Tales from a traveling yogi

by Marian C. Baring

YOGA and travel are two of David Kim’s passions. To get the best of both worlds, he fused these two passions of his and became a traveling yogi.

Known for his light sense of humor and winsome style of teaching, Kim has traveled all over Asia — to name a few, Japan, Korea, and Thailand — to share his practice.

The American yoga teacher came to Cebu last month to meet the yoga community in line with the anniversary celebration of Yogahub Philippines.

Kim was a longtime practitioner until he finally decided to take a teacher’s training course some eight years ago.

Before that, he was an editor of the New York journal the Village Voice, a job he took shortly after graduating from Brown University. Around this time, Kim was dabbling in yoga.

Kim said it was only after he moved to Los Angeles in 1994 when he got hooked.

“I was evaluating scripts that were submitted to the movie studios. That was when I hit a wall. It was such an interesting job, but I just felt so isolated and cerebral. It was then when I decided to do yoga,” said Kim.

He said it helped that he felt an instant connection to the yoga community in LA, and yoga has helped him become calmer and more focused to help drown out the chatter that surrounded him.

In his travels, Kim has met all sorts of practitioners with different kinds of theories about yoga — some sound, some uncanny. Cebu is no different.

Either way, Kim just wants to spread the good word about yoga wherever his yogi’s feet take him.