MANILA, Philippines - At this very moment, Rosan Cruz is in the vast plains of Montana, doing advanced training for Theta healing. Last year she climbed the Himalayas with a group of yoga practitioners on a mystic journey to caves and sacred sites – a pilgrimage of sorts for yogis. Earlier this year she walked the Camino de Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage in Spain.
In her previous life, she would be logging overtime at the office, working on the weekends as a senior executive. Though she only left corporate life behind completely about two years ago to practice and teach yoga full time, she says she can hardly recall life before yoga.
“It was not that easy, because you have email, calls, meetings – and then all of a sudden, nothing,” says Rosan on making the transition from corporate life to a more mindful practice.
In her “past life” she had been in account executive with McCann Erickson and Avia Communications in the ‘90s; worked in New York with Nynex, which is now Verizon Communications; was senior marketing services manager for Bayantel when the company was just a start-up; and was senior assistant vice president with Lopez Holding Corp. for 18 years.
“I don’t miss that life at all,” says Rosan quickly and definitively, now that she’s gone “from high heels to tsinelas.” Corporate life was stressful, she recalls: “Before, I was stressed, sick, I had indigestion all the time… I got healed by yoga.”
Rosan started her journey as a yogi early on – way before yoga became a fitness craze. While on a sabbatical in New York in 1995, she discovered yoga and enjoyed it so much that she decided to continue her practice when she came back home to Manila.
One day, while pushing herself to get into a pose, she heard an ominous crack. “When I released my pose, I couldn’t walk,” she says. On that fateful day, she learned that “when you do yoga, you really have to be mindful of your body.”
A friend then recommended that she try hot yoga. “When I did hot yoga, my body healed, my back healed. That’s when I realized that yoga is not just for improving your flexibility. I discovered there’s more to yoga than just the physical.”
This turning point, one of many in her yoga journey, led her to become a Theta healer, a sound healer and a passionate Kundalini yoga teacher.
“Kundalini, for me, is a different ballgame,” Rosan says. “It’s liberating. It’s what I really want to do.”
She explains, “In Kundalini yoga, it’s more spiritual. You will discover your body, yourself more.”
While it is not as popular in Manila as ashtanga, vinyasa or hot yoga, “the first time I tried it, it was mind-blowing,” Rosan says, describing Kundalini yoga as a “mind bootcamp.”
In this type of yoga, practitioners access the dormant Kundalini energy located at the base of the spine through breathing, chanting mantras and doing yoga poses that stimulate the seven chakras.
“It is a yoga of awareness. You awaken your shakti power and gain a heightened awareness,” says Rosan. “Sometimes in life, everything is already in front of us but we are not aware of it, we don’t see it. We insist on doing things, we insist on doing it our way. But in fact, you’re already being guided by your intuition.”
A heightened awareness, she says, will reveal more clearly the opportunities in front of you.
Teaching was the next step in Rosan’s journey. She now teaches hot, vinyasa and yin yoga, and is one of the few who offers Kundalini yoga classes in Manila.
Kundalini yoga teacher training consists of three levels of increasing difficulty – the third level requires 1,000 days of meditation. Rosan is now on her way to completing the modules in the second level.
“When you teach, you’re holding the space for everyone. You have to be mindful of all the students. You have to guide them with your voice. It’s not just telling them what to do. You have to really be connected to each one of them,” she says.
“I always emphasize that we are one group, we’re sharing each other’s energy. Each student is helping another student with their energy. In class you’re being carried by the energy of the group. As a yoga teacher, you really have to hold that space, you have to hold that energy. You have to make sure that everyone is moving as one.”
Rosan describes a Kundalini yoga class: they start by tuning in through the chanting of a mantra. Then the class warms up to open up the spine. They then go through a yoga set, working on the core. Then they cool down and relax with meditation. “It’s all about reclaiming your power. It’s way beyond the physical practice,” says Rosan.
To end the class, she plays her gong to synchronize the body’s frequency with that of the earth. “It balances anything that’s not in harmony,” she says.
As part of her seva (selfless service) every month, Rosan brings her gong healing to cancer patients at Carewell Foundation and Medical City.
Rosan has embarked on another step of her journey – both inward and outward – in her new life dedicated to yoga.
She shares with STARweek some of the most important realizations she has gained from her practice:
“Love yourself. The more you love yourself, the more secure you feel, the more you generate that feeling of happiness in you. So once you open yourself up to love, the more you’re attracting these opportunities to come to your life and the more you’ll see it. If you want to be happy, love yourself more.”
In this her second life, Rosan’s motto is “Live, heal, bloom.”
She says, “No matter how old you are, you have these possibilities at your fingertips. Remember, Kundalini yoga is all about discovering your fullest potential. If you awaken that Kundalini, you can do anything.”