoga teaching 13 years ago as an exit plan in case I did not want to work for others anymore. After I sold my restaurant business, I went to India to study Sound Healing & Mediation to pursue my yoga skills. I have been through a stressful career and business and getting sick all the time… so I started Anahata Sound Healing & Yoga to help myself and others manage stress, heal and live a healthier life.

Share with us an interesting story from behind the scenes.
Take a scroll on Instagram, a lot of people are posting “Yoga” poses which some do not even exist in Yoga teaching in India. Using those challenging poses to market yoga and promising weight management and weight loss has made yoga lose its Soul. People come to a yoga class with a totally different intention. These people want to sweat in a yoga class like a cardio exercise class.

What’s the best/ worst part of your job?
Best Part
I am just human, I get lazy with my own yoga practice so the best part of my job is that when I conduct classes or sessions I am forced to practise, and I mean proper practice:  students expect to see my perfect asanas!
The best rewards I get from this job are when my students come to thank me for a great session and how much they learnt and healed. Trust me the reward is not the money, it’s the words from the students/clients.
Worst Part
Trying to explain that Yoga, Meditation, and Tibetan Singing Bowl Sound Healing isn’t religious! Many perceive Yoga as Hinduism and Buddhism.

What’s one of the funniest things you’ve seen behind the scenes?
A yoga teacher sitting at the edge of the stage looking down at her feet teaching a meditation class as if she was speaking to herself and some of her students were playing with phones while lying down and some students were sleeping.

The perfect day off would be…
Muay Thai sparing with my Kru (coach). I cannot be Zen all the time: Muay Thai is my other passion. It helps me destress and tires me out so that I can get a good night sleep.

What do you do for fun?
Cooking. I used to do that in my restaurant, experimenting and creating new recipes with my chefs. I have created new dishes using local ingredients like Buah Keluak Pasta, Buah Keluak Ice Cream and Cincaluk Pasta. Yeah that’s fun.

What’s something you’d like guests to know about Anahata Sound Healing & Yoga
Classes?
All classes are conducted with the true traditional yoga sequences from proper Pranayama, Warm Up, Asanas and Savasana. I run small and private classes only. Much attention is paid to avoid injuries, verbal correction is given to students to avoid pushing and forcing them into the asanas, alignments and specifying the exact muscle to use for each asana.
I am a certified Sound Healer and Meditation Teacher from Satyam Shivam Sundram Meditation School Rishikesh, India. My Singing Bowls are from Kathmandu directly from the bowl maker. They are hand hammered, made from 7 sacred metals; Gold, Tin, Silver, Copper, Lead, Mercury and Iron. I choose the bowls with the corresponding musical notes so that healing can take place effectively.

What’s in store for you in the upcoming months?
1) Sound Bath with Floatation.
Sound Bath – Submerge in Sound & Vibration
Floatation – Sensory deprivation

This is the next level of relaxation: a 5 minutes aura cleansing to clear the negative energies prior to stepping into the float tank. Once you are in the tank, I will begin playing the Tibetan Singing Bowls for 30 minutes while you float, the sounds created by the singing bowls will entrain the brain into the THETA brain waves. The next 30 minutes you will continue to float with no visuals and no sounds.

2) Heart Chakra Meditation; 1-hour meditation class focusing on your heart chakra where this chakra is responsible for Love, Compassion, Forgiveness, Appreciation and Centre of Awareness. When your heart chakra is strong, you will feel confident and free, secure immune and fully appreciate the joys of life.

3) 7 Chakra Healing Therapy: Tibetan Singing Bowls are placed at the Chakra point to balance all your 7 Chakras

4) Gentle Yoga with Sound Bath – 1-hour class, 45 minutes of gentle asanas, 15 minutes of Sound Bath at the end of the class.

5) Candlelight Gentle Yoga with Essential Oils and Sound Bath – This class is to help people with insomnia issues. Yoga poses in this class emphasize relaxation and poses to aid sleep issues.

Read about our experience at ZeroGravity KL at which Stephanie offers her services here.

One Comment

  1. Looking at what she cooks, looks like she’s Peranakan, a nyonya.

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