Malaysian Association of Yoga Instructors (MAYI)

ABOUT US Manasa Yoga is a Yoga Alliance (YA) Registered School (RYS) which provides a 200-hour and a 300-hour advanced training programme that meets Yoga Alliance’s standards. Manasa Yoga School offers 500 hours of training in two segments, 200 hours and 300 hours, permitting teachers who graduate from our Teacher Training Courses to become either a RYT 200 or a RYT 500, depending on the level of training completed. FOUNDER Our programme director, Manoj Kaimal ERYT500 and co-founder Sandhya Manoj, conduct our Manasa Yoga Teacher Training Courses annually. Manasa yoga, founded by Manoj Kaimal and Sandhya, is a discipline where yoga practice and precepts flow together in a style focused on cultivating a total yogic experience. It sees the integration of a fluid, dynamic and strong body with a mind capable of maintaining a non-reactive, open awareness of the present moment enhanced by an intellect finely tuned to concentrate and contemplate deeply, thus opening up the possibility for health, peace and wisdom. Manas means the mind. At Manasa Yoga, we see it more as ‘awareness’. And by pre-fixing manas to yoga, it simply highlights our intentions in practising and teaching, which is the cultivation or deepening of awareness through yoga. The training for the development of this awareness starts with the gross, objective phenomena such as the foot, knee, spine, inhalations, exhalations, etc, through the tools of asana, taught with specific alignment instructions based on anatomical insights, as well as pranayama. This brings about an attenuation of the scattering tendency of the mind and in its place, a state of attentive steadiness. Then, along with a release of tight muscles which cling and restrict our physical movements, the mind too gets a release from the obduracy of many ignorant notions, creating space for spontaneous wisdom to arise; such as the insightful experience of body as a dynamic mass of energy and intelligence, pure and radiant, rather than just a static shape.